>>5020983 pb
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Mexico's president unleashes labor unrest at border plants
MEXICO CITY — A mass strike at 48 “maquiladora,” or manufacturer, plants in Mexico’s border city of Matamoros is heading for victory, bringing pay raises for laborers who make less than $1 an hour, or about 100 pesos a day, assembling auto components and TV sets for export to the United States - and causing jitters for the business community.
The labor battle broke out in mid-January after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador decreed a doubling of the minimum wage in Mexico’s border zones, apparently unaware that some union contracts at the maquiladora plants are indexed to minimum wage increases. The decree sparked a wave of walkouts involving about 25,000 workers.
The maquiladoras claim the strikes threaten the very existence of their industry, which has attracted over 5,000 mostly foreign-owned plants and 2 million jobs by paying very low wages. Union leaders say those worries are overblown, noting that workers at the border plants still earn far less than their counterparts in the United States.
Less than a week after the strike broke out, a majority of the export plants in Matamoros - 29 companies with a total of about 34 factories - have agreed to the union demands.
Lopez Obrador also has shown a certain fondness for militant union bosses like Mine Workers’ head Napoleon Gomez Urrutia and the head of the Electrical Workers Union, Martin Esparza, even though both have been accused of questionable financial deals and of holding more protests than negotiations.
But Zuniga brushes off suggestions that Lopez Obrador favors the miners’ union, and he dismisses accusations that he and other strike organizers are helping President Donald Trump’s campaign to bring manufacturing plants back to the United States.
“Unfortunately, people here in Matamoros live on very low salaries,” Zuniga said. “There is no plot, no conspiracy, other than to protect and help the workers.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/3/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-mexicos-president-unle/