LEARNING FROM OUR NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR: MAQUILAS LEAVE MATA, WORKERS, HIGH AND DRY

By Juan Montoya
This Saturday's newspapers from our neighbors across the puddle in Matamoros should give us pause to ponder.
The lead story deals with the plight of 600 families who have fallen behind on their payments to government-subsidized housing (la INFONAVIT) and are in the process of being evicted from their apartments.
Almost all of them are former workers in the maquilas or were related to workers of maquilas which have left city in search of greener pastures across the Pacific (China, etc.).

At one time, the promoters of these fly-by-night enterprises hailed these employers as the salvation of the border.
Today, we still hear this siren song on our side of the border as economic development gurus hold yet another announcement complete with heralds and trumpets that another maquila is being lured to the border.

On our side of the border, the main benefit, they tell us, will be rental of storage warehouses, a place for the managers to live, and the economic offshoot of having them here buying their consumer purchases.

Delphi Rimir S.A. DE CV,  whose parent company, Delphi Corporation, moved its assembly of plastic bumpers to Matamoros from the Midwest and is supported by U.S. automotive parts giant Fisher Guide Division, moved into Matamoros with much fanfare only to close as production costs drove them elsewhere. 

A press release in the Delphi Automotive website from Troy, Michigan, states that: "Delphi Automotive (NYSE: DLPH), a leading global vehicle components manufacturer providing electrical and electronic, powertrain, safety and thermal technology solutions to the global automotive and commercial vehicle markets, today reported fourth quarter 2011 revenues of $3.9 billion, an increase of 6.8% over the prior year period, and fourth quarter net income of $290 million, an increase of $215 million over the prior year period."

Before Delphi came to the border, it left behind in Michigan thousands of U.S. workers without jobs and established its maquiladoras on the border to undercut U.S. labor.

Communities from Saginaw, Michigan to Ypsilati suddenly found that the jobs that had kept entire communities alive were suddenly gone south at wages that totaled $10 to $20 a day in Matamoros when that same amount was paid by the hour to its experienced workers. And U.S. consumers were now buying cars "Made in the USA" with components made in Matamoros, Reynosa and Rio Bravo.

Componentes de Mexico was yet another company that came to Matamoros with much fanfare as did Deltronicos y Kemet de Mexico.

Now, with those giants gone elsewhere, the hangover of the maquila binge is being visited upon workers of the maquilas who committed themselves to buy their families homes based upon the wages they received from their maquila jobs.

"We used to get as much as $1,700 pesos a week in the year 2000 (about $100 to $120 a week)," a worker told the daily. "The houses were being sold for 208,000 pesos (about US 20,000) with a 30 year mortgage. Now, the judgement documents of our eviction tell us we owe $308,000 pesos after all these years of payments that we and the companies were making. What happened?"

After a slowdown at the Matamoros plant, the workers salaries were reduced to paid $700 pesos (less than $70 a week), and they began to fall behind on their housing contracts.

The crisis was not slow in coming. El Porvenir  reported that at the beginning of 2010, unemployment and economic insecurity forced 45,000 workers with INFONAVIT contracts to give up their homes to foreclosure. Nothern Mexico states along the US-MExico border like Baja California, Sonora, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas make up more than half of those foreclosures. Tijuana, Juárez and Reynosa alone accounted for 15,000 homes abandoned by their owners.

What was hailed as a dream by maquila promoters on both sides of the Rio Grande has now become the workers' nightmare. At least 600 families in Matamoros have already been ordered evicted by state courts and have run out of alternatives as more maquilas continue closing and leaving them without any hope of regaining their jobs.

On the Delphi website, it's Social Responsibility section, states that its "Delphi volunteers recently distributed books to the children at a rural school in a poverty-stricken town in Northeast China" where its production facility moved after it left Matamoros.

In 2006, Delphi announced plans to throw out its union contracts in Michigan and shed more than 28,000 workers as it shut down most of its U.S. operations. It also announced plans to sell or close 21 of its 29 plants in the United States.

And our economic-development gurus continue to put our eggs into that basket?