Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed in 1993, the economies of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have become increasingly integrated. Workers in all three countries have suffered as corporations have used trade rules to maximize profits, push down wages and benefits, and manage the flow of people displaced by these rules.

Unions in all three countries have faced a basic question: Can they win the battles they face today without joining forces? That question has only become more urgent under the agreement that replaced NAFTA, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, or T-MEC in Spanish).

In February 2024 the UCLA Labor Center, the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation brought together union and workplace activists from the three countries to talk about labor solidarity in their industries.

The conference took place as a new wave of organizing was unfolding in the Mexican plants of U.S. corporations—including a successful campaign at the General Motors assembly plant in Silao. Participants also heard from Edgar Romero, secretary treasurer of the independent union at an Audi plant in Puebla, Mexico, who described the strike that was then underway at his plant.

United Auto Workers officers and members committed to supporting auto organizing in Mexico. One of them, Henry Salazar, talked with labor journalist David Bacon after the conference.

I’ve got 25 years seniority at the Stellantis small parts distribution center in Ontario, here in southern California. I belong to United Auto Workers Local 230. I’m the Community Action Program and health and safety rep. Currently I’m working with the region as an organizer.

I started in 1999. Our local used to be the union for the old Chrysler assembly plant in Van Nuys before it closed in the early ’80s. When they closed that plant they opened up the parts distribution center. They transferred folks from there to here. We have 135 active members now, and probably about 40 retirees.

Our local is affected by the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. The company threatens all the time to relocate the parts center to the other side of the border. They try to use the labor market in Mexico against us here, especially during negotiations, but also when deliveries aren’t going well, or products aren’t coming the way they want them.

During negotiations it’s always, “We’ve got to be competitive with the labor market over there.” But we think Mexico needs to be competitive with the U.S. by bringing workers there up to $35 an hour.

Generally speaking, people in the local take those threats with a grain of salt. Over the past five to six years, threats of work loss and moving production have been taken more seriously because the company has actually outsourced our jobs to third parties, supplying direct from Mexico to the dealerships, instead of products coming to our facility first.

But we don’t change the way we work because they threaten us. We can only do what we can do with the tools they give us.

The company is real big on saying what they want, which is profits. But they are not investing to make that money. Instead, they’re taking that investment out of us, out of our physical bodies, and that definitely needs to change.

‘WHAT CAN WE DO HERE?’

When they had that union election at the GM plant in Silao, Mexico, some of our members followed it a little. They’re interested in what’s going on, but it wasn’t televised news. Hearing about it at this conference has been very helpful. We’re taking the news back to our members. I started getting phone calls last night, asking, what can we do here for Mexican autoworker unions besides donate?

This was just people responding from word of mouth, and already people wanted to do actions. They want to go out and leaflet the dealerships. We’re going to, if that’s something that our region says we can do. People are looking for concrete action, not just solidarity in spirit.

The way the UAW has been operating in the past six months has been about concrete action. So if our leadership is saying we’re going to do something, to commit to something physical, not just sign on to something, we’re going to do it.

I just got the information about the Audi strike [then underway in Puebla, Mexico]. We’re waiting to hear the results of their ratification election. A striker from Audi said the strikers were not going to accept what the company was offering. They were really angry about it, actually. They should be.

I think workers in the union here should have much greater collaboration with workers in Mexico, because a lot of our product parts come from Mexico. They come through other labor union hands too. So what if we could work in a coalition? Let’s say there’s an issue with a supplier to the Stellantis parts plant here in Ontario. We could put some pressure on them here.

We have Audi dealers here, right? Maybe we could go to the Audi dealerships to notify the customers about the strike with a leaflet. Whatever legally we can do to help out. This type of cross-border organizing and communication is really our best tool for direct action. We can talk all we want but something has to be done physically.

If a handful of UAW workers showed up in Mexico, I guarantee you this would get the attention of the Mexican government and the U.S. government. I’d love to go down there. I’d go walk the picket line with them, organize, knock on doors, call on the mayors, to get them to wake up.

TRACKING PARTS

In our warehouse, we know which parts are coming from which plant as they come through, and where the suppliers are. If we were able to organize it, we could start targeting locations to help workers unionize these facilities in the future. That’s not hard, if we were aware of what was going on. We could let our our folks on the dock know.

A lot of times our members think that when when we get into leadership that we don’t participate in these activities and we’re just mouthpieces. But my local knows I’m not like that.

In fact, the CEO of Stellantis got ahold of our UAW vice president and said, “You need to tell your local to stop their activism out there.” They were taking our dock away, and we were getting ahold of Congress members and Senators, and they were sending letters to the CEO, and Stellantis was really saying that to me. But my local president and my regional director told him to go pound sand. We’re going to continue to do whatever is going to help everybody out. That’s our new leadership.

Local 230 has a militant history—it’s not a violent one, but we don’t take things lightly and sit on our hands. The company is afraid of our plant’s activism and what we can and cannot do. We have worker power because of the amount of product that comes through our plant, and that we service. Southern California is the first or second hottest market in the U.S. for OEM [original equipment] parts and truck sales. They don’t want us to mess with that and shut down one of those facilities.

They put paramilitary security forces at our plant during the strike. They went at it with us. We had a six-and-a-half-hour standoff. We were holding up the trucks, making a point. Then later that night, they decided to activate their training. Their guards got hands on, and it didn’t go over well. After that day, they never came out of the plant again, out into the street. I sent our company director an e-mail and said, “You’re more worried about your parts or getting something to your dealership than the value of your employees.”

BUSINESS CONNECTIONS

Many of our members are Chicanos or Mexican citizens, and all through Southern California our membership is more Hispanic. We also have a lot of immigrants from other places. We’re trying to get them active, get them involved in local politics, to realize how they’re affected. There’s been a change in how they participate, in their activism. It’s not just strictly related to work now.

And there’s also knowledge about Mexico or some identification with Mexico among some of the union members. If you ask them right now, most are going to talk about what they see on the news, about migration issues.

But those that truly pay attention know that there is a big business connection between immigration and trade with Mexico. Because of the threat that the company will shift parts over there, they’re taking a greater interest in it. But a lot depends on what leadership does, and that’s our job, to filter it down to them and get them engaged.

The UAW supports workers in Mexico. It wants to help them get a good contract and hopefully open the eyes of their government officials, to stop choking change.

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