USW, Los Mineros Wage Cross-Border Struggle To Lift Mexican Worker Wages, Labor Standards

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/13890

Submitted by Doug Cunningham on July 20, 2010 - 7:13pm
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By Doug Cunningham

United Steel Workers International Affairs Director Ben Davis says his union and Los Mineros, the Mexican mine workers union, continue to move forward in a strategic cross-border alliance. The USW, Davis says, is in solidarity with Los Mineros in its struggle to uplift wages and working conditions for all Mexican workers because that strategy will also protect U.S. industrial jobs.

: “Workers in the auto parts industry n Mexico are making between fifty and seventy dollars a week right now. So that puts enormous pressure on industrial jobs in the U.S. And we would much rather see the workers in Mexico making more money than the plants closing in the U.S. as they continue to do during this economic depression.”

Davis says the USW is helping Los Mineros leader Napoleon Gomez, who recently had trumped up criminal charges against him dismissed. Gomez says the Los Mineros struggle is being fought against a highly corrupt right-wing government in collusion with mining companies that use violent suppression of workers. But he says the union is determined to change working conditions.

: “We have been under the right-wing government for the last ten years in Mexico, which has acted completely against the workers’ rights, particularly the democratic and independent unions. But I think and I’m convinced that this is going to change in the future. We will have a more democratic country, more respect for labor and human rights in Mexico.”