Stop and Go : Strike--and Pact--Affect Mexicans Too

From the sleepy industrial town known as the Little Mexican Detroit to the bustling maquiladora plants along the U.S. border, tens of thousands of Mexican auto workers have suddenly gotten a glimpse of the downside of free trade.

Thanks to a strike by 3,000 United Auto Workers members in Ohio that halted production of key brake parts, General Motors Corp. this week idled 2,500 non-UAW workers at its auto assembly and engine factory in the northern town of Ramos Arizpe.

Around Mexico, 30,000 employees of GM’s Delphi Automotive part-making plants also suddenly found their work at a standstill.

Thursday’s tentative settlement of the Ohio strike should quickly send the Mexican workers back to their factories. But the work stoppage is a dramatic illustration of how the Mexican auto workers’ fates are tied to developments in remote places such as Detroit or Dayton--especially since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“Since NAFTA, the border has been something on maps, not something that influences the way GM structures its operations,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at UC Berkeley.

But don’t expect car workers here to bash free trade. Exports have enabled them to weather the worst Mexican recession since the Great Depression.

For example, in Ramos Arizpe, “the Little Mexican Detroit,” not a single worker lost his job because of dried-up demand last year--even as Mexican domestic car sales plunged 70%, GM says.

“The industry had schizophrenic behavior during the [economic] crisis,” said Arnulfo Arteago, an auto-industry specialist at the Autonomous University of Mexico. “If you look at the internal market, there was a deplorable collapse,” he said. But, thanks to free trade, “it’s an industry that’s growing.”

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In recent days, the effect of the Ohio strike has rippled across Mexico. The Ramos Arizpe plant, one of three assembly plants run here by GM, was unable to get brakes and stopped its production lines.

The effect was even greater for GM’s Delphi Automotive part-making factories, which mostly produce components for U.S. assembly plants. About 30,000 of Delphi’s 63,000 workers were affected as the U.S. plants closed, company spokesman Michael Hissam said.

The toll on workers has been mixed. At Ramos Arizpe, roughly 2,500 employees remained on the job, doing maintenance or training. The other 2,500 either moved up their vacation time or saw their pay cut in half, a company spokesman said.

At Delphi, employees had the option of reporting to work for training or other activities, or staying home and receiving half pay. Decisions were made “plant by plant,” said Hissam, adding that he did not know how many saw their paychecks cut.

There was no word Thursday, a Mexican holiday, about how soon the plants would resume production if UAW workers vote today to end the strike.

Without a doubt, the strike was another dose of bad news for Mexico’s car industry, battered last year by a severe recession and soaring consumer interest rates.

Thousands of Mexican auto-parts workers lost their jobs in 1995 as wholesale vehicle sales plunged to 184,937 from 413,150 a year earlier, according to figures from the Mexican Assn. for the Automobile Industry trade group.

Some assembly plants shut down lines for days or weeks, often putting workers on partial pay.

But the Mexican auto industry’s increasing focus on exports meant the effect of the crisis was not as great as it would have been years ago, experts say. Exports shot up 38% last year, to 781,082 vehicles, according to the trade group.