How can U.S. and Mexican workers build cross-border solidarity?

I have been working at the Stellantis small parts distribution center in Ontario, here in Southern California, for 25 years. I am a member of United Auto Workers Local 230. I am the Community Action Program and Health and Safety Representative. I am currently working with the region as an organizer.

I started in 1999. Our local was formerly the union for the old Chrysler Assembly Plant in Van Nuys before it closed in the early 1980s. When they closed the plant, they opened the parts distribution center. They brought people from there to here. We now have 135 active members and probably about 40 retirees.

Our location is affected by US-Mexico relations. The company constantly threatens to move the parts center to the other side of the border. They are trying to exploit the labor market in Mexico against us, especially during negotiations, but also when deliveries don’t go well or products don’t arrive as they would like.

When negotiating, it’s always said, “We have to be competitive with the labor market there.” But we believe that Mexico needs to be competitive with the United States by employing workers there at up to $35 an hour.

In general, local people take such threats with caution. In the last five to six years, threatened job losses and production relocations have been taken more seriously as the company has actually outsourced our jobs to third parties and is shipping directly to distributors from Mexico instead of the products arriving at our factory first.

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

The company makes a point of saying what it wants, namely profits. But they don’t invest to make that money. Instead, they take that investment out of us, out of our physical body, and that definitely needs to change.

“What can we do here?”

When this union election took place at the GM plant in Silao, Mexico, some of our members followed it a bit. They’re interested in what’s going on, but it wasn’t TV news. It was very helpful to hear about it at this conference. We pass on the news to our members. Last night I got calls asking, “What can we do here for the Mexican auto workers unions other than donate?”

It was just a reaction from people through word of mouth and people wanted to do something. They want to go out and hand out leaflets to the dealers. We will do it if our region says we can do it. People are looking for concrete actions, not just solidarity in spirit.

The UAW’s approach over the past six months has been about concrete action. So if our leadership says we’re going to do something, commit to something physical and not just sign something, then we’ll do it.

I just received information about the Audi strike (which was underway in Puebla, Mexico at the time). We await the results of their ratification election. An Audi striker said the strikers would not accept the company’s offer. Actually, they were really angry about it. They should be.

I think that the workers in the union here should work much more closely with the workers in Mexico because a lot of our product parts come from Mexico. They also come from other union hands. What if we could work together in a coalition? Let’s say there is a problem with a supplier to the Stellantis parts factory here in Ontario. We could put a little pressure on them here.

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

I guarantee you that if a handful of UAW workers showed up in Mexico, it would attract the attention of the Mexican and U.S. governments. I would like to go there. I walked the strike line with them, organized, knocked on doors, called the mayors to get them to wake up.

TRACKING PARTS

In our warehouse we know which parts come from which factory and where the suppliers are. If we could get it organized, we could target locations to help workers unionize those facilities in the future. This isn’t hard if we knew what was going on. We could inform our people at the dock.

Often our members think that when we take on a leadership role, we are not participating in these activities and are just mouthpieces. But my local knows I’m not like that.

In fact, the CEO of Stellantis contacted our UAW vice president and said, “You need to tell your locals to stop their activism out there.” They took away our dock and we found congressmen and senators and they wrote letters to the CEO sent, and Stellantis actually told me that. But my local president and regional director told him to grind sand. We will continue to do everything we can to help everyone. This is our new leadership.

Local 230 has a militant history – it is not a violent one, but we do not take things lightly and remain inactive. The company is afraid of activism in our factory and what we can and cannot do. We have manpower due to the volume of products that come through our facility and that we service. Southern California is the first or second largest market in the United States for OEM (original equipment) parts and truck sales. They don’t want us to mess with this and close any of these establishments.

During the strike, they stationed paramilitary security forces at our factory. They did it to us. We had a six and a half hour standoff. We stopped the trucks to make a signal. Later that evening they decided to activate their training. Her guards attacked and it didn’t go down well. From that day on they never came out of the factory and onto the streets again. I emailed our company manager and said, “You are more concerned about your parts or getting something from your dealer than you are about the value of your employees.”

BUSINESS CONNECTIONS

Many of our members are Chicano or Mexican nationals, and throughout Southern California our members tend to be of Hispanic descent. We also have a lot of immigrants from other places. We try to get them active, involve them in local politics and make them aware of how much it affects them. There’s been a change in the way they participate, in their activism. It is no longer just closely linked to work.

And there is also knowledge about Mexico or a certain identification with Mexico among some union members. If you ask them now, most of them will talk about what they see in the news, about migration issues.

But those who are really paying attention know that there is a big business connection between immigration and trade with Mexico. There is increasing interest in this because of the risk that the company might relocate parts there. But a lot depends on what the leadership does, and that’s our job to filter it down to them and engage them.

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 stifling change.

Henry Salazar has worked with Stellantis and its predecessors for 25 years as a member of UAW Local 230 in Ontario, California.