mmo Books

Women’s work and the public sphere

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government and Wall Street reward U.S.-based companies for closing domestic plants and scouring the globe for the lowest wages in places where human rights and labor rights are ignored; and about the ways in which free trade harms democracy, undermines stable businesses and communities, exploits workers on both sides of the border, both ends of the global assembly line.

In 1955, Mollie James, an African-American woman, went to work at Universal Manufacturing Company in Paterson, NJ. This successful, immigrant-founded company produced ballasts for fluorescent lighting. It was a unionized, well-paying job, and it enabled Mollie to raise her five children relatively comfortably. In 1989,

Mollie earned $7.91 an hour; not so much in itself, but with all the overtime she put in, it came to about $30,000 a year. She also received company-paid health insurance, and the peace of mind that came from a secure job— a job she could raise a family on, buy a house, a car, borrow money against, count on for the future.

In the early 1960s, Universal experienced a great deal of union unrest, and the company began to look for a second plant in a location where the conditions were less favorable to unions. It settled on Mississippi’s Simpson County. In addition to weak unions, Mississippi was a right-to-work state that provided public financing for private factories. The jobs at Universal’s Mississippi plant were initially only for whites, paid less than the jobs in New Jersey, and did not provide any benefits.

However, Mississippi was not immune to the social and political changes of the 1960s. Union organizing and the Civil Rights Act combined with the site manager’s efforts to desegregate the local labor force led to the hiring of a number of African-Americans. One of these, who got a job similar to the one done by Mollie at the plant in New Jersey, was a woman named Dorothy Carter. Carter, like many of the other African-Americans who worked at the factory, got the opportunity to free themselves from low-paying dead-end jobs and the chance to work their way out of poverty. Universal also brought prosperity to the county as a whole, but of course, the county’s prosperity would be dependent on the firm’s fortunes:

One thing everybody in Simpson County could agree on…was how inextricably linked was the community with its largest employer. With some much riding on one horse, it is no wonder that people speculated about what would become of them were Universal every to close the barn doors. “I remember when everyone was buying a new trailer,” [said] Dorothy Carter, “and someone said, ‘Boy, if that plant ever shuts down, they’re gonna hook ‘em up like a wagon train.’”

In the 1980s, Universal Manufacturing, like many companies, was caught up in the “gale winds of Wall Street’s merger mania.” While the firm had been sold to Philadelphia & Reading Corporation in the 1960s, P&R had retained most of the original management and made very few changes. This would not be the case with Universal’s new owners. In the mid-1980s, Universal was sold twice within eight months, and it ended up in the hands of Magna-Tek, an electrical components conglomerate.

In 1988 Magna-Tek opened a plant in Matamoros, Mexico, a city full of

foreign-owned assembly plants that wed first-world engineering with third-world working conditions. The maquiladoras, in turn, are a beacon to tens of thousands of poor, young women (the industry prefers women, the younger—for their nimble fingers and compliant minds—the better), for whom a factory job trumps any other employment options.

The plant in Paterson, NJ could not continue to compete with the “benefits”— lower wages, weak unions, weak environmental laws— of operating in Mississippi and Mexico, and in 1989, the plant was closed. Mollie James, lost her job and the security that came with it:

She had received a severance package of $3,171.60— about $93 for each of the thirty-four years she worked. She collected unemployment benefits for six months and then enrolled in a six-month-long computer-repair school, receiving a certificate of completion and numerous don’t-call-us responses to job inquiries. Mollie never again found work.

In Mexico, the equivalent of Mollie’s job was taken in early 1993 by Balbina Duque, a young woman with an incarcerated husband and three small children. However, by the end of 1993, the combined effects of the passage of NAFTA and the collapse of the peso wreaked havoc with her wages. In 1997 on paper, she was earning twice as much as in 1993, but, in reality, her wages had declined. To help control expenses, she lived with her sister and her sister’s children in two rooms in a subdivision with poor roads and few services next to a toxic waste dump. While Balbina’s job was the same as the one Mollie held, her work environment was much different:

The job in which Mollie James once took great pride, the job that fostered and valued her loyalty, enabled her to rise above her humble beginnings, provide for her family— that job does not provide Balbina Duque a wage sufficient to live on.

The company’s move to Mexico did not stop continued attempts to decrease wages and cut operating costs. In 1997 and 1998, Magna-Tek closed the remaining US plants and shifted jobs, not to Matomoras, but to another Mexican city, Reynosa, where it was possible to pay wages lower than those in Matomoras.

Of course, any time a company moves out of the country, it does so at the expense of the local community, which very often, through its labor force and other incentives, helped make the company successful. Very often, these communities do not recover. Today, in Paterson, NJ a once thriving industrial center no longer exists, and one-fifth of its population lives in poverty. The “race to the bottom” creates anxiety for workers who see their chances for security constantly diminishing.

When Adler visited Balbina again in 1999, he asked her if she would move to Reynosa if her job were transferred there. Her answer speaks volumes about the effects of globalization. “And what if they were to move again?” she replies. “Maybe to Juarez or Tijuana? What then? Do I chase my job all over the world?”

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bombs, bases and working communities

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