The creation of the original maquiladora program,the Border Industrial Program,on the U.S.- Mexican boarder in 1964,was conceived as a way to absorb thousands of unemployed contract laborers,who had been working in the U.S during the twenty-two year run of the bracero program(original guest-worker program). To avoid social unrest,Mexican government needed to find jobs for those workers. To attract employers,it changed laws that had prohibited direct U.S. ownership of factories in Mexico,allowing investors to build plants taking advantage of lower Mexican wages,producing goods for the U.S. market. A new labor regime was put into place to attract foreign investment,including the brutal repression of independent unions or challenges to the low-wage model.
This development model has since been reproduced in developing countries all over the world. In the early 1990's the U.S Agency for International Development financed the construction of industrial parks,or export processing zones(EPZ),in rural Honduras. Poverty drove many young women and children to work in these factories.Many children started work at age ten in rural Honduras. The world's oil industry is completely dependent on migrant labor.The oil kingdoms of the Gulf states-Kuwait,Quatar,Bahrain,Abu Dhabi- have many more immigrant workers than native born ones.Migrant workers,in other words,make the world's vital oil industry function. It was no coincidence that Halliburton brought migrants from Bangladesh and the Philippines into Iraq in the wake of the advancing U.S. invading force in 2003,intending to use them to replace Iraqi workers on the oil rigs and pipelines.Only a strike by Iraqi workers forced Halliburton to retreat, and prevented the company from taking control of their industry.
Employers gain great advantage from this system,particularly lower labor costs and increased workforce flexibility.Industrial agriculture,based on migrant labor, has expanded to developing countries, where plantations owned or controlled by large corporations like Dole and Del Monte draw a workforce from displaced rural communities.In Columbia uprooted Afro-Columbians are drawn into nurseries growing flowers for U.S. supermarkets,or plantations growing palms for biodiesel fuel. In northern Mexico,vast industrial farms grow winter tomatoes and strawberries for U.S. consumers,drawing on families migrating north from Oaxaca.
Migrants are now a vital part of the service industry workforce in most developed countries.As the most recent job seekers,they begin in the most marginal and contingent jobs. Day laborers on L.A. or Long Island street corners arrive from Mexico and Central America.In Britain they come from Romania and Africa.Large meatpacking companies in the U.S. Midwest hire a workforce in which immigrants are a majority.Over the last twenty years,the industry's wage scale has steadily fallen behind the manufacturing average. Companies using migrant labor pay little taxes to the communities they belong to. They don't have to support local schools or services for workers families because they are in another country.
As global production lines are tuned more closely to changes in the market,employers use the flexibility of the contract-labor system to adjust quickly.Capital has to be flexible,able to move where it can earn the greatest return,and permanent employment only gets in the way.Production of new product lines requires new workers,often in completely different locations.Agriculture,garment and janitorial industries has used this employment model for decades.Recently,Hewlett-Packard has joined the model by using migrants from around the world to assemble their printers.
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