Workers at Río Bravo Duro Plant Vote Against Independent Union

 
The McAllen, Texas newspaper, The Monitor, reports that workers at the Duro Bag maquiladora in Río Bravo, Tamaulipas have chosen to stay with their current union, the CROC (Confederación Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos, Revolutionary Confederation of Laborers and Farmworkers), by a vote of 497 to 4. The losing party in the election was a new, independent union that appeared to have had wide support in the weeks before the election.

Articles in The Monitor report that workers were intimidated by as many as 50 men prior to the election. When reporters from The Monitor tried to interview some of these men they were met with threats. US human rights and labor observers that gathered outside the Duro plant during the election told the newspaper that they were harassed by Mexican immigration officials.

Both workers and company management told The Monitor that voting took place in front of company officials. As FNS reported earlier in the week, labor supporters have said that this is a violation of the NAFTA Labor Side Accords.

Source: The Monitor (McAllen, Texas), March 3, 2001. Articles by Sean Marciniak, Leonardo Andrade and Melissa Sattley.

This article was published as a special weekend update on March 4, 2001 by Frontera NorteSur, an online news provider of the US-Mexico border, which can be accessed at http://frontera.nmsu.edu.  FNS is an outreach program of the Center for Latin American Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico.

FNS is an outreach program of the Center for Latin American Studies
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