International Solidarity in the Struggle for Justice at Kukdong in Mexico

by
Jeff Hermanson

At Kukdong International – Mexico S.A. de C.V., a Korean-owned textile

and apparel factory located in Atlixco, Puebla, a struggle took place in
2000 that brought together a new generation of workers, young
women and men from rural areas of Mexico, and a new generation of
college students from the US, to confront one of the powerful global
production and marketing networks of the kind that dominate many
industries in today’s world. These workers and students joined forces
with more traditional organizations, local and national trade unions,
NGO’s and “solidarity organizations”, to form a campaign network
capable of waging a powerful struggle for justice on many fronts, from
the production site in Mexico to the campuses, shopping centers and
business districts of the global north. An analysis of this struggle
reveals a new internationalism that is emerging to meet the challenges
of corporate globalization.

The Kukdong International Corporation is a Korea-based multi-national

production company with over US$400 million in annual sales. The
company has plants in
Indonesia, Bangladesh, China, Korea and Mexico, producing high-
quality apparel for the European and US markets. The principal
products of the Mexican plant are hooded fleece sweatshirts,
embroidered with the logos of US colleges and universities. Kukdong
produces the sweatshirts for the US marketing giants Nike and Reebok,
who dominate the US college-logo apparel market along with a few
other large transnational corporations such as Adidas and Champion
Sportswear.

The Kukdong plant in Atlixco is the newest and most modern of the
company’s operations, and is a state-of-the-art “full-package” textile-
apparel production facility.
Kukdong has invested over US$30 million in a plant in which the fleece
is knitted, dyed and finished, then cut, sewn, and embroidered using
the newest computerized technology, then packed and shipped to
customers in the US. Water used in the dyeing process is treated both
before and after use in a modern water treatment facility. At full
capacity the plant would employ 2,500 workers and produce US$25-30
million worth of product each year.

The Kukdong plant is the result of the company’s strategy to become

the low-cost producer in its segment of college apparel production,
hooded fleece sweatshirts. The key elements of the strategy are high
technology, vertical integration, and proximity to the market. And of
course, low wages, even though at this level of technological
development, labor costs are a very small part of the cost of the
finished product, and low wages are not the main factor in determining
the company’s success.

Atlixco is a small city located in the southern part of Puebla state,

about two hours drive from Mexico City. This is an agricultural region,
traditionally one of the major sugar cane-producing areas of Mexico,
along with the neighboring states of Morelos and Veracruz. Since the
signing of NAFTA, the rural economy of Mexico has suffered a
tremendous crisis, as the Mexican peasant farmers entered into direct
competition with the farms of the US, and prices for their crops fell
drastically. Mexican corn producers with their tiny plots were brought
into competition with the huge corn farms of Kansas, Nebraska and
Iowa; sugar cane producers were in competition with giant US
industrial sugar-beet and corn syrup producers, and the introduction of
US-produced high-fructose corn syrup into the Mexican market drove
the price of Mexican sugar below the cost of cane production. Puebla’s
rural economy was especially hard-hit by this drop in sugar prices. The
resulting chronic unemployment and endemic poverty of the southern
part of the state reached an extreme level, provoking mass emigration
to urban centers, to the maquiladoras of the northern border regions
and to the US, especially New York City. Although most of the
migrants in the first years of NAFTA were young men, by the end of the
1990’s many young women were joining the flight from their rural
village homes.

Faced with the crisis of unemployment, extreme poverty and

emigration, the Puebla state government adopted the standard neo-
liberal “remedy”—attract foreign direct investment, and jobs, by
keeping wages low and providing services to foreign investors who set
up maquiladoras in the state. Puebla had the advantage of being in
the lowest of Mexico’s three minimum-wage zones, “Zone C.” Having
a tradition of textile and apparel production dating back to the 19th
Century, it seemed natural that textile and apparel maquiladoras
began to locate in the state.

Puebla is one of Mexico’s most conservative states, with a state

government controlled by the most conservative wing of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI. The PRI in Puebla, like the
national PRI, follows the same “corporatist” model of organization –
control of the populace through mass organizations that derive their
legitimacy from their recognition by the government – that allowed the
party to dominate Mexican politics for over seventy years. The Puebla
PRI has strong popular base organizations. The National Confederation
of Peasants (CNC) is anchored in the countryside and in the cities and
towns it’s the Regional Federation of Peasants and Workers (FROC),
affiliated to the national union center, the Revolutionary Confederation
of Peasants and Workers (CROC). The Puebla FROC-CROC, as it is
known, is a “family business” run by the three sons of its founder
Constantino Sanchez, the Sanchez Juarez brothers. Each of the
brothers has at one time or another been a PRI senator or federal
deputy, and they are an important part of the PRI ruling elite of Puebla.
The FROC-CROC has also adopted the PRI-supported policy of keeping
wages low to attract foreign investment and create employment.

When a potential foreign investor approaches the Puebla state

government, he receives the full treatment: after meeting with the
governor, the Secretary of Economic
Development is brought in, and agreements are reached for cheap or
donated land, low (or no) taxes, assistance in getting legal registration,
and finally, a reference to a “labor leader”. The reference is
sometimes direct, with the governor or the Secretary of Economic
Development making the introduction himself, and sometimes indirect,
through an intermediary “labor attorney”. In any case, the investor is
told that an agreement with a union leader is necessary to gain access
to workers, and that “this is the way it is done here”.

In the case of Kukdong, an agreement was reached with the state

authorities in the fall of
1999, and the factory was built and ready to operate by the end of
November. Shortly after the first workers were hired, in December,
Kukdong management and Rene Sanchez
Juarez, leader of the FROC-CROC, signed a collective bargaining
agreement. This agreement, approximately six pages long, is a classic
example of what Mexicans call a “contrato de proteccion” (protection
contract), merely restating the minimum terms and conditions of
employment mandated by the Federal Labor Law. The article on
salaries is brief, setting rates at “. . . the minimum wage in effect in the
region”. In addition, the contract includes the standard clauses
guaranteeing the union’s exclusive control of hiring, and the “exclusion
clause”, which gives the union the right to demand the firing of any
worker who ceases to be a member of the union, whether by
resignation or expulsion. The workers would not learn that this
contract existed, or that they were represented by the FROC-CROC,
until several months later, when the company told them that they
would have to become members of, and pay dues to the FROC-CROC,
or be fired. Despite repeated requests, they would not see the
contract until more than a year later.

Kukdong’s management was quite pleased with the situation. The

company manager Hoon Park insisted on paying 10% above the
minimum wage, and offered free transportation, as well as free
breakfast and lunch in the company cafeteria, as part of his
recruitment package. He was told he was being “very generous”, and it
seems he believed he was. He also promised wage increases “every
three months”, and promised to provide a child care center for the
young children of workers. These last two promises were not kept.

The company and the FROC-CROC worked together to recruit workers,

traveling to the small villages in Zone C around Izucar de Matamoros,
thirty miles to the south of Atlixco, in the center of the depressed
sugar-cane growing region. Meeting with local mayors, they promised
to relieve the unemployment crisis and provide at least a partial
solution to the poverty that plagued the area. They made
announcements over the village loudspeaker systems, and distributed
leaflets with dollar signs and pictures of the new factory in the village
squares. Within a few months they had recruited approximately 850
workers, mostly young women between sixteen and twenty-one years
of age, the daughters and sons of the impoverished peasants, cane-
cutters, and former sugar-mill workers.

What Kukdong did not know, and what the FROC-CROC did not tell
them, was that these villages have a long historical tradition of
rebellion and struggle, dating back to the Mexican revolution of 1910
and beyond. This was part of the original Zapatista country:
Emiliano Zapata retreated here when the federales raided his home
base in neighboring
Morelos state, and much of Zapata’s revolutionary “Army of the South”
was composed of the ancestors of these same peasants. In the
decades since the revolution, the region south of Izucar de Matamoros
became known for the militancy of the sugar-cane cutters and the mill
workers at the Atencingo ingenio, as well as the workers at the Bacardi
rum distillery in Izucar de Matamoros itself.

For these young workers, a job at Kukdong was a chance to gain some
independence from their parents and provide help to the family
without leaving home for an uncertain future in the United States as
undocumented workers. And they did not have to borrow the
US$2,000 that it cost to cross the border. Especially for the young
women, many of them single mothers, working at a maquiladora was
the only alternative to being dependent upon their parents. Since
NAFTA these families had no steady cash income, eking out a
subsistence living by working harvests in the cane-fields or raising a
few pigs, goats or chickens, selling meat and eggs, or some other
survival occupation.
On May 8, 2000, when the workers learned of the presence of the
FROC-CROC union, they were upset that they had no choice in the
matter, but actually thought it would be good to have a union to help
them solve some of the problems that were already beginning to be
felt. The company’s promises of a child-care center and three-month
raises were not kept, and the “free breakfast” turned out to be nothing
more than coffee and bread; and the “free lunch” was often inedible,
even rotten, and served on dirty plates. On more than one occasion
workers had gotten sick from the food, and there had even been
occasions when several workers had to be taken to the hospital with
stomach and intestinal cramps. The company’s Korean supervisors,
inexperienced young men who hired on for a one- or two-year contract,
and who lived in barracks on the company grounds, yelled at the
workers and threw garments in their faces when they made a mistake.
The workers soon found, however, that when they went to the office
that the company provided for the union, their “representative”, Jose
Luis Ruiz, was either absent or unwilling to help. The resentment of
the workers began to grow, focused on the bad treatment, the broken
promises, and at being forced to join and pay for a union that did
nothing for them.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the university students who were the
main consumers of the sweatshirts produced at Kukdong had
organized. Their organization dated from a campaign in the late
1990’s by the US textile-apparel union, UNITE, against the jeans
company, GUESS. As part of this campaign, UNITE and student allies
established “Student GUESS Boycott Committees” on several
campuses, because of the GUESS company’s emphasis on the youth
market and the brand’s vulnerability to pressure by university
students. Although the GUESS campaign was ultimately unsuccessful
(largely because GUESS moved their production out of Los Angeles,
where the mostly Mexican immigrant workforce was organizing, and
began producing in Tehuacán, Puebla, a few hours drive from Atlixco),
the student committees survived and became organizing centers for a
new, broader “anti-sweatshop” movement, that later became
formalized as the organization “United Students Against Sweatshops”
(USAS). USAS educated students about conditions in global
sweatshops and agitated for disclosure of production locations for the
university-licensed apparel. In the spring of 2000 they forced several
dozen universities to disclose the production information and adopt
codes of conduct for the factories where this apparel was produced.
USAS also forced the universities to set up and fund the “Workers’
Rights Consortium” an independent non-profit organization to
investigate conditions at the factories and enforce the codes of
conduct.
USAS began to use the university disclosure lists to investigate
factories and see for themselves how college apparel was being
produced. One of the first factories outside of the US that was
investigated by the students was Kukdong in Atlixco, Puebla. In the
late summer and fall of 2000, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center agreed to
support two Mexican labor activists to help USAS carry out the
investigation. To prepare for the visit of the USAS students, the
activists, Blanca Velasquez Diaz and David Alvarado, began to have
conversations with Kukdong workers, speaking with them in the street
as they left work and later, by appointment, in their homes in the
villages. They did not attempt to initiate any organizing activity, but
simply explained to the workers that the hooded sweatshirts that were
the product of their work were covered by the codes of conduct of US
universities, and that US students were interested in meeting them
and learning about the conditions at Kukdong. In November 2000, a
delegation of five USAS students from several universities visited
Mexico and met with several Kukdong workers.

From subsequent events, it is clear that these meetings and

conversations with the Mexican activists and the USAS students were
important in the Kukdong workers’ turn from passive resentment and
discontent to active organizing and protest. The meetings were also
important in preparing for the possibility of an international campaign
to support the Kukdong workers when the struggle did break out.
Within a month, on Decamber 15, 2000, the very same Kukdong
workers who had met with the activists and USAS students in
November organized a cafeteria boycott to protest the bad food, and
on January 3, 2001, they were fired by the company, touching off a
wildcat strike by almost all the Kukdong workers.

The labor dispute at Kukdong developed rapidly after the students’

visit. In early December, the nearby Popocatepetl volcano erupted,
forcing the evacuation of the villages around its base, where many
Kukdong workers lived with their families. Although the company
knew about the evacuation, they did not inform the workers, and
Kukdong continued in operation. When the workers returned home
after work and found their families gone, moved to shelters in unknown
locations, they were outraged. They refused to return to work until
they had located their families and they were sure they were safe.
When they did return to work, the company forced them to work
overtime to make up for the lost production. Jose Luis Ruiz, the FROC-
CROC union representative, made the announcement of two hours
obligatory overtime over the company loudspeaker.

As a result of this incident, tensions in the plant were running high.

The workers who had met with the USAS students were meeting
regularly to discuss the situation. One of them, Marcela Munoz,
complained to the FROC-CROC representative about the bad food in
the cafeteria. He suggested that he would talk with the company, but
that the workers should make the company aware of their
dissatisfaction by refusing to eat the food. So on December 15, 2000,
Marcela and four other workers, most of them “line supervisors” who
had lead worker responsibilities, organized a boycott of the company
cafeteria. The boycott was a complete success, and only a few
workers did not participate. But when the company approached Jose
Luis Ruiz to ask what was going on, he denied any knowledge or
responsibility for the action, and blamed it on Marcela and the other
activist workers.

After the Christmas holidays, on January 3, 2001, Kukdong

management fired Marcela
Munoz and four other workers for organizing the boycott of the
company cafeteria on December 15.

As word spread of the firings, the workers’ anger grew into open
rebellion. On Monday, January 8, the workers staged a two-hour work
stoppage and informed management that they had 24 hours to
reinstate the five leaders and to get rid of the FROC-CROC. The next
day, after receiving no response from the company, over 600 of the
850 workers began a work stoppage, and occupied the yard inside the
company walls, but outside of the factory buildings. They elected ten
workers, including the five fired leaders, as a “temporary leadership
committee”, and attempted to negotiate with Kukdong management,
but were rebuffed. The Mexican labor activists Velasquez and Alvarado
and other community supporters, including quite a few parents of the
Kukdong workers, joined the strikers in the company yard, bringing
food and blankets. The first night passed without incident.

On the second day of the strike, the Kukdong workers sent a

commission of three workers to the plenary meeting of the National
Workers’ Union (Union Nacional de Trabajadores, or UNT) in Mexico
City to ask for their assistance and support1.
1
The UNT is an “independent, democratic labor center” formed in 1997 by several
important unions that pulled out of the “official labor center”, the PRI-affiliated
Congreso de Trabajo (CT), in an attempt to build a new, more representative and
combative labor movement. Unfortunately the UNT has never established itself as an
effective organization for a number of reasons, among them not having a
professional staff separate from the staff of the constituent unions, inadequate
resources, and lack of a clear or consistent approach. The UNT has a “collegial
presidency” of the three presidents of the largest unions, the Telephone Workers
Union (STRM), the Social Security Workers Union and The Union of Workers of the
Mexico City Autonomous University (STUNAM), each with a very different
constituency and outlook, and this heterogeneity has led to indecisiveness, a
At a meeting of over thirty leaders of the most important independent
unions in Mexico, one of the Kukdong workers’ commission members,
Santiago Perez Meza, explained the situation at Kukdong and asked for
the UNT’s intervention. The meeting unanimously adopted a resolution
pledging their support, and appointed UNT Secretary of Organization
Jose Luis Hernandez and UNT staff person Rafael Marino as the
responsible persons. Hernandez and Marino advised the Kukdong
workers’ commission that the workers should maintain their strike,
which even though technically illegal was the only manner of
pressuring the company. Marino agreed to contact the Kukdong
company attorney and to attempt to open a dialogue through which he
hoped to win the reinstatement of the workers and the de facto
recognition of the workers’ “temporary leadership committee” as the
representatives of the workers. The next day, the third day of the
strike, several members of Puebla UNT unions, including the Telephone
Workers’ Union (STRM) and the Volkswagen Workers’ Independent
Union (SITIA-VW) visited the strikers as a show of support. But as night
fell, only the workers, some parents, and their allies from the
community (including activists Velasquez and Alvarado) remained.

During that day, Kukdong management, at the urging of their labor

attorney and the
FROC-CROC General Secretary, Rene Sanchez Juarez, filed criminal
complaints against the five worker leaders for “kidnapping” and
“usurpation of private property”. The
Puebla governor and the Secretary for Economic Development were
informed, and agreed that “order must be restored” even if it required
the use of the state police anti-riot battalion (the granaderos or anti-
motines).

That night, as approximately 300 strikers sat on the ground with their
arms raised in a show of non-resistance, singing the Mexican national
anthem, they were brutally attacked by riot police with clubs and
forcibly evicted from the factory grounds. Witnesses said the riot
police were directed by the FROC- CROC leader Rene Sanchez Juarez,
who reportedly pointed out the five union leaders for especially brutal
treatment. Seventeen workers were hospitalized as a result of the
police attack, including one with a concussion and another with broken
ribs.

The next morning, Friday, January 12, as a group of about 75 workers

gathered in the Atlixco village square in front of the mayor’s office. The

reluctance to engage in struggles that entailed risk (especially political risk), and
ultimately paralysis. This was evident in their peripheral involvement in the Kukdong
struggle.
same day, Evelyn Zepeda, a Salvadoran-American student from Pitzer
College in Los Angeles, and an activist of USAS, arrived and joined the
group. USAS had been carefully following the developments in Atlixco
through daily communications with the two Mexican labor activists
Velasquez and Alvarado, and through them with the workers, by
means of the Internet, and when the strike broke out USAS
immediately decided to send Evelyn, who headed the USAS
“International Solidarity Committee”, to Puebla.

The small group of workers protested the state intervention and the
police attack at the mayor’s office and at an event in nearby Metepec
where the Puebla governor was scheduled to appear. The radio and
press carried two versions of the events at the factory: that “nothing
happened, there was no violence and no injuries” was the version of
the state government. There was also denunciation of “UNT
destabilization” and “outside agitators”, mentioning specifically activist
Blanca Velasquez Diaz, who had previously been a strike leader and
later general secretary of a small UNT union at a nearby auto-parts
manufacturer and VW supplier, Siemens. The other version described
an “attack by police on peacefully demonstrating workers”.

The UNT leaders responsible for supporting the Kukdong workers were
nowhere to be seen. Rafael Marino finally made contact with the
Kukdong company lawyer on the Saturday after the strike was
repressed, and was told that the company was determined to resist the
workers’ demand to replace the FROC-CROC with their own union. The
attorney told Marino that they had the full support of the Puebla state
government and of COPARMEX (the Mexican Employers Confederation,
a pillar of Mexican President Vicente Fox’ political support), and that it
was not in the best interest of the UNT to get involved in this affair. As
a result of the company’s apparent determination, their political
connections and the new situation presented by the repression of the
strike, Marino advised the company attorney that the UNT would not
intervene.

As it became clear that they were on their own and could expect no
help from the UNT, the young worker leaders of Kukdong, the activists
Velasquez and Alvarado, Evelyn Zepeda and other USAS students
evaluated the situation: The Kukdong company had invested over
US$30 million in this facility, and it seemed likely that the company
could not simply close or move without tremendous cost, losing most
of its investment and a complete season of work. This would probably
mean the company would have to give up its strategic plan to produce
in Mexico for the US market.

The clients of Kukdong, Nike and Reebok, are the largest retailers of
this kind of product, and a manufacturing company that aspires to
compete in this line of production cannot afford to damage or sever
relations with these retailers. Kukdong was thus very dependent upon
Nike and Reebok for their future prospects.

These retailers have codes of conduct, as do the universities that

license their names to the retailers. The students of USAS have forced
the establishment of the
Workers’ Rights Consortium, which was prepared to investigate the
violations at Kukdong and to pressure the universities and companies
to enforce their codes. The students were also prepared to
demonstrate – indeed, they were already demonstrating – against the
universities and the retailers in support of the Kukdong workers.

The Kukdong workers were united in their desire to have their own
union and to win reinstatement of their leaders. At the time of the
strike, over 600 out of 850 workers supported the movement by
actively joining the strike. Although this support was spontaneous and
disorganized, a group of leaders had emerged who seemed to have the
respect of the workers, and who were committed to seeing the
struggle through to the end. The labor activists Velasquez and
Alvarado, supported by the Solidarity Center, had the experience,
knowledge and desire to assist in such a campaign. The workers were
mostly young women with few alternatives, who would almost certainly
be forced to return to work at Kukdong, but who were now unwilling to
accept the bad treatment and the presence of a corrupt company
union.

The situation in the US, Canada and other consumer countries was
propitious for the building of a movement to support the Kukdong
workers’ struggle, because of the “anti-sweatshop” or “corporate
responsibility” movement, and the growing critique of corporate
globalization. There were many unions and NGO’s ready to support
the workers struggle with high profile brand names like Nike and
Reebok.

The assessment was, in short, that the company was vulnerable to a

campaign of pressure in the marketplace, that the workers were
capable of building a strong organization on the ground in Mexico, and
that there were significant allies in Mexico and in other countries that
could be a powerful force in the campaign.

The political context was considered to be somewhat unfavorable, in

that the FROC-
CROC was a pillar of the PRI in a state that was a PRI stronghold. The
movement would confront the determined opposition of the state
government and its civil society instruments, especially the FROC-
CROC. However, since the election of the PAN candidate Vicente Fox
in July 2000 as the first opposition president in over seventy years, the
federal government was no longer in the hands of the PRI. With the
election of the opposition PAN party to power, the Mexican state was
no longer monolithic, and the corporatist system had been somewhat
weakened. Because of this, it seemed unlikely that the federal
government of Vicente Fox would intervene on behalf of the FROC-
CROC, one of the main supporters of Fox’ PRI opposition. That this
assessment was correct was later demonstrated by events, and further
confirmed in an interview with the personal secretary of the Secretary
of Labor, who affirmed that “this is outside our jurisdiction” and “we
have no interest in defending the FROC-CROC”.

Second, the analysis of the power structure and political-economic

situation of the state of Puebla seemed to indicate that the Kukdong
company had some power to influence the state government. The
employment crisis was clearly the most explosive issue facing the
Puebla government, and the maquiladora was their answer. Most of
the maquiladoras that had located in Puebla are Korean-owned, and of
these Kukdong is by far the largest and most influential. The Puebla
state government did not want to offend the Korean investor
community, and that meant they did not want to offend Kukdong. If
Kukdong’s owner could be convinced that the company’s interest was
in getting rid of the FROC-CROC and accepting the workers’
independent union, it was possible that the state government could be
convinced not to stand in the way.

The conclusion of this assessment was that the struggle might be won
by using bottom-up organizing of the workers to build a strong
organization, gain the “moral high ground”, and prevent “pacification”;
by using exposure of Kukdong’s abuses and violations to put pressure
on the universities and the retailers. These institutions would pressure
Kukdong; and finally, by presenting Kukdong with the choice between
accepting an independent union, seen as an authentic, honest and
reasonable representative of the workers, or by staying with the
corrupt FROC-CROC, facing a stalemate in which the company would
lose its customers and possibly be forced to close. The objective would
be to get the company to decide to “get rid of the FROC-CROC”, and to
get the company (and its customers, Nike and Reebok) to press the
state government to allow an independent union solution. This
presupposed the non-intervention of the federal government.

At the time this assessment was made, the workers were dispersed
and demoralized, but not defeated. The five worker leaders and
Velazquez and Alvarado began an all-out campaign to visit the workers
in their homes, and to convince them to return to work with the idea of
continuing the campaign from within. This was difficult, as many of the
workers and their parents were rightfully very angry at the way the
company had treated them, and with the police attack. In the end, the
combination of patient persuasion by their recognized leaders and the
pressure of economic necessity saw over half of the workers slowly
return to work.

Perhaps the most important single step in building the confidence of

the workers in their ability to win was the reinstatement of three of the
fired worker leaders. Within days of the police attack, students at
twenty-five campuses in the US had demonstrated in protest. The
return of the leaders was one of the key demands of the protests. The
protests led to articles in the New York Times and the Financial Times.
E-mails began to pour into the corporate offices of Nike and Reebok,
organized by USAS. Pictures of Kukdong workers were posted on
websites, and an audio statement from a 14-year old child worker was
prominently displayed on UNITE’s website, <behindthelabel.org>. This
led Nike and Reebok to send company representatives to Kukdong
almost immediately, and to begin to pressure Kukdong for a resolution
of the dispute.

The Workers’ Rights Consortium also began an investigation, putting

together a delegation of international labor law experts, university
administrators, and religious representatives. They arrived on the
scene within a week of the police attack on the strikers, and released a
preliminary report on the violations and abuses within two weeks of
their visit. Their quick and forceful intervention must be seen as a key
to the success of the campaign. They also met Professor Huberto
Juarez from the Puebla Autonomous University, who was later hired by
the corporate monitoring group Verite, contracted by the Fair Labor
Association (the monitoring organization established by Nike, Reebok
and other brands) on behalf of Nike and Reebok, to do their own
monitoring of the situation after the WRC investigators had returned to
the US.

The issue of the reinstatement of the fired leaders was raised by the
WRC as the critical test for Kukdong’s willingness to respect the
workers’ right to freedom of association, guaranteed by the various
codes of conduct, as well as by Mexican law and international
conventions. The focus on this issue touched on the company’s
relationship to the FROC-CROC, as the FROC-CROC vehemently
opposed the return of the leaders, even threatening to strike if
Kukdong took them back. The company also was very reluctant to
admit that their firing of the leaders was wrong, and they saw the
leaders as persons who “tried to destroy the company”.
What finally won the reinstatement of the leaders was the growing
pressure from all sides, including the workers themselves, USAS, the
WRC, Nike and Reebok, the FLA, and the intervention of a Korean NGO,
the Korea House of International Solidarity (KHIS). KHIS visit was
arranged by the Solidarity Center, and it played a critical role by
mediating and bridging the “culture gap” between the Korean
management and Mexican workers. The KHIS representatives were
Korean lawyers and academics, and thus had credibility with
management. They explained to management how the return of the
leaders was required by law and by the codes of conduct of their
customers. The reinstatements had to be seen not as an admission of
guilt by the company, but as an “olive branch” to try and put the
dispute behind them and get back to work. In fact the reinstatement
of the workers would prove that Kukdong was an ethical company,
committed to generous treatment of their workers. KHIS and the
Verite monitors finally convinced management to accept the
reinstatement, and worked out an arrangement by which the leaders
could return to work by signing individual employment contracts, and
did not have to declare loyalty to the FROC-CROC, as the company and
the FROC-CROC were requiring of other workers.

Once the leaders had returned to work, the campaign to organize the
workers picked up steam. In March the independent union SITEKIM
(“Independent Union of Workers of
Kukdong International – Mexico”) was formed, and an application for
legal registration filed with the Puebla Local Board of Conciliation and
Arbitration, the agency that regulates labor relations in the
maquiladora industry in Puebla. After fifty-nine days, one day before
the expiration of the sixty-day period allowed for the review of such
applications, the Board rejected the application, citing the resignation
of several of the persons who had signed the application, and the fact
that the leaders, who had also signed the application, were employed
by individual contracts. This was not unexpected, as it had been
discovered that the FROC-CROC had paid some of the applicants a
large sum of money to withdraw from the union, and the local Labor
Board was in the control of the PRI and the FROC-CROC. The FROC-
CROC’s strategy was to use the state government’s support to block
the recognition of the independent union.

But Kukdong management was now convinced that they had to accept
the independent union, and had to find a way to “get rid” of the FROC-
CROC. Nike was pressuring
Kukdong to permit the workers to vote on which union they wanted,
and the workers were confident that such a vote would be won by
SITEKIM. But the state would not grant legal registration to SITEKIM,
and without it the union could not legally represent the workers.
Furthermore, the state government was opposed to holding a secret-
ballot election to allow the workers to choose their representative,
fearful of setting a precedent that would cause an avalanche of
workers seeking to rid themselves of corrupt unions like the FROC-
CROC. Kukdong management began to meet with the independent
union leaders, and to discuss with them what kind of relationship they
would have if the FROC-CROC could be convinced to give up their
contract. At the same time, the company forced the FROC-CROC to
give up their space in the factory office, arguing that this was
necessary to comply with Nike’s demands.

All through the summer, the company was putting pressure on the
FROC-CROC to give up their contract and pressuring the state
government to grant legal registration to the independent union.
Reebok had pulled their work out of the factory and Nike was putting
very little work in as well. Production in the factory was almost
completely stopped, and management was desperate to get it started
again. The workers were by now well organized and insistent on the
recognition of their union.

In the end, Kukdong reached agreement with the FROC-CROC, the

government and the independent union on a solution: the Kukdong
company would be dissolved, and a new company, MexMode, would be
formed. The FROC-CROC contract would be invalidated, the company
would pay a sum of money to the FROC-CROC for “damages”, and a
new independent union, now called SITEMEX (Independent Union of
Workers of MexMode) would be formed. SITEMEX would be granted its
legal registration by the state Board once the company had reached
agreement on a new contract. It is said the company also paid a large
sum of money to the state labor officials to get their cooperation.

Even before the new union was officially registered and legally able to
sign a contract with management Kukdong (now MexMode)
management began negotiations with the independent union leaders
and their advisers for a collective bargaining agreement. Finally, on
September 30, 2001, a few days short of nine months after the strike,
management and workers reached agreement on a first contract. The
next day, the independent union SITEMEX received its legal
registration, and the contract was filed and officially accepted by the
Puebla labor authorities.

The first contract at MexMode had a nominal 10% wage increase, in

recognition of the losses the company had suffered during the nine-
month struggle and as a show of good faith by the new union. It had
language concerning workers rights, and a clause prohibiting
managers from “yelling at or demeaning in any way the workers”,
mandating apologies to the workers by managers who violate this
prohibition. The contract had an unusually short six-month term in
order to permit a new negotiation in March 2002, when the company
resumed full operation and would be beginning their peak season.

On April 1, 2002, when the new contract was signed and went into
effect, workers received an “attendance bonus” which resulted in a
38% increase in earnings, making them among the highest paid
apparel workers in the region. Since then, the contract has been
renegotiated several times (In Mexico, by law, contracts are
renegotiated every two years, and wages are negotiated every year).
Negotiations have often been difficult, but so far there has not been
another strike, and workers’ wages and conditions compare favorably
with those in other unionized apparel factories in Mexico. Most
importantly, the workers have the representation of their own
choosing.

SITEMEX and the workers of the former Kukdong factory are the first of
the more than one million workers in Mexico’s over 3,000
maquiladoras to win representation by an independent union and to
then negotiate a collective bargaining agreement.

Work stoppages and other forms of protest are quite common in the
Mexican maquiladoras. The low pay, long hours, bad treatment and
poor working conditions, combined with the lack of authentic union
representation, result in a dissatisfied, discontented and often
rebellious workforce. This is reflected in high turnover rates, said to be
over 100% in many factories, and the use of the maquiladoras as
trampolines or “staging grounds” for emigration to the US. It is also
reflected in the frequent small and large-scale work stoppages, which
typically result in repression by the police and/or firings by the
companies.

What was different in the Kukdong case, and what has been different
in other cases that have arisen since in countries as far flung as
Bangladesh, Thailand, Lesotho and El Salvador, is that these worker
rebellions are beginning to be linked up with national and international
support networks, and repression and firings are no longer able to so
easily quash these struggles. International solidarity has proven to be
a decisive factor in many cases, raising the conflict to a new level and
bringing new forces into play. Perhaps this is the workers’ best answer
to the abuses and exploitation of corporate globalization.