Paolo Marinaro

This chapter examines labor militancy in the automotive industry in Mexico. Over the past decade, Mexico has risen as one of the largest global car manufacturers. Nevertheless, wages continue to plummet, setting Mexican salaries among the five lowest in the world. At the center of this increasing disparity, unions play a significant role colluding with companies and the government to control labor demands through corruption and illegal means. Despite fierce repression, workers organize clandestinely to resist precarious working conditions, building international solidarity and engaging in spontaneous labor strikes.This chapter is based on three years of ethnographic research. It looks at the recent wave of wildcat strikes that reveals an emerging pattern of collective action and labor organizing. The automotive sector is traditionally considered emblematic of stable and unionized jobs. However, this study shows how labor responds to the radical precarization of working conditions, b...

In this article, we look at how economic and political restructuring​ in Mexico has transformed working conditions, informing new strategies of labor militancy. Our research shows that, despite fierce repression by private corporations, the government, and corrupt unions, Mexican workers organize in independent movements to demand freedom of association and collective bargaining by engaging in wildcat strikes and building international solidarity. We focus on two labor movements in the State of Coahuila that shed light on the strategic alliance between independent workers' movements in the automotive industry and the Miners Union. Our hypothesis is that this coalition serves two different but complementary goals: independent workers' movements aim at the democratization of union relations by fighting against corrupt company unions, while the Miners aspire to extend their representation from mining and the steel industry to the automotive sector by offering better working conditions to auto-workers. However, these actors seek to create different and opposing political landscapes. The underground struggle of autoworkers in Coahuila provides a significant micro-perspective from which to analyze opportunities and contradictions for the Mexican labor movement posed by the recent election of president Andres Manuel López Obrador, in July 2018.

This chapter examines labor militancy in the automotive industry in Mexico. Over the past decade, Mexico has risen as one of the largest global car manufacturers. Nevertheless, wages continue to plummet, setting Mexican salaries among the five lowest in the world. At the center of this increasing disparity, unions play a significant role colluding with companies and the government to control labor demands through corruption and illegal means. Despite fierce repression, workers organize clandestinely to resist precarious working conditions, building international solidarity and engaging in spontaneous labor strikes. This chapter is based on three years of ethnographic research. It looks at the recent wave of wildcat strikes that reveals an emerging pattern of collective action and labor organizing. The automotive sector is traditionally considered emblematic of stable and unionized jobs. However, this study shows how labor responds to the radical precarization of working conditions, by developing crossborder ties and carrying out independent work stoppages.

En este artículo plantearé que las relaciones industriales en México están atravesando una coyuntura de intensas y crecientes movilizaciones obreras cuyo objetivo principal es la democratización de las prácticas sindicales. Esta hipótesis es el resultado del trabajo de investigación cualitativa que he llevado a cabo a lo largo de los últimos tres años con los y las trabajadoras de tres empresas ubicadas en la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos. Por un año viví en las casas de los y las obreras, junto con sus familias, participé en sus vidas cotidianas, hice entrevistas en profundidad y grupos focales, con el objetivo de investigar en torno a las relaciones sindicales en la región. Las narraciones de las trabajadoras y los trabajadores señalan que se trata de luchas invisibilizadas y reprimidas por los sindicatos, por las instituciones laborales y por la prensa. Mi hipótesis es que no se trate de eventos puntuales, que se reducen a los días de la huelga o del paro: el conflicto, aunque fragmentado, es constante en cuanto está implícito en el modelo de relaciones industriales hegemónico en el país.
Las vivencias de estos conflictos, la incorporación de experiencias de subordinación y de impugnación de la dominación sindical son movilizadas en un particular proceso de subjetivación política que configura el antagonismo obrero al sindicalismo de protección patronal en México.