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Looking for strategies to make corporate abusers accountable to the worker.

• Hearing of the National Administrative Office (U.S. Department of Labor) in San Antonio, Texas on June 2000 complaint by workers in Matamoros against Custom Trim and Auto Trim/Breed Mexicana. Workers provided anonymous testimony of toxic exposure to workplace chemicals, solvents, glues and subsequent disabling injuries, lung damage, genetic birth defects. Transcript of Public Hearing available by contacting the U.S. Department of Labor, www.dol.gov.

• Complaint submitted by Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras and various other organizations, legal clinics and workers to the National Administrative Office (NAO) of the International Labor Bureau (U.S. DOL) against the Mexican Government for failure to comply with side agreement to NAFTA known as North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC). Complaint submitted June 2000, by workers in Matamoras plants of Custom Trim/Auto Trim/Breed Mexicana.  Click here to read complaint:  http://www.dol.gov/dol/ilab/public/media/reports/nao/Sub2000-01pt1.htm
  
  
  
  
  
• ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CORPORATE ABUSE AT THE MEXICAN BORDER -- ADMINISTRATIVE COMPLAINTS V. LAWSUITS en español
  by Elvia R. Arriola, J.D., M.A., Executive Director, Women on the Border
  
  Justice in the maquiladoras can be an arduous and elusive project. While the labor rights articulated for Mexican workers are generous the biggest obstacle is enforcement of those rights. A worker who doesn't know her rights is unlikely to know how to navigate the system of compliance under her country's system. It is even more frustrating to discover that a factory is actually owned by a parent company headquartered far away in the Northern U.S. Distance. Lack of access to the English language and lack of funds to hire someone to represent her present the typical obstacles.

  Meanwhile the rights of human dignity guaranteed to workers by their Constitution are violated day in and day out. Now and then a worker can get help from supportive groups who have learned how to work the system and who may even seek alternative routes to seeking justice against corporations that don't respect Mexican labor and health and safety laws or human rights principles. The following is an attempt to summarize the basic approaches such a worker might take.

Continue reading ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CORPORATE ABUSE AT THE MEXICAN BORDER -- ADMINISTRATIVE COMPLAINTS V. LAWSUITS