On the eve of a strike deadline at auto plants across the US and Canada, the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter spoke to Luis, a General Motors assembly worker at the Silao Complex in central Mexico.
He described his living conditions and several cases of corporate abuse overseen by the “independent” union installed last year at the plant with the support of both the governments and union bureaucracies in the US, Canada and Mexico.
Q. AMLO (Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador) said at the recent event that the auto industry “treats its workers well, paying them the fair wages and benefits” they “deserve.” How would you respond to him?
A. For him earning little is a fair wage. For me it is not a fair wage. We don’t make enough.
My salary is 568 pesos [$33] a day. With 568 pesos you don’t eat three meals a day as you should. For the house, I have a loan with Infonavit and they take 785 pesos a week from me. I have spoken to other coworkers, who pay 1,150 pesos a week. Most of the people I have talked to have other jobs. In my case, I do carpentry work in my free time. When I get a job, I do it. Other colleagues are mechanics, bricklayers, etc. I have asked others, “Is what you earn here enough for you?” And they answer, “No. My wife works. I work in my spare time. And now that there are so many stoppages, well, even less.”
I recently bought a car, a Matiz Pontiac, and sometimes it breaks down and we can’t even afford to repair it. Sometimes I have to try to fix it myself. What I tell my colleagues: what ironies of life! We assemble very expensive vehicles that we cannot afford. We workers make the company run.
There is a Mexican movie called Los albañiles [1976], very beautiful, and a bricklayer tells this very truth on May 3, the Day of the Holy Cross of the bricklayers. He is drinking and shouts, “I build houses and they are not mine!” And the same goes for us. These are the ironies of life. Emiliano Zapata [figure of the Mexican Revolution] said it here in Mexico, “The land belongs to those who work it.” It is something similar; unfortunately things are not like that, neither here in Mexico nor in the rest of the world.
Q. US autoworkers said at a meeting Sunday that “they get worked to death” due to long hours and unsafe conditions. Does this resonate with you?
A. We work 12 hours a day for four days, which adds up to 48 hours. In other words, we work the “normal” hours according to the law. But, yes, as they say, the work is very demanding.
I work where we start to assemble the unit, we put on the exhaust, the disks where the tire goes, the gas tank, the
