The recent win of an insurgent union to represent workers at the Tridonex auto parts plant in the city of Matamoros, on the Mexico side of the U.S. border, was a blow to the long unholy alliance between corporations and subservient unions in Mexico.

But Susana Prieto Terrazas, a leader in this struggle, could not be there to celebrate the February 28 win. Until next January, she is banned from setting foot in the state of Tamaulipas, which includes Matamoros, after being arrested in 2020 for her union organizing activities.

The irrepressible Prieto, now also a member of Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies, was not to be silenced. On election night, she streamed her victory speech live on Facebook to her more than 155,000 followers.

“We are taking a step forward,” she rejoiced. “We hope to do it in the whole republic.”

Prieto’s exile from Tamaulipas—itself a sign of resistance to labor reform—is a condition of her release from three weeks in jail following her June 2020 arrest on charges of inciting a riot and related offenses.

Prieto, in a recent interview with The Progressive, says she expects several new challenges to company unions in Tamaulipas, as she fights for “an egalitarian world, with justice for poor people.”

The February win by the National Independent Union of Industry and Service Workers, 20/32 Movement (SNITIS) was the second insurgent victory that month. Four weeks earlier, the National Independent Union for Workers in the Automotive Industry won an election to represent workers at the General Motors plant in Silao, central Mexico.

Both Tridonex and GM are among the multitude of U.S.-based corporations that set up shop in Mexico following the 1994 implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“Finally, the workers have an independent union that is going to be fighting for their rights,” labor organizer Israel Cervantes tells The Progressive. Cervantes led the grassroots effort, Generando Movimiento (Generating Movement), to oust the incumbent union at the GM facility.

These victories, however, are the exceptions, not the rule, in a collective bargaining system dominated by the cozy relationship between corporations and employer-friendly unions that has a history of suppressing wages.

“Protection contracts,” as these collective bargaining agreements are called, have become the norm in Mexico. They account for at least 75 percent of the collective bargaining agreements in Mexico, says a 2021 report by the Independent Mexico Labor Expert Board, established by the U.S Congress and the Labor Advisory Committee.

“The purpose of the protection contract,” notes the report, “is to lock in low wages and poor conditions and ‘protect’ the employers from having to negotiate with an independent and democratic union.”

What’s more, the report says, “the employer-dominated union and the government have often colluded to intimidate workers through delays, threats and physical violence, and dismissal.”

Insurgent unions are needed in order to challenge this entrenched system solidified by NAFTA, which opened the door for multinational corporations bent on cheap labor and big profits by reducing trade barriers.

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, who was elected in 2018, has raised the national minimum wage, which is about $13 a day for businesses in the border region of Mexico and about $8.60 for the rest of the nation.

But whether workers are actually paid that wage is another question. “Enforcement is the biggest problem,” says Jorge Mujica, who serves in the Chamber of Deputies. Abuses, he says, are common, with workers often not getting the wages owed them.

And there are huge disparities to close.

“NAFTA really polarized Mexican society even more than it already was,” says Howard Campbell, a professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Texas, El Paso who has written four books about Mexico.

Foreign-owned companies in Mexico—maquiladoras—have deservedly been the target of criticism. “The wages are so bad that everybody has to work in the household,” says Carlos Marentes, director of the Border Agricultural Workers Project in El Paso.

He tells of a Mexican woman who recently crossed the border looking for work because she could not make a living as a factory worker across the Rio Grande in Ciudad Juárez.

NAFTA has also driven many subsistence farmers off their land. They could not compete with U.S. agribusiness exports. Between 1993 and 2002, the number of Mexicans trying to make a living in agriculture dropped by 1.3 million, according to a Carnegie study. This contributed to the three million Mexicans who migrated to the United States between 1995 and 2000.

Changes in Mexico’s labor law in 2019 have provided an avenue to break the undemocratic hold of company unions. A key provision creates a “legitimization process,” which requires that by May 2023 all collective bargaining agreements be put up for a vote.

If the workers at a plant reject their existing contract, the union representing them is ousted.

“It was intended to get rid of the old system, which was very boss-friendly,” says Daniel Rangel, Research Director for Rethink Trade. Until recently, he held a similar position with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and has been involved in helping secure labor rights at Tridonex.

The 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced NAFTA, empowers the U.S. Trade Representative to respond to disputes, as happened in the Tridonex and GM cases.

But by the end of last year, according to a January USMCA monitoring report, just sixteen of the 2,749 collective bargaining agreements voted on had been rejected.

Prieto is determined to break the stranglehold of “protection contracts” with insurgent unions—free from corporate control and the grip of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), an umbrella group for protection unions.

“If the workers get enough information, they will vote to destroy the power of the CTM,” says Prieto. “The companies say most of the time, ‘If you vote no, you will lose everything.’ ”

Prieto’s confrontational style was an effective counterpunch in the wildcat strikes over wages and bonuses three year ago in Tamaulipas.

“She likes facing down the bosses,” says Ben Davis, director of international affairs for the United Steelworkers. “Instead of doing it in a closed room, she was doing it on the street.”

The grievances of Tridonex workers came to a head last spring. Global Trade Watch, along with the AFL-CIO, the SEIU and SNITIS, the insurgent union, filed a complaint with the U.S. government.

Rangel, who helped draft the complaint, says SNITIS members faced threats and dismissals for their activism. The complaint also criticized the arrest, detention, and punitive terms of Prieto’s release from jail.

Tridonex, says Rangel, retaliated against workers who signed petitions to stop payments of dues to the incumbent union. As a result, more than 600 workers were fired. And the company, according to Rangel, required those fired to sign “voluntary” resignations in order to receive severance pay.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai intervened under the Rapid Response Mechanism of the USMCA. The resulting action plan led to the February vote for union representation, which SNITIS overwhelmingly won.

Still, only about 200 of the 600 fired Tridonex workers are expected to get severance pay, says Rangel.

At the GM plant in Silao, Cervantes tells how Generando Movimiento grew out of weekly Sunday meetings that began in April 2021, when he and a handful of co-workers gathered to review Mexico’s revised labor law. “Every Sunday more workers arrive,” says the forty-four-year-old Cervantes.

The company union, commonly known as Miguel Trujillo López union, had not held elections for representatives, failed to provide a contract, and did not fight for higher wages, according to Cervantes. After thirteen years at GM, says Cervantes, he was earning a mere 440 pesos—about $22—for a twelve-hour shift. He worked four days a week.

Establishment of Generando Movimiento occurred at the time the existing collective bargaining agreement at the plant was put to a vote.

But the vote turned into a scandal. The company union, according to the Associated Press, had apparently destroyed ballots. Mexico Labor Secretary Luisa María Alcalde then weighed in, saying “some people haven’t gotten the message” that “the rights of workers are going to be respected.” Trade Representative Tai intervened as well.

A revote was held in August, with workers rejecting the contract and leading to the ouster of the incumbent union. This set the stage for this past February’s vote to determine union representation.

Generando Movimiento became the driving force for the creation of SINTTIA.

But this victory was not without casualties. GM fired Cervantes in August. The pretext, Cervantes tells The Progressive, was that the company tested him for drugs and said the results were positive. Cervantes subsequently had a drug test taken on his own, which he says showed no drug use. He has appealed his firing to Mexico’s Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board.

As further evidence that his firing was politically motivated, Cervantes notes that other pro-SINTTIA workers were also fired.

Undeterred, Cervantes formed an activist group, Casa Obrera del Bajío, which leafleted and held rallies about the February election, which SINTTIA handily won.

In the battles ahead, Prieto is mapping out her strategy and stressing the importance of changes coming from the workers.

She is comfortable with the label of “troublemaker” and hopes that the organizing efforts will spread to her hometown of Ciudad Juárez, where she estimates there are 380,000 workers.

And she says, “Many people in Juárez are enthusiastic about the victory in Matamoros.”

(James Goodman is a freelance writer based in Rochester, New York. Courtesy: The Progressive Magazine. The Progressive Magazine aims to amplify voices of dissent and those under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal of championing grassroots progressive politics. Its bedrock values are nonviolence and freedom of speech.)