Monika Greenhow

Just across the border with Texas, workers in Ciudad Juárez have been launching brave actions against global manufacturing giants to improve conditions in the low-wage maquiladora sector. Over the past six months, workers at large assembly plants owned by Commscope, Eaton, Foxconn and Lexmark, producing electronics, auto parts and printing supplies for the U.S. market, have launched a series of mobilizations to protest wages as low as $30 per week, unsafe working conditions, sexual harassment and discrimination. Juárez is a major location of such industry, accounting for well over 10% of all such exports from Mexico. In several cases, workers have attempted to form independent unions to defend their rights and have a voice at work.

The president will give his final State of the Union address tonight. Traditionally, this annual speech reviews the accomplishments of years past and sets out a “to-do” list for the year ahead. Although the White House has indicated that this year’s speech will be “nontraditional,” it has made clear the economy will be a major focus. 

Unions must mobilize to defeat racism because it destroys solidarity and brutalizes union members, the demographics of working people are changing rapidly and morality demands action. But mobilizing all of labor to join the fight against racism will not be easy: Race fractures the labor movement itself. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said of Ferguson, Mo., “our brother killed our sister’s son,” and, in doing so, he spoke to the tragic facts and also to the internecine racial fault lines that shatter worker solidarity.