International Solidarity Is the Union Answer to Tariffs and Deportations

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has recently expressed the UAW’s readiness to “work with Trump on trade.” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke on a podcast against “illegal immigrants that come into our country to commit crimes and steal jobs.”

But based on my experience, in the long run, international solidarity is the only way we can build working-class power.

Demagogues like Trump have often exploited the protectionist and anti-immigrant sentiments that have been widespread in American labor for generations. A working class that is divided, both within the U.S. and across North America, is easier to exploit. Corporations have greatly profited from our divisions over the three decades since NAFTA was enacted.

It’s the same this time. The integration of production in many industries, especially auto, means that Trump’s tariffs will disrupt supply chains that are necessary to keep our factories humming.

Many auto parts and components are supplied from Mexico—approximately 40 percent. If the supply is cut off, factories that depend on parts arriving in a just-in-time system will close. If parts prices are increased by 25 percent tariffs, the prices of assembled autos will also rise, so sales will fall, hurting workers in the U.S. too.

Meanwhile workers in Mexico will suffer job loss. Those deported from the U.S. will see their lives disrupted. Farmers, hotels, restaurants, meatpacking plants, and construction companies will lose workers.

‘BUY AMERICAN’ DEAD END

From 1977 to 1997 I worked with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which had a policy of “Buy American” and “Roll Back Imports” until it was too late and the industry was gone. This was in spite of its overwhelmingly immigrant membership from China and Latin America, which is where the factories were going.

We struck against companies that were closing shop and moving, and even won some of those fights, forcing the companies to remain. But it was a losing cause.

So I tried to get the union to organize in the Dominican Republic and Central America, and we had real success. But when NAFTA passed, over the objection of the U.S. labor movement, and firms moved to Mexico, the union gave up.

Now I continue to work with garment unions in Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

SEEDS OF AN UPSURGE

In 1994, NAFTA caused massive job loss in the U.S. as factories closed and companies moved production to Mexico, where workers had few labor rights and corrupt unions kept them under control.

NAFTA drove down wages in auto manufacturing and parts. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

NAFTA’s successor, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, took effect in 2020. Unlike the original NAFTA, the USMCA had a labor chapter that obligated Mexico to enact a new labor law with greater protections for workers, and established a rapid-response mechanism permitting Mexican workers to raise complaints over violations of their labor rights.

The government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stated its determination to “democratize the trade unions” and encourage wage increases, and also began raising the Mexican minimum wage. By the time his successor Claudia Sheinbaum was elected last year, the minimum wage had increased 135 percent.

Still, the gap remains vast: Mexican wages average one-tenth of U.S. or Canadian wages for the same work. Corrupt unions still control most of the contracts in most industries.

Mexican workers and independent unions had great hopes in 2020, when it seemed the new USMCA protections and pro-worker government presented an opportunity to rid their industries of corrupt unions and organize thousands of workers into legitimate unions that could raise the standard of living and close the wage gap.

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Although new independent, democratic unions have won some important victories in the auto, rubber, glass, electronics, textile, and apparel industries, there has been no mass organizing movement as many had hoped.

MISSING INGREDIENT

One reason is the absence of a practical alliance between Mexican independent unions and the U.S. and Canadian unions in the same industries. Almost no U.S. unions have established relations or alliances with these new unions—and the Mexican independent labor movement remains weak, with limited resources and few experienced leaders and organizers.

I and other observers of the Mexican labor movement had hoped that the UAW and the Teamsters, two unions where new leaders were organizing militant contract campaigns and bold new organizing drives, might see the opportunities for a strategic alliance with Mexican workers to confront the same corporate employers on both sides of the border. But this has not come to pass.

While the UAW publicly committed support for Mexican auto workers, so far this support has consisted of one organizer on the ground in Mexico and one based in Washington, D.C., while the Teamsters have not even done that.

Independent worker rights organizations in Mexico have made contacts in U.S. auto assembly and farm implement plants and in Amazon logistics centers, but are working with almost no resources and no effective coordination with either the UAW or the Teamsters.

BROTHERS AND SISTERS

In the long run, supporting Trump’s tariffs and deportations is a counterproductive stance for U.S. labor. By doing so, a union risks being perceived as allying with the most reactionary sectors of capital in an attack on Mexican workers in the U.S. and in Mexico.

Only by balancing trade policy advocacy with a strong program of concrete international solidarity and support for undocumented workers in the U.S. can we live up to the labor slogan of “an injury to one is an injury to all.”

We should not ignore the interests of our Mexican brothers and sisters, who are toiling for the same corporate bosses at one-tenth the wages, nor should we underestimate their potential power. Mexican workers have successfully taken on General Motors, Volkswagen, and Audi in recent organizing campaigns and contract strikes.

A cross-border working-class alliance with efforts like these is the only way we will ever build the power to confront these corporations, corral them, and together determine investment and employment decisions.

Jeffery Hermanson is director of the International Union Educational League, a non-profit organization supporting unions in Mexico, Central America and other countries of the Global South.