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The Saker Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Public InquiryInterested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
Human Rights in IrelandIndymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Lockdown Skeptics
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It will happen here too - Factories leave Mexico to find cheaper labor national |
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news report
 Tuesday July 09, 2002 15:45 by Blisset - SI (IV)
 Bubbleheads to be followed by 'real' workers? I kind of enjoyed meeting crestfallen newly unemployed bubbleheads around Dublin the last few months. From masters of the universe to rent allowance in a year must be sobering. As must their savings being whittled away by the euro-inflation scam of the decade. It'll be different when the inflation makes china seem a good idea to the US. We are their friends till it is a problem to pay decent wages. I remember the closures of the early eighties right thru and it was like Mexico and nearly Argentina here. Ansbacher brought it all back. Loot em and then ship out says the US. Loot em and ship them (and the money) out our new landed gentry will reply. Factories leave Mexico to find cheaper labor By Mary Jordan
But after 13 years during which her wages rose to $200 a week, Ruiz Brena lost her job June 1. Her Canon inkjet-printer factory shut down. She and her co-workers shared a cake, snapped photos of one another and said goodbye. The factory work, they were told, was moving to Thailand and Vietnam, where wages are as low as $15 a week, less than what she earns in a day. All along Mexico's border with the United States, once-busy factories are closing. Since the end of 2000, tearful farewell parties have been held for The reason is the same: cheaper labor. The loss of jobs in Mexico in part reflects the slowdown in the U.S. economy. But many of the closings are just the globalized economy at work. Mexico is left with a bittersweet legacy: higher wages, but fewer jobs. More than 500 foreign-owned assembly-line factories in Mexico, called maquiladoras, have closed in the past two years, in part because wages have doubled in the past 10 years. An entry-level factory worker in Tijuana earns $1.50 to $2 an hour, compared with 25 cents an hour in parts of China. International companies once wary of China are increasingly inclined to invest there. Those include a golf-club manufacturer that laid off 1,500 employees in Tijuana and an electronics factory in Guadalajara that left 4,000 workers Suddenly Mexican workers view China as their fiercest competitor, sucking their jobs east. "It's a reality of globalization," said Mexican economist Rogelio Ramirez de la O. The closures are a jolt to an industry that until 2001 had never known a year in which it did not grow. Started in the mid-1960s, the maquiladora industry had been expanding steadily, with double-digit annual growth after passage of the North The pact meant designer jeans could be sewn and television sets assembled in Mexico cheaply, then shipped tax-free to the United States, the world's >From 120 export factories in 1970, the industry swelled to more than 3,700 in 2000. In Tijuana, a border city of 1.5 million residents, one new Today, sprawling factories making electronics, auto parts and medical supplies ring the city. The maquiladora industry produces half of Mexico's But in responding to the new reality of overseas competition, the industry is trying to shift from labor-intensive assembly, in which China and other As a result, the number of factories has receded to about 3,200. "It's similar to the reinventing that had to be done in the United States" in the 1980s, said Ramirez de la O. But, he said, Mexico is ill-prepared for the transition. The government has been lax about monitoring wage increases and supporting worker education and training programs, preferring to believe the factory problems will disappear Wages in Mexico have risen faster than inflation, and at a faster rate than those in the United States and Asia. Rolando Gonzalez, president of the National Maquiladora Association, said that is not all bad. Fatter salaries mean better housing and better living conditions, he said, and Asian competition is forcing an improvement in It is cheaper to truck most goods from Mexico to the United States than to ship them from Asia. But the wage differential between China and Mexico is so great that the bottom line usually tips to production in China. Still, for some large items, such as automobiles, Mexico has an advantage. Toyota recently announced plans to open a new pickup-truckbed factory here. Tijuana has a long history of reinventing itself to respond to economic changes. In the 1980s, the city took advantage of a pre-NAFTA free-trade zone to create what many called the "perfume capital of the world." Companies When NAFTA provided tax-free incentives for maquiladoras, Tijuana substituted crates of electronics components for perfume bottles and became one of the world's leading television-set assembly sites. So many Sony, JVC, Panasonic and Hitachi sets are assembled in Tijuana - more than 15 million a year - that some call the city "TVjuana." Narrowing the salary gap between Mexico and the United States is a goal of the Mexican government. Most U.S. factory jobs pay six to 10 times more than similar jobs in Mexico. The government hopes rising wages will slow illegal immigration to the United States and keep more of the country's most ambitious and entrepreneurial workers at home.
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Comments (6 of 6)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6Phuq Hedd you took the words right out of my mouth: "What's a 'bubblehead'?". Apart from that the article is very good. Blisset, just tell us What's a 'bubblehead'? Coz otherwise the first paragraph doesn't make any sense.
someone, who worked in the IT industry I presume, and was then duffed out on their arse.
Its quite funny actually because if any one else was made unemployed, people would have sympathy with them, but as any "bubblehead" who has spent any time umemployed recently (like me) knows, most people say "thats terrible" and them wander off smirking.
I suppose alot deserve it for being such arrogant b*stards and flashing their cash around(when they had it), but I mean its still a bit harsh. I think peoples reactions are based on the fact they think things will pick up again and the IT people will be back loaded again soon and give up packing shelves at tescos. Personally though, I think there a snowballs chance in hell of that happening.
-vinnie
Vinnie has it right - bubbleheads are those that floated to the surface and kept on going up during the Hi-tech stock market bubble of the late 90's. Refers to those who assumed the stock market would continue growing endlessly and who were taken in by the new-economy propaganda.
In this context I am indeed referring to Dubs etc. who floated up working for internet startups which gave them lots of cash and share options which then promptly disappeared. NUA is a good example. They were an arrogant lot - especially those who knew little more than HTML and assumed because of their pay packets they were geuninuses.KNOWWHATIMEAN.
maquiladoras - there are loads of them in blanchardstown etc. they produce most of the software cd's in europe and pay shit wages £200 p/w for pure hard work. £200 p/w if the workers get restless will seem too much for these companies which fly french/UK and US flags outside their factories if inflation keeps on kicking in.
These factories do not rely on our supposed national strongpoint of education - I have worked in these pplaces with immigrants from all over africa/southamerica/eastern europe. I once had the surreal experience of translating for middle management in French with a few guys from angola who needed a bit of 'training' in the finer points of shrinkwrapping/packing CD's.
guadalajara.