Meixco Focuses on Female Workers
by Julie Watson
MONTERREY, Mexico - President Vicente Fox and industry leaders agreed to improve working conditions for women at foreign-owned factories along the Mexico-U.S. border.
Monday's agreement calls for daycare centers at as many assembly-for-export plants, or maquilas, as possible, and the enforcement of laws prohibiting employers from asking women to take pregnancy tests before being hired. It also urges employers to give working mothers preference for daytime shifts.
The pact was signed by Fox and the Export Industry Council in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas.
Maquilas were started in the 1960s and have grown over the years to become the industrial backbone of Mexico's 2,000-mile border with the United States. More than 3,500 plants, including major U.S. and international heavyweights, employ 1.2 million people.
Women are the majority of workers at these plants. Across Mexico, women on average earn 35 percent less than men in the same positions.
"We cannot be on the cutting edge, as we aim to do, if women continue to be discriminated against, if they are not incorporated into the productive work force with all their rights and their skills, if we do not establish together the conditions to overcome the historic gaps in this area," Fox said while touring Delphi Rimir factory in Matamoros.
The plant, which produces air bags for cars, is owned by Delphi Automotive Systems, the world's largest car components supplier.
Factories have recently taken steps to tend to the needs of female employees. After a series of gruesome rape-murders of workers in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez, factories came under fire for not providing transportation to female workers who were forced to walk home after getting off shifts at 1 a.m.
Many plants now provide bus service and offer self-defense courses.
Fox promised to improve education levels, health and job opportunities for women.
He said the Mexican economy has shown signs of recovery in recent weeks and the border's industrial sector, which was hit the hardest by the U.S. recession, could still recover 100,000 lost jobs by year's end.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press