The workers of the tire manufacturing plant in the Mexican city of San Luis Potosi are exposing the unlitateral lay off of almost half of the workers in the pay roll, the illegal firing of workers almost a year ago, 20% salary reductions and the hiring of people to try to intimidate the trade union leaders through violence.

There have also been similar incidents in the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca, in Azuay province, and in a French manufacturing plant where 1,200 employees were fired.

But the most paradigmatic case is Continental’s decision of closing down the plant of Hulera Euzkadi corporation, in the Mexican state of Jalisco, in December of 2001.

The German corporation fired over a thousand workers at the time, who began a long conflict that included exposing the Mexican and German governments’ involvement.

Real World Radio interviewed Jesus Torres, chair of the Western Democratic Workers’ cooperative (Tradoc), as a result of this long struggle that ended with the workers’ taking over the plant.

Torres recalled that during the years of the strike and occupation of the plant, Continental had the support of the then right-wing President Vicente Fox. The workers’ self-management proposal rendered positive results and five years after its reopening, the company is much better than when Continental managed it, claims Torres.

“We currently produce over 11,000 tires a day with 800 employees and we have better salaries than all the Mexican tire industry. Today the cooperative is the biggest shareholder of the company and we are the only Mexican industry producing tires and which can compete with transnational corporations”, he said.

Torres referred to the problems the cooperative faced to get credits from banks and he did not hesitate to say that this experience has been criticized by the business world.

Despite the results, Tradoc feels the obligation to continue exposing the labor rights violations committed by Continental in places like San Luis Potosi and Ecuador. “The abuses continue”, he said.

Photo: http://online.wsj.com