Mexican Seafood Workers Battle Inhumane Treatment
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Workers who process seafood in the maquilas in Santa Rosalia, Mexico, along the California border, are determined to improve their lives by joining a union. But in an all-too-familiar scenario, the workers face virulently anti-union multinational employers who fire workers for speaking up.
The mostly female workers, some of them as young as 12 years old, work 14-to-16-hour days, six or seven days a week for mainly Korean, Chinese and U.S.-based multinational corporations that sell to markets in Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, the United States and elsewhere.
Many of the workers in Santa Rosalia are forced to live in company dormitories attached to two of the larger plants. They sleep on the floor or on plastic boxes. The rooms are nine feet by 13 feet for a family of four or a group of six to eight.
