Briggs, Vernon M., Jr.

Ruiz, Vicki

Strom, Sharon

English

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Cornell University ILR School 
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Briggs Volume III Briggs Papers and Speeches 
April 1988 
Comments on the Papers by Vicki Ruiz and Sharon Strom 
Vernon M. Briggs Jr. 
vmb2@cornell.edu 
Vicki Ruiz 
Sharon Strom 
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Comments on the Papers by Vicki Ruiz and Sharon Strom 
Keywords 
Labor, U.S., men, women, employment, work, Ruiz, Strom, program, maquila, enterprise, international, 
market 
Comments 
Volume 3 - Paper #47 
This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/briggsIII/6 
4~
N.Y.S.S.I.L.R.
I,abor History Conference
April 22, 1988
Ithaca, New York
Comments on the Papers by Vicki Ruiz and Sharon Strom
By: Vernon M. Briggs, Jr.
Cornell University
The papers under consideration discuss how previously ignored labor
pools have been identified and tapped by U.S. corporations as new industrial
circumstances have emerged over time. They also explore some of the
consequences of these actions. Strom details how the evolution of office
work -- referred to as being "light manufacturing" -- at the turn of the
20th Century in the United States shifted from being work for men (when it
was mostly hand and brain work) to work for women (when it became mostly
mechanized and routine work). Ruiz, on the other hand, has focussed on the
post-1965 issue of the employment patterns and practices of U.S. based
businesses which have shifted their assembly manufacturing to enterprises
located in Mexico. Known as "maquila plants" (or "twin plants" or "in-bond
plants"), these manufacturing enterprises owe their existence to special
provisions written into the U.S. tariff codes.1 As a response to the
unilateral termination by the United States on December 31, 1964 of the
infamous "bracero" program, the Mexican government elected to permit maquila
plants to operate in the country. The "bracero" program was an agricultural
contract labor program that had been introduced in 1942 as a "temporary"
war time emergency program to supply southwestern growers with a source of
unskilled workers. The growers, however, became addicted to the availability
of captive cheap workers and lobbied for its continuation over the next 22
years. These Mexican workers were all men. When this exploitive program
2ended (its termination had because a rallying cause for organized labor,
Chicano community groups, and various liberal organizations), the Mexican
government sought to find a quick way to absorb what it feared would be an
added surplus of unemployed males in its border towns when the next harvest
season began. Thus, in direct contraction to its extant policies of
restricting the operation of foreign-owned enterprises, the Mexican government
changed its laws to permit these U.S.-based firms to operate on their soil.
The acceptance of the maquila program was also in direct opposition to
Mexico's long term economic development strategy for the border region.
In 1960 the National Frontier Programs (la programa Nacional Fronterizo,
or PRONAF) was launched. This policy sought to find ways to diversify the
dependency of the Mexican border economies on economic happenings in the
United States. The maquila program has greatly increased this dependency.
The point is that the maquila program was originally conceived as a
means of employing men. As it turned out, most of the men (i.e., the former
braceros) kept coming to the United States after 1965 albeit as illegal
immigrants. Whether these firms would have actually hired men can only be
conjectured. From the time they actually began to employ workers in 1966,
the garment and electronics firms that have dominated the program have sought
female employees. Ruiz does point-out, however, that in the 1980s, as some
automobile and furniture firms have become involved, there are some examples
of young men being employed. They remain, however, the exceptions.
Thus, one of the parallel issues in both papers is their concern with
the gender patterns in industrial employment. Strom points out that the
key to gender hiring for office jobs was not the machines that were used.
Rather, she contends it was the conversion of the jobs into menial tasks
3that could now be performed by these machines that caused the shift. As
a consequence of this change, the tasks now were perceived as being low status
work and the opportunities for worker advancement were greatly limited.
As office work became more segmented in emerging large-sized enterprises
(such as Sears Roebuck, AT&T, the Federal Civil Service etc.), employers -
- under the guise of scientific management principles -- were able to
internalize the exercise of their power. In the process they sought a stable
labor force to perform the increasingly routine tasks associated with
processing paperwork. They sought a group that could not be easily bid away
by alternative vocations. In the period that was examined (i.e., 1900 to
1930), women had few occupational alternatives in the labor market and were
usually denied opportunities to be prepar~d for other paid work. The
pervasive discriminatory conditions in the external labor market during that
era enabled employers to manipulate their internal labor markets to achieve
their specific hiring objectives.
It seems important to note that the jobs associated with office work
were not open to all women. They were reserved largely for native-born women.
In part this preference may have reflected anti-foreigner sentiments. But
Strom believes that the practice actually mirrored the reality of the nature
of office work then and now. Office work is service employment that requires
communication skills based on the ability to read, write, and speak English.
Strom notes that young girls frequently had more formal education than did
young boys at that time. Accordingly, they were more literate. Foreign-
born women seemed to lack these abilities and were excluded. Recent research
on immigrants into New York City in the 1980s, for instance, has found very
pronounced industrial and occupational employment patterns that are directly
4associated with English fluency.2 There does seem to be a lesson in the
discussion for the study of employment patterns of low wage workers in the
1980s as the goods producing industries give way to service producing jobs
and mass immigration has again become a major characteristic of labor force
growth.
The Ruiz paper documents a somewhat similar phenomenon. U.S. employers
needed a labor supply that had few alternatives. Women in Mexican border
towns frequently were in this predicament. Mexican men in these
municipalities often had the opportunities to be employed locally or, if
not, to illegally immigrate to the United states. Given these options, it
is doubtful that many men could have ever been attracted to assembly
manufacturing at the Mexican daily minimum even if there had ever been any
inclination to seek them. A captive labor force was needed. The ensuing
employment practices of maquila firms has best been described in an earlier
study of maquiladoras by Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly to be as follows:
"...Maquiladoras...do not tend to employ the members of the
traditional work force, that is males of working age. Rather,
they employ members of the so called inactive population, that
is daughters and wives whose principal activities took place in
the school or the home prior to the existence of the in-bond plant
program. In other words, these were the components of a formerly
unemployable sector.,,3
The description by Ruiz of the despicable employment practices used
by the U.s. firms operating under the auspices of maquila programs reinforce
the similar findings of Fernandez-Kelly. Any vestiges of the training that
U.S. employees supposedly receive in human resource management (i.e.,
personnel policy) seems to vanish at the border. Similarily, homage to
the public policy constraints imposed by U.s. laws for worker protections
are also quickly abandoned. The image of the "ugly American" has been
5reincarnated. These writings should suffice to strip away the glossy public
relations veneer of u.s. business and chambers of commerce publications which
seek to create the illusion that somehow these operations are beneficial
to Mexican workers (or to other workers in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean
who are employed in such similar ventures). Nothing could be further from
the truth. Ruiz and Fernandez-Kelly both show that the involvement of women
in paid industrial labor in such enterprises does not necessarily represent
an improvement of their alternatives as individuals, workers or as members
of families. Instead, their participation is a manifestation of their
economic vulnerability. Just as Strom found women recruited into office
work as a cost cutting move by u.S. firms in the early 20th Century, so does
Ruiz find that the identical pressures are driving the contemporary
international economy. The only difference is that in the earlier period
in the United States, women were confined to limited segments of the labor
market. Now, thanks to enlightened social policy in the United States, women
have been afforded opportunities to prepare and to be employed in a wider
array of jobs. But just as the recently won gains by U.s. women are, in
part threatened by the new drive to open the u.s. economy to international
competition, so is the situation identical for women in developing nations.
The status of women in these countries, however, is imperiled not only the
same global pressures of international competition but also, by the fact
that these women are still largely trapped by segregated employment practices
into segmented and limited enclaves of their national labor markets as were
u.s. women earlier in this Century.
The villain to worker welfare in economically developing nations in
the late 1980s -- as it was in the u.s. in the early 20th Century -- is
6unbridled competition coupled with the absence of enforceable fair labor
standards. Fair labor standards and equal employment opportunity policies
in the united states were introduced at a time when the u.s. economy was
sheltered from foreign competitive forces by high tariffs. Since the 1960s,
the u.s. has led the way to open up both its own economy and, with the aid
of other signatory nations to the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade,
the evil jinni of unrestricted competition has been released upon the
seemingly helpless workers of the world. This move toward greater
competition, however, has not been accompanied by any parallel effort to
encourage the adoption of worldwide fair labor standards and equal employment
opportunity policies.4 As Fernandez-Kelly has so perceptively warned "without
the careful vigilance of responsible business representatives and public
officials, the internationalization of production can entail the worsening
of working conditions, the loosening of health and safety regulations, the
exacerbation of urban problems, and in the long run, the increase of
unemployment"S
Thus, under these conditions the entry of new workers into the economies
of already developed or of developing nations does not bode-well for the
welfare of working people. The current fad in the United states and in these
other nations is "competitiveness". Reduced to its essentials, the slogan
means 'cut costs to the bone.'" These pressures have led u.s. firms to
participate in maquiladora type enterprises in Mexico and elsewhere. other
nations feel compelled to follow suit. Neoclassical economists may be
heartened by these pressures toward greater efficiency in the use of the
world's economic resources. But as Frederick Thayer has so wisely observed:
7"Lets not kid ourselves: all-out competition in world markets
involves both "capitalist" and "socialist" enterprises and cost
cutting kills workers in all those enterprises. Less competition
is the only thing that will save them".'"
There is ample evidence presented in both these papers -- one describing
events of the past, one describing events of the present -- to cause
reasonable persons to ask if we cannot learn from history. Is it really
in anyone's interest to revive Darwinistic competition for the workers of
the world or should we not seek to put the brakes on these tendencies and
begin the exploration of other paradigms that may offer the prospect of hope
and not despair for those who toil to produce the world's output.
8Footnotes
1. For a discussion of these provisions and how Mexico became involved
with them, see Vernon M. Briggs, Immigration Policy and the American
Labor Force, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), pp.
238-242.
2. Elizabeth Bogen, Immigration in New York, (New York:
Company, 1987), pp. 84-5 ff.
praeger Publishing
3. Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, For We are Sold, I and My People: Women
and Industry in Mexico's Frontier (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1983), p. 45.
4. Howard D. Samuel, "Social Goals and International Trade: A New
Dimension" in The Internationalization of the U.S. Economy: Its Labor
Market Implications, edited by Vernon M. Briggs, Jr. (Salt Lake City:
Olympus Publishing Company, 1986) pp. 27-37.
5. Ibid., p. 194.
6. Letters to the Editor by Professor Frederick Thayer, New York Times,
(August 16, 1987) p. F-18.


Comments on the Papers by Vicki Ruiz and Sharon Strom

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