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July 19, 2010
Johnson Controls workers rally, May 2010
Since 2007, MSN has been actively involved in an international campaign to push Milwaukee-based auto parts manufacturing company Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI) to respect the rights of workers in their Puebla, Mexico plants.
Johnson Controls has three plants in the state of Puebla, Mexico that produce seats and seat parts, mainly for the Volkswagen assembly plant in Puebla, but also for Chrysler, Ford, Mercedes Benz and Nissan. Two of these plants, JCI FINSA and JCI Interiores, are located in the city of Puebla; the third plant is located in the city of Tlaxcala.
In 2006, in response to a number of worker rights violations and complaints, including unpaid wages, deteriorating and unsafe working conditions, violations of freedom of association and gender discrimination, a group of workers at JCI FINSA formed an Organizing Coalition and sought support from the Workers Assistance Center in Puebla (CAT, in its Spanish acronym). Coalition members have been harassed and fired for their organizing efforts, while CAT staff have been physically assaulted for their defence of the JCI workers.
Company-controlled "protection unions" linked to the Puebla State PRI government have held title to the collective agreements at the FINSA and JC Interiores factories. Workers in both factories have never received a copy of those agreements or been consulted about whether they wanted to be represented by those unions.
In May 2010, a brief strike at the JCI Interiores plant led to an agreement with JCI to break the existing "protection contract" and allow workers the right to be represented by the union of their free choice. Yet the company has continually refused to negotiate with the workers' coalition formed at the FINSA plant to address their long-standing grievances.
MSN is working closely with US-LEAP, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, United Steelworkers (in Canada and the US), the US and Canadian autoworkers unions, and the International Metal Workers' Federation to pressure JCI to meet with the FINSA workers' Coalition and meet their demands.
In response to a violent August 16 attack by thugs from a protection union, workers at the Johnson Controls Interiores plant in Puebla, Mexico walked off the job and remained on strike for several days. On August 19, the dispute was resolved when management signed an agreement recognizing the workers' independent union and severing its ties with the Confederación de Organizaciones Sindicales (COS), a company union that was ejected from the factory in May after a previous strike.
MSN is pleased to announce that an agreement was reached on August 19, 2010 between factory management and the independent union. MSN would like to thank those who responded to the action alert.
On August 16, 2010, thugs entered a plant owned by Johnson Controls in Puebla, Mexico, and assaulted them, according to reports, "with sticks and stones, leaving many injured." Two of the members of the Executive Committee of the newly formed union at the plant, Cándido Barreucos and Vigilio Melendez, were beaten in a company office and forced to sign letters of resignation, reportedly at gunpoint. They are currently in a hospital with severe injuries. Our allies the US Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP) have set up automatic email pages you can use to take two actions: contact Johnson Controls and contact the Mexican government.
A three-day strike by workers at a Johnson Controls auto parts plant in Puebla, Mexico, backed by an international solidarity campaign, has won the workers the right to be represented by a union of their free choice. The agreement sets an important precedent in Mexico where employers often sign "protection contracts" with corrupt unions without the workers' knowledge and/or consent in order to prevent those workers from organizing or affiliating with a democratic union.
On April 28, 2010, Enrique Morales Montaño and Coral Juarez Melo, of the Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador (CAT) were visiting employees of the multi-national Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI) in the community of Santo Toribio, when Enrique was physically assaulted by the son of Magdaleno Texis, a local leader of the CROM, the illegitimate union at the Johnson Controls Puebla factory. Please help support the CAT by sending a letter to Mexican President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa asking him to guarantee the safety of Coral Juarez and Enrique Morales.
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