7. 18. 2025
Internationalizing the Coalition
Martha Ojeda
We’ve seen nationalism blow up in the Canadian state in reaction to Trump’s tariffs and talk of annexing Canada. Some on the left – including John Clarke and Todd Gordon in Midnight Sun – have warned of the dangers of such a response. They argue that nationalism inevitably benefits the ruling class at the expense of workers. Neither free trade nor tariffs will help workers, because trade negotiations are fundamentally about maximizing capitalist productivity and profits. The way forward, rather, is to promote working class internationalism, recognizing that US and Canadian workers have more in common than either national working class has with their national bourgeoisie.
While working-class internationalism may sound like an abstract slogan, the idea of workers joining forces across national borders has important precedents. One is the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM), an organization formed to protect workers against the ravages of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect in 1994. CJM brought together labour, religious, environmental, and feminist groups from Mexico, the United States, and Canada to support working-class action against and popular education about NAFTA’s impact.
NAFTA’s promoters promised economic growth for all three countries: more jobs and better wages. The opposite was true. A Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report concluded that NAFTA “has destroyed more jobs than it has created, depressed wages, worsened poverty and inequality, eroded social programs…and greatly increased the rights and power of corporations, investors, and property holders.” Despite Mexican workers also faring poorly because of NAFTA, American and Canadian workers largely blamed them for “stealing” their jobs – a position that fomented racism and nationalism within the working class and often on the left as well.
Martha Ojeda was CJM’s executive director from 1996 to 2012. She also worked for 20 years in the maquiladoras – foreign-run factories in Mexico, manufacturing for export, concentrated near the Mexico-US border. In 1994, she led more than a thousand women workers in a wildcat strike at a factory in Nuevo Laredo – an action that led to improved working conditions. Her experiences inspired Martha to earn a law degree, paid for largely by her sister workers. After joining CJM, Martha worked tirelessly to strengthen international ties among workers, while also promoting workers’ self-organization to protect labour and environmental rights. She shares some of her experiences and insights about international organizing in this conversation with Midnight Sun.
Midnight Sun:
Can you tell us how the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM) began its work in Mexico? How did you first encounter it?
Martha Ojeda:
The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras was a US organization. It began with 40 organizations, and most of them were religious organizations. And the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) was bringing some folks in.
The CJM began by struggling to establish a code of conduct for the maquiladoras in 1989. It was about the US Environmental Protection Act (EPA) regulations – they were trying to implement and enforce those in Mexico, because US-owned companies were dumping chemicals in the community. The CJM’s main focus at the beginning was to call attention to what these corporations were doing. They produced a video to show how the community was polluted and how people were dying of cancer. That caught the attention of many people in Congress, who started to pay attention to what was going on across the Mexican border.
But the focus changed when NAFTA passed in 1994. I was working in the maquiladoras, and we were facing really terrible conditions. The situation of major concern was the children with birth defects. There were many children with spina bifida and anencephaly. We were asking the company, “Why is this happening?” They said that it was a genetic problem of the workers. We started to track those affected, and found that most cases were in the painting and quality control departments, where we were using thinner and ammonia. However, the union and the company didn’t want to give us any information. We all were women, and the union guys were saying, “Ah, women complaining…you don’t know anything…we are the men, we are the leaders, and we have the power because we know what to do.”
When NAFTA passed, the company told us that our shifts would change. At that time, after eight hours daily, you made double pay for overtime. But when NAFTA passed, the shift would be 12 hours, three or four days a week, with no overtime. We said that was not the law, and we would enforce our rights for overtime according to the law. We challenged the company and its corporate union. We went on strike in seven plants, and the three shifts at each plant stopped. 2000 women went on strike. We were on the streets in front of the company’s headquarters, and we were repressed with brutality. First, the police came to arrest the leaders, and then all the workers went to the police department demanding that all of them be arrested – not only the leaders – and the workers took over the police station, so we were released. The police beat workers with brutality; many of them were hospitalized. We stood our ground despite all the attacks.
The workers told me a gringo was looking for me, asking them where to find me. We didn’t know who or where he was from…he was a blonde guy and wanted to meet with us. In the beginning, we were very skeptical because we thought that he was from the US government, the CIA, and we didn’t want to meet with him. Finally we met with him, and he told us that he was from the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, that it was an NGO, and that they could help us confront the company under the NAFTA side agreements [addenda to NAFTA that stipulated certain labour and environmental standards]. He told us that we could sue the company for the violation of the right to freedom of association. We thought there was hope. So we agreed to submit a complaint.
We spent three years on the complaint process, going to Mexico, Canada, and the United States: Mexico because it was the country where the violations happened; the United States was the headquarters of the court office where we were going to submit our complaint, in Washington; Canada was, like, the neutral guys. For us, it was a really good experience – the beginning of exploring these treaties and how we could help workers. CJM reached out to the National Association of Democratic Lawyers in Mexico, so they could represent the workers in this international case under the National Administrative Office (NAO) of NAFTA.
There were all these charges against me for my role in the strikes. The first hearing happened in Mexico, and the workers and I were afraid the Mexican government could arrest me, and the case would be dismissed. But then the lawyers association called all their allies in Mexico City, and when I arrived for the hearing, many workers from Mexico City were waiting for me in solidarity.
Midnight Sun:
So the CJM had funding to establish international infrastructure and help with lawyers and so on. That was crucial, I’m sure.
Martha:
That was exactly the first strategy: okay, let’s look for these lawyers in Mexico who’ll protect the workers, so the workers won’t be arrested.
So we went to Washington for the NAFTA commission hearings, where the workers provided testimony about the brutality, that they were attacked and many were hospitalized. The only thing we were trying to do was enforce the labour law, our rights: our right to be paid overtime, and our right to organize.
Midnight Sun:
Basic liberal democratic rights.
Martha:
The company hired expensive lawyers from New York. At the third hearing, the workers were not allowed to talk. Then the Canadian Labour Congress said they would give me their turn, because for them it was more important that the workers talk. However, two years later, in 1996, the hearing’s conclusions were released – and yes, they said it was a big violation of the right to organize, and so on. But we learned that those NAFTA side agreements did not have any powers of enforcement. There was no fine or citation.
So then, okay, now what were we gonna do? We all were fired, we were on the black list. We didn’t know that the hearings would be just to make noise, raise awareness. It was a victory because it shined a spotlight on how Mexico violates workers’ rights, but workers won nothing concrete in the case. However, we got an amazing experience of solidarity from workers from other countries.
In 1996, the CJM offered me the position of executive director, and I said the only thing I know is how to organize workers. They said, that’s exactly what we need: somebody to organize in Mexico, because what is happening to you is happening to all your fellow workers. I began to work with the CJM, and my first job was to bring organizations from Mexico and Canada to join the coalition.
Midnight Sun:
So you actually internationalized the coalition on the ground.
Martha:
Exactly. The first trip that I did was to Mexico City to thank all the folks who helped me in the NAO hearing, and to invite all those who were there to join the coalition.
Midnight Sun:
Can you remember the names of the Canadian organizations that were involved?
Martha:
The Canadian Labour Congress, the Steelworkers, the Canadian Auto Workers, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers – they were the best. Maquiladora Solidarity Network, and many other unions and Canadian organizations, but those were the main players from Canada, and the other ones were following them.
Midnight Sun:
What did international support look like in practice? How did it make a difference to organizing in the maquiladoras?
Martha:
One of the problems had to do with differences in strategy. With NAFTA, all the big companies were dividing their production and assembly plants along the lines of specific work tasks. The workers at one plant were assembling and sewing steering wheels, and they were having a lot of health problems. They were not able to use their arms anymore, or they were having children with birth defects. They asked for support because they knew they would be repressed when they organized.
But the AFL-CIO said, “No, we’re just hunting the big corporations as targets.” And we said, “You’re not going to find Ford, General Motors, or Chrysler here. You’re going to find all these smaller companies with weird names that are producing parts.” The Mexican organizations from Mexico City were supporting the maquila workers at the border because they knew the situation, and the Canadian organizations were supporting the Mexicans. But the US unions weren’t agreeing. They said: “If it’s not a big name, the campaign’s not going to be successful.” The US organizations were also saying that unions in the United States weren’t going to support us because the Mexican workers were stealing their jobs.
So then the best thing to do was to put all those workers together so they could learn from each other. One is going to be unemployed, the other is exploited; both are victims of the same corporation. The first Canadian union that came to the border was the Steelworkers. They were in shock when they saw the terrible working conditions. They promised help, and soon I got a call from the national Steelworkers office, and the campaign began.
The Canadian Auto Workers was the first union to come to Mexico to deliver health and safety training, so workers could identify chemicals and how they could avoid endangering themselves. The UCLA Berkeley occupational health faculty and the International Center for Labor Research from Mexico City also came to teach the workers about health and safety. We started to do these international trainings.
We also wanted to submit complaints about health and safety violations under the NAFTA side agreements because, in these cases, it would be possible to impose a fine on the country violating workers’ rights. So we said, let’s submit the first complaint that will be enforceable.
Midnight Sun:
To do this, you were bringing together rank-and-file workers, not union officials.
Martha:
Yes, rank-and-file workers.
I want to tell you about an experience I had when workers from the United Auto Workers, from Detroit, Michigan, learned what was happening with workers in Reynosa, Mexico. They drove their trucks from Michigan to support the workers on strike. Three trucks of workers drove down to the Mexican border. And when I called union officials in Texas to say, “Hey, the UAW from Michigan are coming to support the workers in Mexico,” they said, “No, that’s a big problem. Because first any supportive actions need to be authorized for the region, and then the region will decide what we can do.” The officials from the union never showed up. It was rank-and-file workers who came to support the workers from the same company who were on strike on the Mexican border.
Midnight Sun:
And do you have a sense of how much that solidarity helped to change people’s attitudes about Mexicans stealing jobs or whatever?
Martha:
A lot. A lot. Because they were realizing they were victims of the same corporation. The same corporation is taking away my job and paying you meagre salaries, while the corporation is making much more money. That was really clear. We began to have workshops with workers from the same company, in order that they could learn about each other’s salaries and working conditions. We started to form these kinds of alliances, worker to worker.
From the postal workers, it was really the top officials who were coming, not rank-and-file workers. They rented a bus, and they travelled city by city. I took them through all the cities along the border, meeting workers, meeting with communities. And that was the interesting thing, because once you connect workers and civil society, they organize to support each other in different ways.
For example, we started to form worker centres. In every place where workers were organizing – in Reynosa, in Rio Bravo, in Matamoros, in Juarez, in Tijuana, in every city…those workers started to develop allies in the United States, people who were connected with those workers because companies had moved down to Mexico, or because they were working for the same company. For example, in Kansas City, an organization called the Cross Border Network for Justice and Solidarity formed. This network brought folks – some from unions, but also faith leaders and professors – to meet Mexican workers on the border, and they sponsored organizers in Mexico.
Midnight Sun:
Most of that was happening below the level of the union officialdom.
Martha:
Exactly. That was the way. So, for example, the Kansas guys were sponsoring two, three organizers in Mexico. The guys from New York, the Labor-Religion Coalition, brought faith people; the United University Professors (UUP) were very progressive, and they sent teachers who were affiliated with the union to Mexico. Many were inspired and decided to support workers who were organizing in Rio Bravo and Matamoros. The UUP and faith leaders were also sponsoring several organizers. So we started to develop this kind of alliance in order to continue our campaigns.
Midnight Sun:
Those are great stories. “Worker internationalism” is a fine slogan, and people aspire to it, but I don’t think people really have a good sense of what it means on the ground.
Martha:
Or the idea that international trade unionism is just top unions talking to top unions. NAFTA changed that.
For example, the cross-border network from Kansas mobilized to support Mexican workers who’d decided to organize an independent union in a maquila. Those workers had, again, children with birth defects; they were in warehouses with no air conditioning, just big fans. But they had to turn off the fans, because the glue wouldn’t work. So no fans, no air conditioning, or anything, and more than 110 degrees. Workers were fainting, getting sick, and having children with birth defects.
When we started this campaign, the company sent a third party to do an inspection of the plant with the code of conduct. This organization was paid by the company. They never met with workers, only with representatives of the company. They reported that everything was super nice, while things were actually really pretty bad. So the workers went on strike again. It was huge, all the workers outside. And they decided to organize a new union. The workers wanted an election for an independent union, and CJM sent an attorney from Mexico City to help them submit the paperwork at the border.
Meanwhile, the union that was holding the contract was based in Mexico City, not at the border. They came with other corporate unions and brought in tough guys with guns. On the day of the independent union elections, the tough guys kidnapped the workers from the third shift. They closed the factory door to hold the elections inside, with guns to the workers, threatening to kill them and their families if they didn’t vote for the company union.
Midnight Sun:
This is the union that had been representing the workers up until then?
Martha:
Yes. The families were afraid because the workers never arrived home. Families arrived looking for the workers at the factory. The election was the next day. We were all outside; we called for international observers. And the workers were yelling, “Here they are with guns, they’ve closed the door, we’re kidnapped, we have to vote for them, otherwise they’re not going to let us out – not until we vote for the company union.”
Of course, the workers lost the independent union election. And the AFL-CIO people said, “They lost the election because they didn’t know how to organize.” So the workers said, “Wait a minute? Are these guys with us or against us?”
There were many, many cases like that.
Midnight Sun:
It’s inspiring work that you did. Also really hard work.
Martha:
Well, it was hard in a way. When I see a crisis or an obstacle, I feel it should be an opening. You need to find that opening. And that means you need to think out of the box. If you keep doing things the way they say it should be, it’s never gonna change. You’re following a pattern that they decide. So you need to develop new strategies. With all the things happening right now in the United States, you can’t keep doing things in the way you’re used to doing them – sending letters, etcetera…that’s not going to work. But there’s an opening. When there’s oppression, that’s when the opening for change happens.
Midnight Sun:
The CJM was originally American-based, and pretty bureaucratic and hierarchical. Were there many struggles inside the coalition? How did you get the support of some of the officialdom within the coalition for the more radical things that you’ve been involved with?
Martha:
Well, as I told you, you need to think out of the box. In 1996 when I began, I started to invite people from Mexico, people from Canada, to join the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras – and then, with so many experts involved, the changes to the organization’s bylaws began.
The workers need to be in the decision-making process, because the decisions are made about them. Some organizations said, “We are the voice of the workers.” But the workers have a voice. They can talk; just let them talk. They need to be there and be part of the decision-making.
So in 2000, we changed the bylaws and all the bureaucratic systems went away. We replaced them, so there would be representation for people of faith, for unions, for civil society, equally, but the majority on the board of directors should be workers. We also formed an executive committee, and insisted that the executive committee should be composed of people from the United States, Mexico, and Canada – but, again, the majority should be workers. The workers were deciding on the campaigns.
And then we formed a fundraising committee, with all those who had expertise and wanted to raise funds. People would say, “Oh, Martha, I know this foundation, I want to connect you, you can get an interview.” They were developing contacts and so on, and I was going and meeting with them, helping to do the proposals, submitting the proposals. There was also the strategic action committee, determining the best strategy, what we can do. Workers were also involved in the methodology committee; instead of an expert coming to teach them, it should be the workers on the methodology committee.
Midnight Sun:
I’ve never heard of a methodology committee before.
Martha:
Yeah! The workers were saying they wanted popular education training. They were talking about [Brazilian radical education philosopher] Paulo Freire. They argued that the analysis should begin from workers’ reality.
We strategized and implemented all strategies simultaneously. We used companies’ shareholder meetings; people would be annoyed, but the workers could testify there. We also educated the US people and raised awareness through boycotts. At the same time, we united the workers from the same company based in different countries. We engaged allies to sponsor organizers in the field, organizing independent unions. We escalated until workers succeeded in their struggle.
For example, since 1996, we’ve really started the struggle for independent unions in Mexico, because they were not permitted. It wasn’t until 2005 that we won the first independent union with all-women leadership. The workers there were repressed with brutality. They were producing jeans, using chemicals to bleach the jeans, and workers were again having children with birth defects, and they were having respiratory problems. But this wasn’t a public company, so we couldn’t use shareholder meetings. It was a private company, and they were trying to be the “good guys,” trying to use the code of conduct, but there was no enforcement. The police used gas grenades, so all the workers, even pregnant women, were exposed to gases, and they were beaten, and so on. And we put that in the spotlight, in that campaign. All the workers’ leadership were women.
Many people in the United States, and the Canadian postal workers, joined the boycott after that. They put notes in all the pants: Don’t buy these pants. The postal workers helped a lot. In the end, we forced the company’s leadership to sit with the workers and meet with the union.
Midnight Sun:
It seems that there are two levels of activity. There are all the worker-to-worker connections being made, the learning and, as you say, the civil society and cultural changes that come about with that, which is really, really important, for morale and support and keeping the initiative alive. And then there’s the infrastructural work that needs to be democratized, so those workers who are getting connected on the ground can have some control over that wider infrastructure. It takes quite a vision to do that.
Martha:
A vision and support. Most of the funding for the CJM was from religious organizations, as I mentioned. Many religious organizations support charity, anti-poverty, and social justice – so our work was really aligned with their values. Trade unions also were coming to support us from Canada, as I mentioned – the Steelworkers, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Canadian Auto Workers. And from the United States, many locals were sending funding, the rank and file.
Unfortunately, with the economic recession in 2008, all these religious groups had investments in Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, and their portfolios crashed. Even though they wanted to help, they’d lost a lot of money. Therefore, it was like, how is our organization going to survive? All those years from 2008 to 2012, we were trying to keep it alive. 2013 was the last time we did things.
Midnight Sun:
And it’s really folded now, right? The coalition?
Martha:
Yes – after losing financial support. Many workers were losing their jobs. And just as companies were crashing in the US, all the maquiladoras assembling for them were crashing in Mexico. Then a lot of the workers started to cross undocumented to work in the United States.
Midnight Sun:
The coalition aimed to curtail free trade policies in some ways. To put brakes on them, by making sure the code of conduct was being adhered to. Today, Trump’s imposing tariffs and protectionism. Were the CJM around today to fight, would it consider tariffs to be a good answer?
Martha:
Definitely not. One of the things we were very clear on: trade agreements and negotiations are a tool for the wealthy people. This is a strategy for them to make more money. It’s not a tool or strategy for people who are just surviving. Workers have been just surviving since before NAFTA; workers were being sacrificed before NAFTA. The corporations and the system have sacrificed workers always: workers make production happen, but they are treated as disposable.
I think the CJM’s best strategy was bringing workers together, so that workers would be united to find the best way to overcome, not to follow the pattern of the system. Because it’s the system: the government, following corporations’ lead and working together to make more profits, to get more money.
We need to find a way for workers to understand that the corporations need us more than we need them. They need our hands to make their wealth. Without workers, without our hands, they wouldn’t be able to create their wealth. When workers get that consciousness – how important they are, and how much corporations need them – then, only then, workers lose their fear, and they fight back to produce change.
Martha Ojeda is the Workers Outreach National Coordinator of the Just Purchasing Consortium, an initiative of the Harrison Institute for Public Law and Workers Rights Institute at Georgetown University, which aims to use the leverage of universities’ purchasing power to improve working conditions in meatpacking plants through a worker-centred participatory process. Under her leadership as Executive Director of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, CJM submitted several international complaints about labour rights and health and safety violations to the International Labour Organization and to the National Administration Office of the NAFTA side agreements. She is co-author of NAFTA from Below: Maquiladora Workers, Farmers, and Indigenous Communities Speak Out on the Impact of Free Trade in Mexico, and she holds a law degree from the University of Coahuila, Mexico. She has received numerous awards, including from the American Public Health Association Occupational Health Division (2017), the Democratic Lawyers Association, Mexico City (2007), and the Petra Foundation (2001).