Allies Across the Border

From the publisher:

While Wall Street pundits praise the global economy, workers find their jobs more pressured and precarious. Americans and Canadians are told that Mexicans are stealing their jobs, but workers in Mexico find themselves in dangerous plants where they are barely paid their daily bread. This first book on Mexico's pioneer independent labor federation, the Authentic Labor Front (the FAT), shows how activists are gaining strength in coalition with their "allies across the border."

It offers both activists and scholars an understanding of the last 40 years of Mexican history, explaining how globalizing the Mexican economy undermined workers' wages and the authoritarian structures that had bound them to the PRI, the ruling party that had dominated Mexico until 2000. It celebrates the organizing tactics both within plants and across borders that have given new hope to workers throughout the continent.

A case study of how democracy -in workplaces and international structures-is the greatest source of power on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

"Activists everywhere have much to learn from the people Dale Hathaway profiles in this book. Solidarity is the best answer to globalization."
-Bob Clark, General Secretary-Treasurer, United Electrical Workers (UE)

"This book stands firm against the corporate hagiographies currently clogging the shelves; its clear, careful tracking of actual plant conditions and labor practices, rendered evenly-if sympathetically to workers' plight-should convince even hardened union skeptics to consider the other side's claims."
-Publishers Weekly