International Project interview: Floyd Cameron

Corporate park factories, destitute workers
an interview with Floyd Cameron, Border Witness delegate

by Courtney Clifford

Most of us will never know what the word “sweatshop” really means. That word is foreign territory, representing a world far away from most U.S. citizens’ daily experiences. But Floyd Cameron can tell you what the word means, because he has not only been to sweatshops on the US/Mexican Border, but has also talked to the workers who have been economically abandoned by their own government and ours.

Cameron, a legislative lobbyist for New York State United Teachers, recently returned from a Border Witness trip to Juarez, Mexico and El Paso Texas, organized by the New York State Labor Religion Coalition.

These trips have been run continually by the Coalition since 1997 as a way of exposing people from this side of the border to the workers’ rights violations happening right over the Mexican Border. Cameron was drawn to the idea of Border Witness through his long-standing professional and personal relationship with the Labor-Religion Coalition. He calls himself a “believer in human beings” and has participated in various worker’s rights rallies and events organized by the Coalition.

Cameron says that he was surprised by what he saw once he arrived in Juarez. “The people didn’t look destitute, but it was clear that they didn’t have anything, so that made it worse in my mind.” What Cameron witnessed were factories that looked “like a corporate park.” Through comparing the absolute destitution of these workers’ living conditions to the surface appearance of the factories, he realized the facade that allows these conditions to exist.

Disturbed by what he saw as unnecessary poverty, Cameron says that he began to wonder about the real implications of the border situation. “I imagined that if these people just crossed to my side of the fence, they’d have clothes that fit, running water and more food. It borders on economic slavery.”

Indeed, as in many places in the world, the maquiladoras in Juarez do function much like economic slavery. The cost of living in Juarez is comparable to that in El Paso, but people working in Juarez are not paid a living wage. Cameron says, “Not only were these workers not making a living wage, they weren’t even making a poverty wage. The poverty wage in Mexico is 150 pesos a day and these people only earn 50 pesos each day. It’s disgusting.”

The reason that Mexican sweatshops weigh so heavily on the consciences of U.S. citizens is that their existence has been fueled by trade agreements such as NAFTA, which were co-created by the United States. There is an essential paradox inherent in these types of trade agreements. As Cameron states, “The legislators in the United States on the border of Texas, Arizona and California voted for NAFTA, which forces economically destitute people to cross the border. Now they complain that we need to keep these people out of the country.”

The question that most often arises from witness trips like these seems to be “What can be done?” One misconception is that Mexico simply does not have strong enough labor laws. In fact, Mexico’s labor laws are comparable to those in the United States, but they are not implemented. This system could be changed, but it would take more than written labor laws to do so. As Cameron says, one of the first steps is to realize that “humans are being treated like objects.”

In order to ensure that this realization will take an even firmer hold in the minds of U.S. citizens, the New York State Labor Religion Coalition is dedicated to continuing its collaborative effort with workers’ rights allies on the Mexican border. The Border Witness trips will continue, as will the fight for education and awareness of such a crucial human right’s issue.