Mexico plants unable to tap migrant flood heading north
Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Nov. 4, 2006 12:00 AM
MEXICO CITY - Factories on the Mexican side of the border are battling a labor shortage and say they have failed miserably in their attempts to hire some of the thousands of migrants flowing toward the United States.
Companies in Nogales, Juarez, Reynosa and other border cities are sending recruiters hundreds of miles to hunt for workers in southern Mexico. Many are offering signing bonuses, housing and even free lunches to lure employees.
"There just aren't enough workers here," said Abel Anaya, manager of the Weiser Lock plant in Nogales, Sonora, on the Arizona border.
Weiser Lock has sent recruiters to Chiapas, a Mexican state 1,400 miles away, and to Veracruz state, on the Atlantic Ocean. About 150 of the plant's 600 employees are from out of state, he said.
Most migrants turn up their noses at Mexican factory jobs, which typically pay unskilled workers less than 120 pesos ($11.30) a day. Migrants know that they can earn five or six times as much just across the border in the United States. Mexican companies say they can't afford to raise their wages because they are competing with assembly plants in China and India, where the pay is even lower.
In June, Mexican President Vicente Fox estimated the labor shortage on the border at 100,000 workers. John Christman, an expert on Mexican manufacturing with the Global Insight consulting firm, said the crunch has eased somewhat since then, as assembly plants known as maquiladoras enter their slowest time of the year. But the shortage is still about 60,000 workers, he said.
Juarez alone needs 10,000 factory workers, said Jorge Pedrosa, director of the local maquiladora association. Tijuana needs 4,000 to 5,000, according to Luis Alberto Pelayo, his counterpart in that city.
Some factories have had to turn down contracts because they cannot keep up with the workload, they said.
In many places, Mexican companies have launched programs to recruit some of the hundreds of migrants deported daily by U.S. authorities.
Nogales is a prime example. The city lies in the middle of the most popular corridor for Mexicans headed illegally to the United States. The U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector made more than 380,000 arrests from Oct. 1, 2005 to Sept. 15.
Most of the detainees are put onto buses and released just across the border, in downtown Nogales.
During the peak summer season, when factories in Nogales were struggling to fill 2,000 openings, company recruiters and state employment officials greeted the buses.
Migrants were offered a month of free room and board if they would take jobs on the Mexican side, said Jesus Montoya, executive director of the Sonora Maquiladora Association.
Only about 300 migrants accepted. Most of the others planned to cross the border again, Montoya said.
"We talked with them, we offered them work, we offered them dormitories, and the response was absolutely minimal," said Mario Echeverrķa, human resources manager for Sonitronies, a staffing company in Nogales, Sonora.
But part of the problem is that Mexican maquiladoras increasingly need skilled workers, which are harder to find, company officials say.
During the 2000-01 economic slump, many U.S. companies moved manual factory work, such as clothing manufacturing, from Mexico to China to cut costs.
Mexican factories became more automated, creating a demand for machinery operators, computer technicians and engineers.
"The people who are repatriated don't fall within the profile we are looking for," said Arnulfo Castro, personnel manager for Columbus Industries, a maker of air filters in Juarez.
Because factories are having to do more training, many are offering bonuses to new hires who stay for three months, and another bonus if they stay for a year, Castro said.
At the same time, they are turning away people who don't have high school diplomas or who cannot pass basic math and reading tests.
"Mexico's problem is not creating jobs, it's having trained people to occupy those jobs," President Fox told The Republic during an interview in June. "Education, teaching and training will become vital to fill those jobs."
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