Of Labor Tragedy and Legal Farce

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that transnational activist networks have greater power to compel state and private sector actors to address rights-based grievances as networks grow and activists gain greater visibility in the mass media. However, evidence from case studies of transnational mobilization suggests that the opposite may hold true under given circumstances. This article examines the struggle for an independent union in the Tijuana-based Han Young welding facility, which in 1997 and 1998 became one of the most important tests to date of labor law and institutions across the U.S.-Mexico border. Drawing international press, the Han Young factory conflict eventually drew in national labor unions, a multinational corporation, state governments, the U.S. and Mexican congresses, powerful private-sector lobbies, Mexican district courts, labor secretariats, national and regional media in Mexico and the United States, and eventually then Mexican president Ernest Zedillo and then U.S. president Bill Clinton. Despite the prominence of the case, however, the Han Young struggle ended in almost total defeat for labor. Evidence from the Han Young case suggests that as conflicts become more complex and drawn out, transnational activists' real influence may decrease, as redress of particular demands requires increasingly complex and surgical interventions to resolve problems. When conflicts implicate internecine power struggles among government actors, solving problems requires confrontations not only over social demands, but also over implementation of agreements when they are reached.