Maquiladoras in low wage society

Gomez Solorzano, Marco

Submitter's E-mail Address:

marcoagomez.gomez@gmail.com

Preferred Presentation Format:

Oral

Keywords:

Export-processing, Maquiladoras, intensive-labor and low-wage

Maquiladora production is a result of the tendency of capitalist enterprises to shift their activities from more industrialized to less industrialized areas. resulting from the transnational corporations´ quest for ever lower production costs, particularly labor costs. The maquiladora is basically a form of manufacturing assembly that takes place mainly in low-cost flexible labor zones of peripheral economies as a link –whether directly or indirectly– of transnational production chains. Corporations, with large capital reserves but high labor and environmental costs, tend to outsource the less technologically developed operations to low-standard zones in which workers perform relatively less skilled tasks, while countries with weak savings and large labor reserves tend to demand foreign capital investments (FDI) and to expel large amounts of workers to high-standard zones. The general tendency in peripheric economies is the permanent reproduction of the main aspects of maquiladora assembly-for-export model: low wages, relatively non-skilled labor, basic assembly operations, no general technological upgrading, and no backward linking. The net outcome is that globally wages and working conditions tend to fluctuate around ever lower levels, and production takes place under relatively lower technological compositions, that is, if considered globally, a race to the bottom.

699.2 Maquiladoras in low wage society