Multinational Capital and Free Trade Zones

A new hegemonic regime brought about by the internationalization of capital has created an economic situation in which free trade zones are becoming the locus of exploitation and the oppression of workers (Cravey, 1998). The emerging regime is characterized by the dominance of international capital over domestic capital and the state. The new export-led factory regime created by free trade zoning is a regime in which manufacturing and production jobs have exited the First World and then relocated in either the Second or Third Worlds where labor is cheap and human capital plentiful (Kopinak, 1996).

Free trade zones, created by treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have been promoted by their supporters as capable of spurring economic development in poor countries, leading to greater employment opportunities for workers, and ultimately resulting in improvement in working conditions (Kopinak, 1996). Many of the new factories, universally known as "maguiladoras," have become a study in worker exploitation, oppression, and even brutalization (Cravey, 1998).

Some believe that a new industrial paradigm will gradually emerge and that maquiladoras will become flexible, with multi-skilled workforces, and less hierarchical management styles. Others, including Kopinak (1996) and Cravey (1998), maintain that if such a shift is to emerge, there are no signs that this is occurring. Wherever they are locate

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also claims that the maquiladora phenomenon in Mexico cannot be separated from neoliberalism, or the practice of structural adjustments, privatizations, and free trade that the First World has been imposing on the Third World for more than 15 years. The neoliberal project provides various traditional imperialist ways for the world's elites to enrich themselves at the direct expense of underdeveloped countries and their people. Wilson (1997, p. 29) states that "Mexico has been a sort of laboratory for the neoliberal experiment ever since the country's 1982 debt crisis." The maquiladora expansion that has taken place in the wake of NAFTA in Mexico has not offset the loss of jobs in the agricultural sector that resulted from the various debt crises the country experienced in the 1980s and 1990s. There are more than 750,000 Mexican maquiladora employees working in jobs for significantly lower wages than are paid to their counterparts in the United States. Jim Sessions (1999) reported on an international delegation that examined the working and living conditions of maquiladora workers in Tehuacan, Mexico. This city has become a major production center of blue jeans that are sent to the United States for final processing. In
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Approximate Word count = 2329
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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