In a report released today, Human Rights Watch documents the Mexican government's failure to enforce its own labor laws in the export processing (maquiladora) sector. In violation of Mexican labor law, maquiladora operators oblige women to undergo pregnancy testing as a condition of work. Women thought to be pregnant are not hired.
Among the corporations engaging in this practice, which violates both Mexican and international law, are such international corporations as Landis & Staefa, Samsung Group, Matsushita Electric Corp., Sunbeam-Oster, Sanyo, Thomson Corporate Worldwide, Siemens AG, and Pacific Dunlop. However, the vast majority of companies engaging in this practice are U.S.-owned, including Lear, Johnson Controls, and Tyco International.
The Human Rights Watch report, "A Job or Your Rights: Continued Sex Discrimination in Mexico's Maquiladora Sector," documents how companies demand that women produce urine specimens for pregnancy exams and how maquiladora doctors and nurses examine women's abdomens or require them to reveal private information about menses schedule, birth control use, and sexual activity as a means to determine pregnancy.
"This is flagrant sex discrimination that these corporations would never dare to defend or practice in their own countries," said Regan Ralph, executive director of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. "When corporations say that this discrimination is permissible under Mexican labor law, they are in fact hiding behind Mexico's own negligence."
The Mexican government claims that pregnancy testing does not violate its law and fails to recognize the extent of on-the-job pregnancy discrimination. The Mexican government has fallen back on weak legalisms to defend the practice of pregnancy testing. The U.S. government is holding consultations on this issue under the labor rights side agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta). In these consultations, Mexico has argued that the existing prohibitions against sex discrimination do not cover pregnancy testing--an assertion that many Mexican lawyers strenuously reject. The Mexican government has also argued that the provisions against sex discrimination apply only to job holders, not to job applicants.
"The Mexican government's defense is weak and phony," said Ralph. "It is reinterpreting Mexican law to suit its case."
The Mexican government has also argued that women who suffer discrimination on the job need only come forward and report the incidents in order to attain redress. The Human Rights Watch report shows that the adjudicative and investigative structures charged with receiving these cases are biased, underresourced, and inconsistent about how the law should be enforced on this matter.
"The Mexican government has abandoned women workers to the discriminatory employment practices of maquiladora operators," explained Ralph. "Women are left having to choose between a job and their rights, and the Mexican government is on the wrong side of that choice."
The report also shows how pregnancy discrimination follows women into their jobs. For example, some maquiladoras require women to take pregnancy exams even once they are on the job as a condition of continued work. Some maquiladoras, such as Germany-based Siemens and U.S.-based Lear Corp. and National Processing Company go so far as to require women workers to report to factory infirmaries to show their used sanitary napkins as incontrovertible proof that they are not pregnant.
The latest report describes the cases of fifty-three women who faced either hiring-process pregnancy discrimination or on-the-job pregnancy discrimination in fifty factories in Tijuana, in the state of Baja California (south of San Diego, California); Reynosa and Río Bravo, in the state of Tamaulipas (opposite McAllen, Texas); and Ciudad Juárez (across the border from El Paso, Texas). Additionally, the report contains extensive recommendations to the Mexican and U.S. governments, corporations, and subcontractors aimed at ending pregnancy discrimination in the maquiladoras.
Human Rights Watch calls on Mexico to take immediate action to end pregnancy discrimination in the hiring process and on the job; make remedial measures available for women who face hiring-process pregnancy discrimination; and ensure that existing mechanisms fully investigate, condemn, and punish on-the-job pregnancy discrimination. Human Rights Watch further calls on corporations in the maquiladora sector to end the practice of requiring women to provide information on pregnancy status as a condition to gain or maintain work, including requiring women workers to show used sanitary napkins to keep their jobs and establish mechanisms, independent of the factories, to monitor these changes.
