For various types of labor-intensive manufacturers located in “oil states” like Texas and Oklahoma, competing with oil service companies for labor, has always been a challenge. The oil field service companies, during periods of intense activity, will offer much higher wages than the factories can pay. The manufactured housing companies, including Solitaire, too often faced this dilemma. The responses were to raise wages to compete with the oil field service companies or to slow production to match reduced manpower. The first would reduce profitability. The second would reduce sales. Both were bad choices. After years of studying, deliberation, and investigation, Solitaire decided to follow the lead of hundreds of other American manufacturers and construct a “twin-plant” or “maquiladora” operation at the U.S./Mexican border. The purpose was to acquire a reliable source of assembling labor. To accomplish this objective Solitaire constructed a HUD code factory in Presidio Texas. The factory was and is complete in every aspect of an approved HUD code operation except for assembling labor. Concurrent with the establishment of the HUD approved Elliott Manufactured Homes Inc. factory, some of the owners of Solitaire constructed a Mexican company in Ojinaga Mexico to be strictly a labor contractor for Elliott Manufactured Homes Inc. The factory (now Cavco/Presidio) entered into a “maquila contract” with the Mexican company (Solitaire de Mexico) to provide assembling labor at a facility in Mexico. As with other traditional maquiladoras, the factory (now Cavco/Presidio) would ship appropriate materials to its labor contractor, Solitaire de Mexico, to assemble into a largely assembled manufactured home. The design, the engineering, much of the equipment, the training, and the supervision would be provided by the HUD code factory in Presidio. The last assembling station for the product is back at Presidio for adjustments, corrections, testing, and self-certifying HUD labeling. Then the factory (now Cavco/Presidio) ships homes to the market.
My very first introduction to the culture of the Mexican worker was in the summer of 1949 in the cotton fields of Levelland, Texas. My family and I had moved from Houston to Levelland at the end of May. My father quickly discovered that, at age 12, I should be able to work in the cotton fields that surrounded oil wells that dotted the South Plains. So, I was quickly employed by a local farmer to hoe weeds from his cotton field at 60 cents per hour for 10-hour days, working alongside extraordinary Mexican migrants whose ability to work fast and hard stunned me. I learned that our town of about 10,000 population would swell to more than double that when contracted Mexican laborers would arrive seasonably to work in the cotton fields. (After a period, thousands of Mexican migrants working in the fields during the summer would return to Mexico. They would reappear in the late fall to pick cotton, better known as pulling bolls, by hand, at $2 per hundred pounds. Again, I had the “opportunity” to work alongside those remarkable laborers. After school and on Saturdays I was in the fields with my cotton sack.)
Some history: World War II broke out on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed our Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The U.S. was immediately into the war. It may be hard to imagine for many of us how practically every American family was seriously impacted. The majority of all the able-bodied men in the U.S. either volunteered for the military or were drafted into service. Factories that had been manufacturing consumer goods like automobiles, were transformed to build tanks and planes. Since most of the factory workers had been men, and they are now in the military, women had to take their places in the factories. Those women came from across the country. Many of them came from farms where they had worked both in the homes and in the fields. So, women had filled factory jobs. What was to happen to the farms that had lost the labor of both men and women?
President Roosevelt, early in 1942, recognizing the labor shortage on American farms, created what came to be known the “Bracero Program”. The Bracero Program provided that many thousands of Mexican migrant workers could come to the U.S. to work in the fields and orchards, returning to Mexico as the seasons dictated. Over time, millions of Mexican workers were involved. American agriculture could not have survived without them. The program was extremely popular both with farmers and the Mexican laborers. Multiple thousands of Mexican families (yes, total families would come to work in American fields) would begin to migrate from the interior of Mexico to the border cities at which they could connect with contractors who could provide field work in the U.S.
Finally, the war ended in 1945. Soldiers returned home to take their places back in the factories. Women mostly returned home to raise children. (Perhaps you have heard of the “Baby Boom”.) But the popular Bracero Program continued until the early 60’s when Hispanic politicians, notably Cesar Chavez in California, began to implore the Government to disband the program. The politicians professed that the program made it difficult for American Hispanics to earn decent wages working on the farms. In 1964 President Johnson succumbed to the political pressure and killed the Bracero Program.
Imagine the distress among Mexican laborers who had gathered along the border with the U.S. (principally in the larger cities like Juarez and Tijuana) to participate in the Bracero Program. Johnson had killed it. Large numbers of these laborers who had migrated up to the border would now return to their original homes back into the Mexican interior. But even larger numbers remained in border cities.
Community leaders, principally in Juarez and Tijuana, even before President Jonson killed the Bracero Program, anticipated that the program would soon end. Some of them approached the Mexican government to design a process that would allow for the temporary duty-free importation of materials. The idea was that Mexican labor could assemble the duty-free materials (from U.S. companies) into substantially assembled products to be shipped back to the same U.S. companies for completing, testing, and labeling. The Mexican government designed a program to accomplish such a process.
Armed with this authorized process, these community leaders began to approach U.S. companies and suggested to them that there was a new and better way to use available hard working Mexican labor without the workers needing to immigrate to the U.S. The first U.S. companies approached were apparel manufacturers in El Paso Texas. The manufacturer I remember was Farah. (Farah is still a well-known name in El Paso.) As other manufacturers learned of these early “maquilas” some of them began to emulate the process for themselves. (I can remember that a transistor radio company began to ship parts to Juarez to be assembled. The assembled radios were then shipped back to the U.S. company for completion, testing, labeling, and shipping to retailers throughout the U.S.)
This “twin-plant” or “maquiladora” concept spread quickly to all types of U.S. manufacturers. As of this writing there are more than 300 U.S. company assembling operations in Juarez alone. In all of Mexico there are more than 1,000 such operations. Beyond apparel and transistor radios one can see company names like Caterpillar, Cessna and Ford. Most automobile and truck companies have a presence there.
“Maquila” is short for “Maquiladora”. The origin of those terms originated from Mexican farmers taking their grain to a mill to be ground into flour. The owner of the mill would retain a portion of the flour as his pay for the milling process. “Maquila” describes that portion. “Maquiladora” describes the mill owner who retains that portion. How those terms came to be applied to the “twin-plant” processes being described is difficult for most of us to understand. Today, even most Mexican people only understand “maquila” to describe an assembling operation in Mexico for a U.S. manufacturer.
Solitaire, original owners, and CAVCO, current owners, of the HUD code factory in Presidio and the assembling labor contractor in Mexico have been impressed with the quality of the assembling labor. It has been acknowledged that the Mexican workforce at Solitaire de Mexico is equal to, or likely superior to, counterpart workforces in U.S. based manufactured housing factories. Getting to know and understand the Mexican workers at Solitaire de Mexico has revealed some of their interesting characteristics.
Some of the first conquerors and settlers in the western hemisphere were the conquistadors and priests who subjugated the native American populations in Mexico and beyond. It is speculated that the early absolute domination of the indigenous people included every facet of their lives----- physically, mentally, spiritually, and culturally. After many generations one can see, among the extraordinary Mexican workers what appears to be reflections of the effects of the early domination by conquistadores and priests. The Mexican worker, more than his counterpart in the US is extremely family oriented. He instinctively exhibits a drive for family success beyond success for himself. In a work environment one can see the Mexican worker, even a very capable one, is disinclined to accept a leadership role. He is reluctant to set himself apart from his coworkers. This mimics his pattern of behavior in his family.
To consider a parallel relative to the U.S worker consider that the origin of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were all created by men who promoted ideas of freedom, of opportunities, of adventure, and of making money. Many generations later the U.S worker cares about his family but will load them up and drive across the country for a better paying job. About parents and other relatives, some may rationalize that visiting them occasionally on holidays may be the only connection they really need.
Understanding the foregoing, successfully training or supervising workers in the U.S. or in Mexico requires a deep understanding of the cultural differences between the two. The Mexican worker, consistent with his culture, looks for and respects transparent and caring leaders. It is generally difficult to appoint leaders, even though the candidates are exceptional workers. Most of the time, within small groups, leaders will emerge. Since those individuals have a “following”, it can make sense to “appoint” them and pay them for their leadership. In Cavco’s Solitaire de Mexico assembling operation in Ojinaga, Mexico, General Manager of Cavco/Presidio, Zuleika Ramos, also personally manages production. Her strengths center on her directness, toughness, honesty, and transparency with the workers. All those “machismo” guys (and ladies) under her direction totally respect her. Similarly, U.S. HR experts in the U.S. have always stressed the importance of understanding and respecting the variable cultures of workers.
What should not be lost is our understanding of workers whose grandfathers may have been braceros and who themselves may now be “trabajadores de maquilas.” The pride in the work of the braceros is now obvious in the work of the “trabajadores de maquilas.” Such is especially true at Cavco’s Solitaire de Mexico in Ojinaga, Mexico.
H. Cowan