La Mujer Obrera (The Woman Worker)
Maria Carmen Dominguez, National Organizing Coordinator
Cindy Arnold, Development Coordinator
Carmen Ibarra, Local Organizing Coordinator
Maria Antonia Flores, Education Coordinator
Maribel Mojica, Local Economic Coordinator
PO Box 3975 (2120 Texas)
El Paso, Texas 79923
(915) 533-9710

Until just three years ago, a boss who failed to pay his workers the wages they had earned committed a mere misdemeanor in Texas, and it was often hard to get a conviction even at that.

But that was before the women of La Mujer Obrera chained themselves to their sewing machines and later mounted a hunger strike. Those widely publicized actions during the summer of 1990 got some of them sent to jail, but it also broke loose a legislative logjam that lawsuits and formal complaints had not been able to dislodge, and it quickly got this form of theft redefined as the felony that it should have been all along.

A high point, to be sure, but it's typical of the work done by La Mujer Obrera, a model of the "worker center" style of community organizing in which organizing efforts center on the workplace. The organization (at first called Centro de Obrero Fronterizo, Center for Border Workers) began in 1981, when organizer Cecilia Rodriguez and others saw in the aftermath of a textile workers' strike against the Farah clothing company that women garment workers, in particular, were exploited, without representation, and were for all practical purposes invisible. "There was no place for women workers to meet and talk as women," Dominguez said. "There was no representation of women's values and needs. There was a lack of respect for women as workers."

Over time, conditions got worse rather than better, as most of the major textile manufacturers closed and left the area, turning over the industry to anonymous sweatshops that operated almost invisibly, often opening and then going out of business too rapidly to attract the attention of regulatory agencies, even given the existing weak regulation and lax enforcement.

Starting small and working intensely, La Mujer Obrera -- still numbering only an estimated 200 families -- spreads out among the city's Spanish-speaking women workers with fliers, educational materials and one-on-one talk, emphasizing the organization's three fundamental goals: leadership, development and education; workers running their own organization; and emphasis on empowering a community to insist on all its basic needs, which include jobs, housing, health care, education, food and peace.

In addition to basic community organizing in the workplace, La Mujer Obrera reaches for those goals through such projects as La Escuela Popular (The People's School), which provides training in English, citizenship, women's and workers' issues; two newspapers, "Voz de Mujer" ("Woman's Voice"), which is staff-written and focuses on women's issues, and "Unidad y Fuerza," a Spanish-language newspaper produced by the workers themselves.

In its national organizing component, the organization produces an English-language newspaper containing English translations of articles about Mexican politics from the Mexican news media. And in a major project for which they're still raising funds toward a goal of $850,000, they're planning a community-based economic development program of jobs development and training, to be housed in two renovated buildings.

Dominguez has no illusions of being able to solve all the problems of El Paso's women workers in the short term, but she has strong and attainable dreams for the next five years. "I want to have our buildings," she said. "More projects dedicated to addressing the needs of our community. Many more workers aware of their rights and involved in organizing. And continue to grow and strengthen our voice in the community."

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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