What do unions do?: measuring their impact in the Mexican cotton textile industry, 1900-1930

Abstract

When looking at the consequences of the Mexican Revolution from the perspective of Orizaba textile milis, it is clear that its major impact was a substantial transformation in the relative power of workers and employers in determining working conditions, to the benefit of the former. From a laissez faire regime, where employers dealt with an unorganized labor force and wages were determined solely by the forces of supply and demand, existent by 1900, we arrive in 1925 to a totally diffcrenl situation. Workers were now organized in powerful unions with an important role in the way work was carried on in the shop-floor. Labor was now hired through collective contract negotiated between unions and employers, and it was now unions, rather than employers, who made the major hiring and firing decisions among blue-collar workers. The government, previously totally supportive of employers, became now, at the least, divided between the interests of employers and workers. While in many crucial turning points it gave decisive support to labor at the expense of company owners. In this paper I will analyze what was the impact of such institutional changes in terms of real wages and productivity levels of textile workers at the Santa Rosa mill in Orizaba. I will also look at these issues at a national perspective in order to see how Santa Rosa's experience compares to that of the Mexican textile mills in general.