This peice was featured in Muntjac Magazine Issue 1
To the rhythm of the spontaneous glissando of the clarinet in the Gershwinian rhapsody, buildings appear on the horizon of what one soon
imagines can be no other thing but Manhattan. An anonymous worker enters the scene alongside the characteristic muted trumpet, and the workday begins. His first action is, naturally, to check his watch: permanence and internalisation of time, reminding him of its scarcity and disturbing the everyday routine from the first minute of the day, slicing time itself and transforming it into something that, like any other commodity, is consumed.
A newspaper flying through the streets reads “jobs scarce,” while a white-collar worker in a diner can’t pay his bill. A zoo of people moves through the monster-city to a rhythm set by clocks and metallic instruments. A century after its debut, the Rhapsody in Blue has evolved along with its audience. From its first listeners in the now-defunct Aeolian Hall to the first frames of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, and into various generations through Disney, in a short film that, while celebrating the history of one of the most iconic cities for bourgeois societies, highlights the working class as the economic and driving force of change, contrasting their role in the production of wealth, both material and cultural, with that of the bourgeoisie.
This constant bombardment of images and slogans is no coincidence. The media through which the bourgeoisie disseminates an ideology that generates a sense of defeat and powerlessness in the face of economic forces have accompanied state apparatuses since the origins of bourgeois societies, disabling worker agency by shaping individual perception into one that feels powerless in the face of the labour market’s blows, halting the formation of groups that could confront the mechanisms by which the gap between social classes widens.
In Latin America, processes of late industrialization at the beginning of the 20th century were surrounded by the creation of an institutional framework centred on labour exploitation. In several Latin American countries, large extraction companies were established in regions favourable to mining activities. Management began to instil an industrial capitalist ethic of time and work, and one of their main strategies was to promote the traditional family structure. Under an extractivist and patriarchal logic, neighbourhoods, schools, roads, and recreation spaces were created so that new generations could serve the extractivist capitalism that mostly benefited the U.S. It was in these working-class
communities that struggles to balance working conditions within production centres arose, and a marked tendency to defend the right to unionise spread throughout the 20th century, same which has declined with the neoliberal turn and is now in crisis in many countries. History gives us an example from 1974: the Cinsa-Cifunsa strike in Saltillo, capital of Coahuila, on the Mexico-U.S. border. The company employed 10,000 workers, representing 10% of Saltillo’s population at the time and, as often happens in Mexico, had a protectionist union aligned with the government under the Confederation of Mexican Workers (Confederación de Trabajadores de México, CTM), which helped simulate any contractual regulation and protect its own interests. Led by 23-year-old Salvador Alcaráz, factory workers rejected the collective labour agreement with the CTM and called for a strike, demanding a 35% wage increase. Initially, they achieved victory, that in the medium term, due to pressures from the government, in collusion with business owners, the church, and the media, got undermined. After the movement was dismantled, Saltillo became a city where it is common practice for foreign automotive companies to invest and abuse the economic and political power granted by the Mexican government and phoney unions.
From a classical Marxism perspective, unions are seen as having political potential capable of undoing the progress made by employers and providing a platform that, in seeking the association of the working class, offers means to fight for the suppression of competition in the market, driven by commodified labour sold to corporations. After all, wage labour rests on the competition workers have among themselves within the market, and the pattern of industrial progress paradoxically creates conditions for workers to unite in groups that advocate for shared goals. The optimism with which unionism has been viewed is, however, nuanced within the same Marxist tradition: the nature of wage labour generates struggles that seek to improve the sale of their commodity (their labour power) without having revolutionary power to combat capital. The spontaneity that union movements may or may not claim is subordinated to bourgeois ideology and is therefore criticised for deepening workers’ ideological enslavement by the bourgeoisie.
It is important to nuance the different theoretical readings of the importance of union movements as engines of radical change with the field experience in multiple locations. There is no simpler way to explain the formation and importance of unions than by understanding the need workers have to organise and defend their rights, to push for their own interests, which are opposed to those of factory managers. No bureaucracy, reformism, or state coercion has removed the right to unionise. The fact that unions nest in production points gives them a fundamental tool in their battles against capitalism. While not all demands can be won within the jurisdiction erected by bourgeois society, even the most bureaucratic union can create cracks that shake employers, generating circumstances that clash with the imperatives of a capitalist state. In unionism lies a communal union in spirit, unable to be fully integrated into the society of which it is a part.
Setting aside any theoretical debate about the effectiveness of unionism as a revolutionary force, the reality is that class domination in modern societies can be (and is) challenged by collective experiences in the struggle to defend our rights. In this context, the axis of action in the workplace is revealed as a vehicle through which collective power can not only change the material conditions of those who offer their labour power but also revive the collective imagination around better possible worlds, introduce new myths that allow us to move toward them from multiple fronts, and defeat current narratives of progress that plunge people into a defeatist nihilism, obscuring the structural causes of social, economic, and environmental collapse.
In Colombia, for example, working women organised to expose the false “labour peace” and perpetuation of gender roles. In February 1920, four hundred women and one hundred men from Colombia’s largest textile factory, the Medellín Textile Company (Compañía de Tejidos de Medellín), went on strike. After twenty-four days of striking, the demonstrators won recognition of their demands: a 40% wage increase, the reduction of the workday to nine hours and fifty minutes, the regulation of the fine system, and better hygiene conditions. They also succeeded in firing supervisors accused of rape and administrators hostile to the workers. In Mexico, during the 70s, a group of Maoist workers within the Volkswagen (VW) factory in Puebla managed to break away from a corrupt industrial union tied to the CTM. They formed an independent, democratic union, with regular elections and collective bargaining that improved their working conditions.
In September 2024, this very same union achieved a 10.59% wage increase. In the same month, VW announced the closure of its factories in German territory due to internal costs, putting more than 300,000 workers’ jobs at risk and shifting labour costs to cheaper markets, showing the neocolonial nature of modern industry.
Among unionist movements, there are various currents that today seek to rebuild the class consciousness that neoliberalism has eroded. For different collectives, the urgency of reclaiming the historical causes of the workers’ struggle has become clear: reduction of working hours, dignified working conditions, collectivization of labour, redistribution of profits, etc. In the search for new horizons of struggle, it is necessary to rescue the historical vehicles of resistance while undermining the mechanisms that have allowed the bourgeois state to reinforce a production system that not only exploits workers but also spreads a subjectivity that seeks to render us inoperative in the face of systemic injustices.
Not all struggles against labour precarization on the periphery arise from coordinated union movements: we know that the state and employers have co-opted many unions, that the union figure, in its current form, is a conduit for workers’ demands but also a brake on their resistance. We also know that thousands of workers fight from their daily routine, individually or collectively, and that on the margins of unionism, they explore, weave, and form various strategies to build movements that allow them to reclaim their workplaces. Increasingly, cross-border solidarity networks are emerging as vital forms of resistance and support for clandestine struggles and direct action. We call on every worker to not let go, to not lose the dream of creating independent unions that break free from corporate powers.
The spirit of communal union knows no borders, and through solidarity we will be able to resist the storms to come, and find platforms to reimagine ourselves.
Micelio are a small collective collaborating with independent industrial unions in northern Mexico.
You can follow them on twitter @MicelioRojo & on Instagram @micelio_rojo