- Maquila Solidarity Network
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The Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) is a Canadian labour and women's rights organization with offices in Toronto and Mexico City. MSN supports the efforts of workers in global supply chains to win improved wages and decent working conditions, and a better quality of life for themselves and their families.
The organization gets its name from the maquiladoras° in developing countries where garments are manufactured.
Since 1994, MSN has been working in solidarity with grassroots women's and labour rights organizations in Mexico and Central America, to strengthen their capacity of to challenge the negative impacts of globalization on workers in the global garment industry.
MSN promotes fair labour practices and respect for labour and women's rights through several interconnected strategies, including:- Strengthening Southern Voices: MSN works with Southern partners to strengthen their capacity to document worker rights abuses and effectively engage with and pressure companies and government to respect worker rights.
- Engagement: MSN works with individual companies such as Nike, Gap and Levis and multi-stakeholder groups such as the Fair Labour Association, at the international level to identify and promote industry-wide solutions to systemic problems and to promote both voluntary and regulatory approaches to reverse the "race to the bottom."
- Advocacy: MSN facilitates dialogue between southern groups and international brands in order to use push the brands to find solutions to problems in their supplier factories.
- Campaigning: MSN promotes solidarity with workers in global supply chains struggling to win improved wages and working conditions.
Notes
°The word “maquiladora,” or maquila for short, comes from the Spanish word for milling. Maquiladoras are assembly-for-export factories, first established along the Mexico/US border in the mid-1960s. Today maquilas are found throughout Mexico and Central America. They are generally located in free trade zones or industrial parks, and are often associated with low wages, poor working conditions and labour rights violations.
References
Maquila Solidarity Website: http://en.maquilasolidarity.org/About_MSN
External links
Categories:- Political advocacy groups in Canada
- Strengthening Southern Voices: MSN works with Southern partners to strengthen their capacity to document worker rights abuses and effectively engage with and pressure companies and government to respect worker rights.
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