BACKGROUND:
The first TIE Telecommunications conference was held in Oaxtepec, Mexico in 1994 where sixty people from Canada, the United States, Mexico and El Salvador shared their concerns as workers in the same industry and in many cases from the same companies.
The idea of the second TIE telecommunication workers' conference was first of all, to follow up with the resolutions and goals which came out of the first conference. This basic framework included mainly to keep the international organization alive, evaluate the achievements from the first experience, follow up on some of the original goals, and reevaluate the issues from a more timely perspective.
The planning of the second event took into consideration that two years had already passed and that it was important to reconvene soon even if not a large number of people would participate. There was also the notion that a smaller group would allow for a better quality of participation.
PLANNING:
Direct contact via phone and email with telecom activists from the three countries provided a number of issues to be incorporated in the agenda and a subsequent number of contacts and resources to design the program.
In Mexico, CILAS as an organization, was instrumental in organizing the Mexican participation. In the US. and Canada a group of individuals were identified as the coordinating committee which guided the process until its completion. All these people were key in each of the three countries helping with the promotion and recruitment as well as with the design of the project.
RECRUITMENT:
Promotion and recruitment was done through Labor Notes and other alternative media; mail outs and subsequent phoning to participants of the first conference; Labor NotesCWA subscribers; ABC, a group of activists within CWA and the Canadian Alliance of Telecommunications Unions. Promotion and recruitment also took place at the 1996 CWA constitutional convention in Detroit. Towards the end of the recruiting phase, almost 60 people were listed as participants, including members of the coordinating committee, and staff. However, in the end only 43 people attended.
As the demographics show, the international union community was well represented; there was a good gender balance and although there was a good number of Latina/os, there was only one African American; but perhaps the most significant figure is the large number of newcomers to the conference which made the majority of participants. Union representation came generally from Local elected officers, mostly stewards, board members and presidents, as well as some staffers. As far as industry or trade, the majority of the participants were technicians, others included service, sales representatives and telephone operators.
DEMOGRAPHICS:
TOTAL 43 18 women 25 men
30 first timers, 9 second timers; 12 facilitators, 27 participants, 2 staff, 2 translators.
15 MEXICO (10 first timers); 2 translators, 2 facilitators,
10 participants.
19 UNITED STATES (13 first timers); 2 coord. staff, 17 participants
8 CANADA (6 first timers); 3 facilitators, 5 participants.
1 FRANCE (first time); one participant
NORTH MEETS SOUTH:
The place chosen for the second conference was Tijuana, Mexico. One reason was the identification of local resources to help facilitate the coordination of the event and also the idea of holding an event in the US/Mexico border to witness first hand the effects of the "integration of the economies" of North America.
The program had five main components; an update report from each country and four issues to be discussed restructuring of the industry, new technology/reengineering, and safety and health for the purpose of modeling organizing campaigns. The extracurricular component included a social gathering with members of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras and a tour of the Tijuana maquila sector.
The team of facilitators reflected the trinational community and a variety of unions. In line with TIE tradition, the facilitators came from the community of activists with the exception of German Sanchez Daza, a researcher in the field of economics from the Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, Mexico and Dr. Luis Felipe Sanchez Lopez, a CILAS educator in issues of Health and Safety.
The last part of the conference was a combination of the drafting of resolutions and the Conference Closure, allowing an opportunity for participants and facilitators to combine acquired information with ideas for organizing projects.
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