Mexican factory workers turn to unions

Available for over a year

On the southern side of the US-Mexico border, you can find foreign factories called maquiladoras, many of them built by American companies. These factories employ hundreds of thousands of workers, and those workers earn as little as seven dollars a day assembling things like computers, clothing and car parts for export to the US. But as demand for cheap labour rises -- and the value of the Mexican peso falls -- some workers are feeling emboldened. Image: Brenda Estrada was an employee at a CommScope factory in Ciudad Juárez. She heats her three-room home with a makeshift fireplace made from a recycled trash bin. Credit: Mónica Ortiz Uribe