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Favouring foreign contracts

Broadcast Date: June 14, 1989

Garment workers at Bovie Manufacturing are finishing up their last contract. Bovie, an industrial clothing factory in Lindsay, Ont., is laying off 65 workers in favour of cheap Mexican labour. It's a temporary fix until the company can find clothiers in Canada willing to pay the higher prices of Canadian contracts. Mexican workers are paid 40 cents an hour; a rate barely comparable to the $9 Bovie pays its Canadian employees to do the same job.

In this CBC clip, manager Paul Bovie explains why he thinks the foreign trend "will eventually turn around."

Favouring foreign contracts

• Bovie Manufacturing was under contract with Texas company Kimberly-Clark to make lab coats and coveralls.
• In 1989, Bovie lost one of their Kimberly-Clark contracts because the company began switching operations to Mexico. The contract was worth $1.5 million.
• Kimberly-Clark took the contract to Mexico's Maquiladora free trade zone where, in 1989, workers were paid 40 cents an hour, and worked without workers' safety regulations.

• Kimberly-Clark said its Mexican labour contract had nothing to do with the company discontinuing the Bovie contract. Bovie couldn't "meet our requirements in terms of volume, quality, costs, the whole works," Kimberly-Clark said.
• The Toronto Star reported in 1989 that a company called Bottom Lines Technologies was set up in Toronto to help companies relocate to the "Maquiladora free trade zone."

• A company advertisement said the zone had a "highly skilled, low-cost labour reservoir." The company guaranteed discreet help moving operations south.
• In the 1960s, American companies set up the Maquiladora zone on the Mexican side of the border. The mostly female workforce, manufacturing everything from clothing to luxury automobiles, was paid only five per cent of what U.S. workers made on average.

• Employees at Bovie attributed the loss of jobs to free trade. Union leaders were hesitant to make the same correlation. In another Toronto Star article, a representative of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers said he could not assume the connection.
• When workers at the Bovie plant threatened to strike in 1989, manager Paul Bovie came back with a letter that read: "The Mexicans are waiting … Your strike vote last night means as soon as you go out, the Mexicans will get your jobs immediately."

• NDP trade critic Dave Barrett waved the letter around in the House of Commons, accusing Liberal Trade Minister John Crosbie of being "out of touch" with workers.
• In 2004, Bovie Manufacturing was still in business in Lindsay, Ont., employing 15 employees. Paul Bovie continued to manage the scaled-back operation.

Favouring foreign contracts

Medium: Television

Program: CBC News

Broadcast Date: June 14, 1989

Guest(s): Paul Bovie

Reporter: Brenda Craig

Duration: 1:57

Last updated:
May 1, 2008