Employee Perceptions Of The Environmental Risk: Maquila Industries On The Mexico-U.S. Border

Abstract

The Mexican maquila (assembly-for-export) industry has been involved in four main environmental risk areas of concern that affect residents of the border; these risks are: water-pollution, waste-management, air-pollution and water-availability. Our study shows a descriptive evaluation for the employees and/or supervisors perceptions of the environmental risk represented by their maquila industries located in the Mexican-U.S. border city of Nuevo-Laredo; where, its expected labor-force for year 2008 (an estimate of 24,480 employees) has been experiencing some reductions mainly due to the high cost of energy supplies and because some maquilas have emigrated to China. Furthermore, an estimate of 61.0% of these maquila’s employees perceive an appropriate level of application of environmental laws. Although the majority of the maquila industry (80.5%) at this border city possesses production-quality certifications, merely an estimate of 17.1% of such industrial-units (maquilas) have an international environmental-quality certification (ISO14000). The majority of the interviewed labor personnel agreed that an ISO14000 system in combination with any environmental risk reduction plan is the most effective strategy to prevent and minimize pollution.