In August 2022, auto parts workers at VU Manufacturing won a landmark election to gain recognition for a new independent union, the Mexican Workers’ League (La Liga). A year later, after refusing to negotiate a new contract, the company has shut down, leaving four hundred workers jobless — and seventy-one workers without their legally mandated severance pay.

VU is located in the border city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, where politicians brag about maintaining “labor peace” in the foreign-owned factories known as maquiladoras. This “peace” is largely mediated by the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), a powerful company-friendly union notorious for signing contracts behind workers’ backs and preventing them from organizing genuine, democratic unions.

At VU, a Michigan-based interior auto parts manufacturer, workers — supported by the Border Workers’ Committee (Comité Fronterizo de Obrer@s) — took on the company, the CTM, and the local political establishment last year to form the city’s first independent union. But in the months after that victory, the company refused to negotiate a new contract, and organizers at VU faced heavy retaliation, including the firing of two leading activists in the plant.