Mexico's border industry healing but still feeling pain of crisis

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- The signs of crisis are everywhere. Homeless people sleep in abandoned factories where workers once assembled irons, toasters, shirts and other goods. Border migrant groups air radio announcements in the countryside, telling job seekers to stay away. \nMexico's northern border industry, hit hard by a year-long downturn, is finally starting to recover, but with some of its biggest factories shuttered, no one expects the region to return to the thriving export economy it enjoyed for a decade. \nToy maker Hasbro Inc. has moved its Tijuana plant to China. Canon Inc. moved its Tijuana inkjet printer plant to Vietnam. Philips Electronics shifted one of its Ciudad Juarez computer monitor plants to China. \nIt is a dramatic change from the influx of manufacturing that began in the 1960s when mostly U.S.-owned assembly plants came to the 2,000-mile frontier in the 1960s to take advantage of Mexico's proximity and low labor costs. \nMexico recently complained to the World Trade Organization about China's luring away its factories, but Asia is not the border's only competition. Some companies have opted for Central America and Mexico's impoverished southern states, where labor is cheaper than along the border. \n"It's going to be very difficult for the border to bounce back to the way it was with labor-intensive plants," said Rolando Gonzalez, president of Mexico's Association of Maquiladoras, as the plants are known in Spanish. "Labor is too expensive. The border can't compete paying $2.50 to $4.50 an hour when China pays less than 50 cents an hour.'' \nFor decades before the crisis, busloads of Mexico's unemployed arrived daily and found work amid the boom of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Plants offered gymnasiums, daycare and other perks to compete for laborers. More than 3,500 plants employed 1.2 million people. \nBut the maquiladora industry has since lost 250,000 jobs, most along the border. Some jobs have been created recently, but most are in the interior -- not the border, Gonzalez said.