When factory moves to Mexico, workers’ lives turned upside down
The final installment of “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?” will be shown at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 13, in the Levin Hall Auditorium, 11th and Market streets, at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. The award-winning series of seven documentaries explores how social conditions affect health. The documentary is free and open to the public.
In the winter of 2006, Electrolux Corporation closed the largest refrigerator factory in the United States and moved it to Juarez, Mexico, for cheaper labor. In this installment, titled “Not Just a Paycheck,” viewers will see that the move turned the lives of nearly 3,000 workers in Greenville, Mich., upside down with enormous health implications. As personal finances spiraled downward, health followed. In the year after the plant was closed, the local hospital’s caseload tripled because of depression, alcoholism and domestic abuse.
Moderator is Alexandra “Lexi” Nolen, director of health policy and planning in the Center to Eliminate Health Disparities at UTMB.