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CIUDAD JUAREZ-EL PASO: A MAGNET FOR ENGINEERSNearly two million people live in the urban sprawl between the dun-colored mountains that enclose El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, midway between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. Juarez, population 1.2 million, boasts more maquiladora jobs than any other border city: 178,000 workers in 235 plants, including a flock of auto parts makers. It's also a showcase of how border industries that started as low-skilled assembly operations are moving up the technological scale. Two years ago, GM's Delphi Automotive Div. opened a sophisticated research and development center, employing a mostly Mexican engineering staff of 750 to design a wide variety of auto components. It runs 24 hours a day, with engineers always on duty to serve executives around the world. For Delphi, which employs 18,000 people in Juarez, putting the $13 million center there made sense: It cut the lead time for new-product development by moving the designers close to where parts are made. It also doesn't hurt the bottom line that Mexican engineers earn only about $20,000, though that's still a fortune to most Mexicans. Delphi is building a $22 million R&D expansion next door and plans to double the number of engineers by 2000. ENVIRONMENTAL WOES. While low-tech assembly work still prevails in Juarez and all along the border, maquiladoras are investing in more quality control and training. One place where that's happening is Cincinnati-based Baldwin Piano & Organ Co.'s 30-year-old plant, which employs 270 workers making keyboards and mechanisms. General Manager Ed Hussaini is also introducing computer-aided design. ''Just about anything north of the border can and will be done south of the border--engineering, design, capital intensive operations,'' Hussaini predicts. Juarez and El Paso, sharing the worst air pollution anywhere on the border, are the prime example of a deepening environmental crisis. Explosive industrial growth and uncontrolled urban expansion have far outstripped the reach of basic municipal services, from sewers to street paving. While NAFTA's provisions for U.S.-Mexican action on such problems have achieved little, businesspeople and environmental activists are pushing local solutions. For example, one proposal that federal authorities are considering would allow money that businesses in El Paso are required to set aside for pollution control to be spent to help clean up Juarez. The reasoning: Paving dusty Juarez streets would do more to curb pollution than installing expensive equipment in the factories of El Paso.
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Updated June 15, 1997 by bwwebmaster
Copyright 1997, Bloomberg L.P.
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