Global unions fight Mexico's attack on workers

Global trade union federation IndustriALL is calling a week of action from this Monday against the Mexican government's intensifying campaign of repression.

Despite the defeat of the right-wing National Action Party government in presidential elections last year new President Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party has supported a "reform" of labour laws which legalises outsourcing and temporary contracts, makes it easier to fire workers and creates new obstacles to organising the unorganised.

The reform was quickly followed by a hammer blow from the Supreme Court, which ruled that 44,000 members of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union who were sacked overnight in 2009 had no case for re-instatement.

Nor has the new government acted to end the repression of the Mexican Metal and Mineworkers' Union, which has been under constant attack for the past seven years.

Labour authorities continue to prosecute the union's leader Napoleon Gomez Urrutia on trumped-up charges despite seven appellate court rulings in his favour.

The bodies of 63 workers killed in an explosion at a coalmine owned by the Grupo Mexico company in February 2006 19 have yet to be recovered.

Authorities in Mexico routinely collaborate with employers to install corrupt company-dominated unions in workplaces, signing collective agreements that the workers have no say in and often do not even know exist.

These agreements, known as "protection contracts," have been condemned by the International Labour Organisation.

At PKC, a Finnish autoparts supplier that produces for Ford, Volvo and other major car companies, workers organised with the Mineworkers in 2009.

The employer responded by signing a secret contract with a corrupt labour organisation (the CTM) and launched a campaign of threats and intimidation in collusion with state authorities.

Despite this repression the Mineworkers won 2,311 votes last October, losing recognition only narrowly to the CTM, and immediately filed for a new election.

But in December PKC fired over 100 workers including the entire union leadership - who have now launched a global campaign to demand reinstatement and a fair vote.

• Ben Davis is director of international affairs for the United Steelworkers of America and Canada.
• Support the campaign for reinstating the sacked PKC workers at: www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=1724
• As part of the Mexico Days of Action, representatives of the TUC general council are to protest to the Mexican ambassador about the actions of the government. On February 20 there will be a public meeting on Mexico's labour movement at Unite's offices at 126 Theobalds Road, London. The meeting is supported by Unite, Workers Uniting, Campaign For Trade Union Freedom and Latin America Conference 2013.