INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 10 Volume 23 Issue 1 2016 The mechanisms that formerly strengthened Mexican unions’ control and legitimacy have been transferred to the employers FOCUS ❐ LATIN AMERICA T he main characteristic of the Mexican unions from the end of the Revolution in the 1930s up to the ‘lost decade’ of the 1980s, was its close and subordinate relation with the Mexican State. The main Mexican confederations have always had close links to the government of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional / Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). That meant many significant things: on the one hand, that the working class interests of the Mexican workers where subordinated to the nationalistic/developmentist project of the Mexican State. It also permitted the PRI regime to maintain itself in power for more than 70 years, based upon the diffuse support of the Mexican population and the active support of the organised masses that voted for the party, voluntarily or forced by their leaders. This modernisation pact, that also comprised the peasants (that had been benefited by the land reform) and diverse other popular groups, permitted the Mexican State to implement a system of control that gave huge margins of discretion to the government, and that has worked against the unions and the workers since the 1980s, when the economic model changed. This system of control rests (as it is still in place in spite of the reform of the labour law of 2012) on the capacity of the government to decide whether a union should or should not be registered and allocated the legal power to represent the workers, the same for any change in leadership and the legality or illegality of the strikes. This faculty is complemented by a double closed shop – entry and exit – which means that a worker has to belong to the union in order to be admitted for the job, and that if they are expelled from the union, they lose their job. On the other hand, there can only be one union per enterprise (and collective negotiation is done at the plant level), and unions can be imposed on any enterprise with 20 or more workers; this did not mean that the union was active, but that it existed formally. This latter principle , made the two closed shop measures all the more powerful to control workers, and especially to prevent dissidence. State corporatism was accepted by both the unions and the workers. In the first place, because it meant an exchange relationship: the leaders got economic and political benefits, while the workers had social and economic benefits (especially those situated in the large stateowned companies). This exchange relationship was a way for both unions and the government to earn legitimacy among workers: the benefits that the union secured (in terms of employment, social protection and wages) provided the support of labour for the government. In the third place, this system was functional for the project of industrialisation, as corporatism implied a form (in terms of Foucault) of disciplining the workers: labour discipline resulted in productivity increases and economic growth, which led to an increase in labour demand, higher wages and social protection. This last capability of corporatism was essential in order to convert a rural population into an urban/industrial one. This system functioned as long as the economy grew and produced benefits for the workers that were unionised, and until other political parties became strong enough to demand more transparent elections and question the role of the ‘official’ Confederación de Trabajadores de México / Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) unions in controlling the vote of the workers. This happened as a result of the crisis that exploded in 1982, when both oil prices fell and interest rates of the huge Mexican debt went up. Mexico suspended payments and had to turn to the IMF, which imposed draconian measures on the country . The financial catastrophe and the recipes of the international financial institution resulted in the abandoning of import substitution and the orientation of the Mexican economy towards the external market. The new export-led growth mode led to an exceptional expansion of the assembly maquiladora industry. It also led to the orientation of other exporting industries to...