In April 2019 the new government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador began undoing 36 years of neoliberal economic reforms in Mexico. The Chamber of Deputies and then the Senate passed a labour law reform bill proposed by López Obrador’s party, the National Regeneration Movement (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, MORENA). The reform follows Mexico’s ratification of the ILO Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98) in 2018, after sustained pressure from national union centres and the international trade union movement over many years. (It will enter into force on 23 November 2019). The labour reform deals primarily with the rights of unions and their members. For more than half a century, a set of established, conservative ‘charro’ unions have been tied to the government and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI), which ruled Mexico for most of that time. In return for political support, charro leaders held office sometimes for life, with no accountability to their members. Labour boards made up of representatives of conservative unions, employers, and a pro-employer government made it extremely difficult for workers to form independent organisations. In thousands of workplaces, charro unions and employers negotiated secret ‘protection’ contracts guaranteeing labour peace. Whenever workers would try to organise independently to win better wages and conditions, employers would usually claim a ‘protection’ union already represented them, posing an enormous legal obstacle to workers’ attempts to establish their own unions. Achievements and Limits of the New Labour Reform Under the MORENA labour law reform, union leaders must now be elected by direct, secret ballot, making them more accountable to members. Contracts must be public, and members must have the right to vote on them. Unions that don’t comply will lose their legal status. And labour tribunals – as part of the judicial system – will replace the old procompany labour boards. The law explicitly covers domestic workers, but not agricultural workers. The reform has been widely welcomed, explains Hector de la Cueva, director of the Independent Centre for Labour Investigation and Union Research (Centro de Investigación Laboral y Asesoría Sindical, CILAS): ‘the current reform will have a big impact. One effect will be the democratisation of charro unions, and independent unions are preparing to take advantage of the new situation. It will be good for independent and new unions. There will be a new wave of workers’ struggles - in fact it’s already happening’. The near-unanimous votes in both chambers in favour of the reform demonstrated just how badly the old unions had lost power in last July’s presidential election. Carlos Aceves del Olmo, the head of the largest charro union, the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (Confederation of Mexican Workers, CTM) called the law ‘impossible to implement’. The old charro unions are continuing their protests, and have gone to court to stop the implementation of the law entirely. For some however, the new law did not go far enough. For one, the MORENA law did not reverse a 2012 reform allowing companies to outsource jobs (which had previously been banned). The 2012 also law allows no-cause termination during workers’ first six months on a job, part-time and temporary work and hourly pay rather than day-long rates. At the time of its passage, Arturo Alcalde - one of Mexico’s most respected labour lawyers - called the 2012 reform ‘an open invitation to employers, and a road to a paradise of firings’. Subcontracting proliferated. In Mexico City alone, 22 percent of the labour force, or about 800,000 workers, are now subcontracted. Some unions would like to address additional issues. University workers, for instance, can’t organise a national union, so each of their unions is tied to a single institution. Furthermore, the new law gives a period of four years before the labour tribunals will replace the old labour boards. During that period a growing number of workers will undoubtedly demand elections for their leaders, and will petition for legal recognition of new unions. There is no budget yet for the new tribunals and setting them up and training their personnel will be very costly. Labour Secretary Luisa Alcalde has...
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Jan 1, 2023
Kim Scipes 
Open Access