Resolution in Support for Mexican Workers in the Fight for Labor Rights

US SOCIAL FORUM – Detroit, 25 June 2010

Resolution from U.S. Social Forum People’s Movement Assembly:

Support for Mexican Workers in the Fight for Labor Rights The United States Social Forum joins unions and social movements around the world in solidarity with Mexican workers fighting for fundamental labor rights. Independent Mexican unions have requested our support in resisting the attempts by employers, corrupt unions, and the Mexican government to destroy the independent trade union movement in Mexico and deprive workers of rights established in the Mexican constitution, Federal Labor Law and ILO conventions. We urge workers and unions, community and social organizations, social movements and non-governmental organizations to join us in this solidarity work.

The Broader Political Context

All the world including North America has been plunged into an economic crisis that began with the financial crisis in the United States in 2007 and 2008. The countries of the Caribbean, Canada, Mexico and the United States have all suffered a depression which has led to the failure of banks and corporations, layoffs and rising levels of unemployment and suffering among the people of all those countries. Felipe Calderón, a conservative, pro-business candidate, was elected president of Mexico in 2006 in an election that many Mexicans consider to have been fraudulent. Barack Obama, president of the United States since 2008, has continued to support the Calderón government. The U.S. government through the Plan Mérida provides the Mexican government funds for military equipment for Calderón’s war on drugs, which are now being used against civil society. The deployment of over 40,000 Mexican soldiers and more Federal police has led to 23,000 deaths in the drug wars, and many human rights violations. This atmosphere has a chilling effect on the exercise of civil and labor rights. At the same time, Obama has expanded militarization on the U.S. side of the border.

The Labor Context

Mexico has a long history of state and state-party involvement in the manipulation of labor unions dating back to the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1940. The Mexican government, was ruled by one party (the Institutional Revolutionary Party) for almost 80 years. More recently the party in power, the National Action Party (PAN), employers, and state-controlled unions have colluded to deny workers their fundamental rights. Workers who attempted to create independent unions have faced terrible periods of government suppression of workers’ rights. Some examples include the government intrusion into the industrial unions in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the crushing of the railroad workers in 1959, the smashing of the Democratic Tendency in 1975, and the attack on miners and petroleum workers by Carlos Salinas in the 1980s. Calderón and the Attack on the Unions Since the election in 2006 of Felipe Calderón, workers’ rights have deteriorated significantly.

Calderón has worked to carry out the program of his National Action Party and of the Mexican employers’ associations which his party represents. Working with Grupo Mexico, Calderón has carried on a continuous assault on the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union with the intent of destroying the power of that union. Most recently in June 2010, Calderón’s government and its courts ended the strike at Grupo Mexico’s Cananea copper mine by dissolving the union of 3,000 members, which has now been replaced by a company union. In October of 2009, Calderón’s government occupied electrical facilities of the Light and Power Company of Mexico City and central Mexico, liquidating the company, firing over 40,000 workers, and thereby eliminating the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME).

The Calderón government’s attack on the Cananea miners and the Mexican Electrical Workers constitute flagrant violations of workers’ rights through the misuse of the law and the courts, the police and the army. The Violation of Workers’ Rights Mexico not only violates the guarantees in the Mexican Constitution’s Article 123 and the Federal Labor Law, but also international labor standards, above all International Labor Organization Convention 87. As has been well documented by a variety of independent organizations, workers are routinely denied the right to form or to join unions of their own choosing, either being corralled into undemocratic government unions, company unions, or gangster unions that sell “protection contracts” to employers.

The government routinely refuses to recognize independent labor unions, prevents duly elected officers from taking office, and denies workers’ rights to strike. The Secretary of Labor functions as the employers’ representative in working to suppress unions and prevent strikes. The labor courts—made up of representatives from the government, government-dominated unions, and the employers—make it virtually impossible to create independent unions. Employers fire worker activists, and the labor boards uphold the employers when they do so.

Labor unions and workers are criminalized. The government brings trumped up charges against union leaders, prosecuting and jailing them as a way to keep them from carrying out their union duties. Workers are not only fired and expelled from the unions, but also threatened and beaten. We express our indignation at the way that the Mexican government, acting in complicity with business, has been continually and violently contravening Mexican law as well as international labour conventions. We are speaking out against those proposals for labour law reform that threaten to worsen the already weakened protections for workers, virtually annihilating trade union freedoms in that country.

We reject the criminalization of labour organizations and the repression by military and paramilitary forces against them, and commit ourselves to the support of our sisters and brothers who are under attack.

In particular we criticize Grupo Mexico, which, acting in complicity with the Mexican government against the Miners’ union, both in the Cananea and Pasta de Conchos mines, has seriously weakened the right to strike and the right to work.

We are outraged about the attack by the Mexican government against the Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union (SME), using armed forces to raid the workplaces of the publicly-owned Central Light and Power Company, and unjustly firing 44,000 workers, especially since eight months into the conflict, and more than sixty days into a hunger strike, the conflict has not been resolved. Conflicts should be resolved through negotiation and the good will of all parties, with absolute respect for trade union autonomy and the international standards of labour rights.

We demand the non-intervention of the government in the internal affairs of unions, and the unconditional recognition of their democratically elected leadership.

We therefore call for the recognition of the Secretaries-General of the Mining and Electrical Workers’ Unions, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia and Martín Esparza Flores, and the withdrawal of federal troops from Cananea.

International Solidarity

Mexico’s few independent and democratic unions carry out a heroic struggle for workers’ rights in the face of violent repression, often with support from other social movements. But, given the pro-employer and repressive character of the Calderón government, it is unlikely that they can win those rights alone. An international gathering of trade union representatives and social movement partners in Toronto on June 20, 2010 declared its solidarity with independent Mexican unions, and committed to establishing a mechanism of international coordination to carry out further actions.

We therefore call upon the USSF to join those unions and movements to:

1.Affirm support for the Toronto declaration and raise awareness in the US about the ongoing attacks against Mexican unions and labor rights;

2.Denounce the violation of labor rights and the virulent attack on labor organizations in Mexico such as the Miners and Electrical Workers through our unions and social movements; and

3. Join in developing an effective and coordinated response with our North American partners.