Mexico: US complaints give impetus to new unions

MEXICO CITY (AP) — It has been nearly two years since the United States began pressuring the Mexican government for labor rights abuses, using the expedited dispute resolution methods contained in the U.S.- Mexico-Canada.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has filed six such complaints and is boasting that, for the first time, someone is challenging Mexico’s old-guard, undemocratic unions that have kept wages painfully low for decades.

But workers and union organizers see the results as mixed. They say it’s hard to build a movement for a real union overnight, and employers and former union bosses continue to resist change.

La primera queja fue interpuesta en mayo de 2021, con respecto a los intentionos del sindicato Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM) para interferir en la votación en la planta de General Motors en Silao, estado de Guanajuato, en la centro-norte del Country.

Under pressure from a U.S. complaint — which could have ultimately led to trade sanctions — Mexican officials and observers oversaw a clean union vote in which the old-guard union CTM was expelled and a new independent union won the right to bargain.

The new union quickly won an 8.5% wage increase and more bonuses.

On the “economic side, the truth is that the change is reflected, even if it took time to give us the increase,” said Manuel Carpio, a GM worker. Carpio says this was due to the reform of Mexican labor laws and pressure from the T-MEC complaint.

“I say it has a lot to do with it,” he added.

In the past, pro-company unions signed contracts behind workers’ backs, using hooligans to prevent workers from questioning contracts or leaning on the company to fire dissenters. Carpio said that before it was impossible to organize a new union.

“You’ve seen a lot of retaliation,” but now they’re protected by law, he said. Before, if they had tried, “heads would have been blown”.

This does not mean that all problems have been solved. Carpio said the new union, known by its initials SINTTIA, has a learning curve and has been slow to deliver the benefits that come with union dues. And autoworkers in Mexico continue to be paid as little as $300 a month, or $12 a day.

The new union managed to raise the minimum to around $14 a day, but that’s still less than an American autoworker earns in an hour. Washington hopes that one day wages in Mexico will catch up with those in the United States, which will prevent manufacturing jobs from leaving the country, although this will not happen for long.

José Guadalupe Alonso, representative of the new union, believes that such an increase is still a long way off. The new union is still trying to find a solution to the fact that the CTM has taken everything from the union offices, including chairs and computers, leaving the tills empty.

Alonso has no doubt that labor complaints in the United States were crucial in creating a new union at GM.

“Here what really made the difference was the United States government, which forced or pressured certain things,” Alonso said.

But he considers that similar attempts to organize at other factories in the region, which have not attracted as much international attention, remain more difficult than ever.

For example, an organizing initiative by the same union at a German factory that manufactures automotive tubes recently met with resistance. Alonso said when Mexican labor authorities attempted to inspect the factory, guards told them they had the wrong address.

“Really, you may have to file another complaint with the government, the government of the United States,” Alonso said.

Mexico’s Ministry of Labor and Social Protection says it is committed to making the new labor laws really work. The reforms guarantee workers the right to vote in secret, consult their contracts and periodically approve union leaders, which was not the case before. But the country has yet to put in place the labor boards, inspectors and disclosure that would get things done.

For its part, US complaints are no magic wand: the best example so far is the VU Manufacturing auto parts plant in the border town of Piedras Negras, Coahuila state. It is the only place where Washington has had to file not one, but two labor complaints under the USMCA, asking Mexico to ensure that its laws guaranteeing freedom to organize are enforced.

The factory, located across from the town of Eagle Pass, Texas, illustrates some of the uphill battles organizers face to make freedom of association a reality.

Staff at VU facilities are predominantly female. Women often work 12-hour shifts assembling sun visors, armrests and parts for car dashboards. The base salary is approximately $15 per day.

Piedras Negras is a relatively small and isolated border town where there is so little union tradition that the CTM dominated the factory, but never even bothered to ask the owners for a contract of employment, explains Pablo Franco, a labor lawyer from Piedras Negras.

After the US filed an initial labor complaint in July, the company was forced to allow a vote but allowed the CTM to stay inside in an attempt to intimidate workers into reject the new union, the Mexican Trade Union League.

“They spoke to their colleagues and told them that they shouldn’t allow a foreign union like the League to come in, that they were better known people, people back home,” Franco said. “And they talked about it with their compañeros and they gave the CTM facilities to talk with the workers, to have proselytizing activities. It was…the company’s involvement.”

Although the new union won a vote in late August by a nearly two-to-one margin, the harassment has not stopped and the company is reluctant to negotiate, said union organizer Julia Quiñonez, a union activist from Piedras. Negras.

Quiñonez was the target of several videos on social media in which factory workers were allowed to leave the factory – dressed in their work uniforms – and hold a press conference, in which they attacked the new union for what they said were excessive demands for wage increases: an outrageous increase of $32 a day.

“No company does this,” one of the dissidents said in the video. This sum of money is not “the property of the owner”.

Quiñonez disputes this – he says the new union is only asking for $19 a day – but points out that the company refused to negotiate, siding with the CTM to launch a smear campaign against the union.

“They say…we encourage workers to ask for more than the companies can give them, so they can then shut down and return to the United States,” Quiñonez said.

The company also reportedly limited the new union’s access to hold a meeting at the factory, refusing to provide information as part of the negotiations.

VU Manufacturing did not respond to email and phone requests for comment.

The situation generated a second American complaint on January 30, an unprecedented fact.

“While this facility took positive steps in 2022, some of the flaws we previously identified appear to be making a comeback,” said U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.

The Ministry of Labor said in a statement that “Manufacturas VU is obliged to negotiate in good faith with the Liga Sindical Obrera Mexicana, for which reason it must provide the necessary facilities for its representatives and advisers so that they can enter the facilities. , take part in negotiations and inform the workers of their results”.