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REPORT ❐ MEXICAN LABOUR LAWA Labour LawBosses Would LoveIn one of therecent diplomaticcables publishedby Wikileaks, theU.S. governmentadmits “The netwealth of the 10richest people inMexico – acountry wheremore than 40percent of thepopulation lives inpoverty _representsroughly 10percent of thecountry’s grossdomestic product”DAVID BACON is a journalistbased in San FranciscoLabour law reformChanging labour law sounds like some technicalmodification, a subject lawyers argueabout in musty hearing rooms. In Mexicoit’s been front-page news for weeks. Changing thecountry’s labour law would transform the lives ofmillions of workers. It would cement the power ofa group of industrialists who have been on thepolitical offensive for decades, and who now controlMexico’s presidency and national government.“Labour law reform will only benefit the country’soligarchs,” claims Andres Manuel LopezObrador, who many if not most Mexicans thinkactually won the last presidential election in2006, as candidate of the leftwing Party of theDemocratic Revolution. Napoleon GomezUrrutia, head of the miner’s union who wasforced into exile in Canada in 2006, says Mexico’sold governing party, the Party of theInstitutionalised Revolution (PRI), which lost controlof the presidency in 2000, “is trying to assureits return by making this gift to big business,putting an end to labour rights.”In part, the change is drastic because on paper,at least, the rights of Mexican workers are extensive,deriving from the Revolution that ended in1920. At a time when workers in the U.S. still hadno law that even recognised the legality ofunions, Article 123 of the Mexican Constitutionspelled them out. Workers have the right to jobsand permanent status once they’re hired. Ifthey’re laid off, they have the right to severancepay. They have rights to housing, health care,and training. In a legal strike, they can string flagsacross the doors of a factory or workplace andeven the owner can’t enter until the dispute issettled. Strikebreaking is prohibited.The new law would change most of that.Companies would be able to hire workers in asix-month probationary status, and then fire themat the end without penalty. Even firing workerswith 20 or 30 years on the job would suddenlybecome much easier and cheaper for theiremployers, by limiting the penalty for unjust terminationto one year’s severance pay. The justificationis that by reducing the number of workersat a worksite, while requiring those remaining towork harder, productivity increases and profitsgo up. The labour law reform proposal deepensthose changes. The 40-hour work week was writteninto the Federal Labor Law, which codifiedthe rights in Article 123. That limit would end.Even the current 7-peso/hour minimum wage($5/day) would be undermined, as employerswould gain the unilateral right to set wages. Theindependent review of safe working conditionswould be heavily restricted.Even in union workplaces with a collectiveagreement setting wages and conditions, anemployer could force individual workers to signindividual agreements with fewer rights or lowerwages. Companies could subcontract work withno limit, giving employers the ability to find lowcostcontractors with no union to replaceunionised, higher-wage employees. And it wouldbecome much more difficult to go on strike.The proposed labour law reform is the fourthin a series of basic changes in Mexico’s economic,legal and political framework over the lastdecade. A fiscal reform began the process of privatisingthe country’s pension system, much likethe Social Security privatisation plans propose forthe US Teachers charge that Mexican educationreform is intended to remove their influence overthe curriculum, which still espouses values thatwould seem very progressive in a US classroom.In many cases, they say, it will remove them fromtheir jobs also. Current Mexican President FelipeCalderon of the National Action Party (PAN) proposedan energy reform aimed at privatising thenational oil company, Pemex. Fierce opposition,however, was able to restrict it to some degree.All the reforms have been part of a program ofeconomic liberalisation opening Mexico to privatedomestic, and especially foreign capital. lnfact, the World Bank pressured Mexico to adoptan earlier labour law reform after the PRI lost thepresidency in 2000, and Calderon’s predecessor,Coca-Cola executive Vicente Fox, won it. Thetwo labour law reform proposals are not identical,but very similar. Both reflect the surgingpower of corporate employers in Mexico, and theway the PRI and PAN often trade places, pursuingthe same political and economic agenda.Mexican poverty is already a scandal for acountry whose leaders insist its economic growthmerits a seat in the “first world.” Changing itslabour law would make that poverty more permanent,however, as well as rendering unionsmore impotent in challenging it.In 2010 Mexico had 53 million people living inpoverty, according to the Monterrey Institute ofTechnology. Even the CIA says half the country’spopulation lives in poverty and almost 20% inextreme poverty. The government’s unemploymentfigures are low - 5-6% - but a huge numberof working-age Mexicans are part of the informaleconomy, selling articles on the street or workingin jobs where the employer doesn’t pay into theofficial funds (the basis for counting employedworkers) Some estimate that there are more workersin the informal sector than in the formal one.Even the formal jobs don’t pay a wage capableof supporting a family, however. According tothe Bank of Mexico, 95% of the 800,000 jobs createdlast year paid only $10 a day. Yet when amaquiladora worker buys a gallon of milk in aTijuana or Juarez supermarket, she pays moreINTERNATIONAL union rights Page 20 Volume 18 Issue 2 2011