Trade unions, students and other social activists in Mexico are uniting against proposed reforms to the country’s labour laws.
Opponents say the proposal – which aims to give greater hiring flexibility to employers, marking the biggest shake-up of the country’s labour market in over 40 years – will have a severe impact on workers’ rights.
Last week, Mexico’s lower house of Congress approved the bill on a vote of 346-60 with one abstention, and this Tuesday it moves to the Senate, which then has 30 days to approve or reject it.
Just weeks before, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to express their discontent over what some unionists have described as a “monstrous” law.
But not all Mexicans are unhappy.
Last week, the Business Coordination Council (CCE), comprising the country’s main enterprises, urged the Senate to approve the reform unconditionally.
CCE President Gerardo Gutiérrez Candiani has stated that any remaining concerns can be worked out over “the next few months or years”, adding that “there will never be a reform that will make everybody happy”.
One of the main motivations for the reform is to create jobs by legalising various forms of outsourcing, which are currently forbidden.
Employers would be able, for example, to hire workers by the hour and through labour contractors.
Proponents of the reform say it is “modernizing Mexico”. But it was actually using the same pretext of renovation that outgoing President Felipe Calderón won one of the worst labour disputes in recent Mexican history.
In 2009, the government announced that it would dissolve the Central Light and Power Company which provided electricity to Mexico City and several states in the central region.
Around 45,000 workers were laid off.
The target was clear. By dissolving the company, Calderón also eliminated one of the country´s most powerful organisations, the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), a leading force in organising opposition to the government´s economic policies and its plan to privatise the electrical industry.
“Our members were replaced by subcontracted workers with no union,” Humberto Montes de Oca, International Secretary of the SME, told American magazine In These Times.
“These new replacements had no training or experience, and as a result, there were countless accidents. Some of these workers died. This is the employment model promoted by the labour law reform. What happened to us anticipated the changes the reform will bring everywhere.”
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has considered unlikely that the reform may create jobs.
Instead, the UN´s regional body stated, it is possible that, through outsourcing, companies will be encouraged to hire informal workers.
In an interview with Equal Times, Héctor Barba García, legal advisor at the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT), agreed with this analysis.
“We believe that if the government’s vision triumphs, if any jobs are in fact generated, they will be more precarious.”
Mounting pressure is also growing outside of Mexico to stop the legislation´s approval.
This month, trade unions from 20 countries wrote to the Mexican parliamentary coordinators to express their concern. The letter included signatures from the International Trade Union Confederation, IndustriALL and the largest federation of unions in the US, the AFL-CIO.
A final decision on the bill is expected by 26 October.
