Mexico's Minimum Wage Is Criminally Low. Is It Unconstitutional? Juan Tadeo - Global Voices
go to original August 9, 2014

In Mexico, the working minimum wage varies geographically. In regions designated “A” (like Mexico City and various towns in the border states of Baja California, Nuevo León, and Sonora), people earn 67.29 pesos (about $5 USD) for an 8-hour workday.

How many workers in Mexico must subsist on this kind of pay? Journalist Juan Pablo Becerra Acosta has the answer:

It's more than a few. According to the most recent data compiled by INEGI [the National Institute of Statistics and Geography], 6.7 million Mexicans earn minimum wage. This represents 15.1% of those employed in the country.

This statistic, incidentally, does not include people whose pay is off the books.

According to Article 123 of Mexico's Constitution, the country's minimum wage should be sufficient to provide the head of a household with the means to satisfy the family's material, social, and cultural needs and to ensure that any children receive an education.

In reality, however, what does a minimum wage salary afford Mexico's workers on a daily basis?

It turns out that 67.29 pesos is not enough to buy a single kilogram of average quality beef, the price of which is about 80 pesos (or $6 USD). On the other hand, the wage is enough to buy a kilo of tortillas, a kilo of eggs, and a liter of pasteurized milk—all of which are considered basic food items in the Mexican diet. With a somewhat happy belly, however, there is little money left over for other basic necessities, like transportation.

A one-way ticket on the Metro, one of the principal modes of transportation in the Mexican capital, runs 5 pesos. That means people in Mexico City spend at least 10 pesos a day - almost 15 percent of the minimum wage income - getting to and from work. In other words, after a full day of working for minimum wage, the average Mexican would not be able to buy a hamburger, french fries, and a beverage combo, the cost of which is closer to 70 pesos ($5.26 USD).

It is interesting to compare Mexico's minimum wage with the salaries paid to public sector employees. The average government employee earns 2,018.70 pesos per month (about $151 USD). Employees elsewhere along the public sector ladder, like the department head at the National Cancer Institute, make as much as 28,027.09 pesos per month ($2,107 USD). The country's President, Enrique Peña Nieto, receives 142,117.76 pesos, according to official sources, which works out to $10,685 USD per month.

If we consider what a person's salary ought to cover, based on the letter of the law, and contrast that with what a day's minimum-wage earnings actually buy, it raises serious concerns about how Mexico's current minimum wage fuels the profound class divisions that plague Mexican society today, perhaps violating the country's Constitution.

Translated by Victoria Robertson

See the full article at Global Voices

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