Forget the 4-Day Week, Mexican Workers Are Fighting the 6-Day Week Mary Beth Sheridan - The Washington Post
go to original January 21, 2024

Workers line up to buy tacos out of a vendor's trunk outside the Marriott. (Mary Beth Sheridan/The Washington Post)

On a recent Friday, like nearly every day, Maricela de la Cruz woke up at 5 a.m. She caught two buses to get from her parents' modest apartment on the outskirts of Cancún to the J.W. Marriott Resort & Spa. As tourists sunned on the white-sand beach outside, she spent eight hours scrubbing bathrooms and making beds.

The 28-year-old housekeeper works six days every week. So do millions of other working-class people in Mexico - hotel staff, auto assemblers, waiters.

But now, workers in the United States' No. 1 trading partner are rebelling. The Mexican Congress is debating a constitutional amendment to guarantee employees two days off per week, a proposal pushed by unions. Over eight decades after President Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered in the five-day workweek in the United States, it finally might be coming to Mexico.

"Every worker dreams of this," de la Cruz said. "More social justice."

The Mexican workers' fight for the 40-hour week comes amid a growing global debate over work schedules. Yet, there is a vast divide in how that conversation is playing out. While North Americans and Europeans experiment with a four-day week, many employees in developing countries toil six days - or more. (In India, a tech billionaire recently caused an uproar by suggesting a 70-hour week.)

The debate goes to fundamental questions of workers' rights and their obligations to their companies and their nations' development.

De la Cruz joined thousands of cooks, waitresses, bellboys and gardeners marching through downtown Cancún under a late-afternoon sun last month, chanting "Yes to two days off!"

"We've seen how other countries have shorter hours than us," she said.

But Mexico is less productive than more developed countries, said Jesús Almaguer, president of the Hotel Association of Cancún. "First, we have to develop economically and industrially in order to have these" - he paused - "these privileges."

A brash lawyer says: 'This is the moment.'

Read the rest at The Washington Post

Related: Mexico Begins the Year With a Spike in Inflation (Mexico News Daily)

Related: Investment Bankers Are Starting to See Mexico as a Money Spinner (Bloomberg News)

Related: Mexican Debt, Wall Street’s New Darling (El País)

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