Mexican Labor Reform Bill to Test New Congress Gabriel Stargardter - Reuters
go to original September 5, 2012

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's lower house of Congress on Tuesday published a labor reform proposal submitted by President Felipe Calderon, which may prove a key test of cooperation between his conservatives and the incoming government of his successor Enrique Pena Nieto.

Aside from softening longstanding labor regulations, the draft bill aims to improve the transparency of trade unions, which have been key supporters of Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and could face resistance there.

Unions have also acquired a reputation for corruption, and Calderon's National Action Party (PAN) has pledged to subject them to tighter surveillance in the face of PRI opposition.

Following are details of the proposal's key points:

• Make work contracts more flexible, enshrining trial periods and initial training contracts in labor laws, which have not been altered significantly for four decades.

• These new rules should also be applied to seasonal workers.

• Ensure election of trade union leadership is free, direct and secret to take political pressure out of the process.

• Enforce disclosure of trade unions' assets; those with more than 150 members must be audited externally annually.

• Details of union balance sheets should be divulged to members, who have to pay fees to the unions. The lack of transparency over use of these funds has been a major bone of contention between unions and political reformers.

• If unions fail to meet transparency requirements, workers should be able to appeal to bring about suspension of these fees.

• Scrap a clause from collective bargaining agreements that allows unions to ask companies to fire workers without compensation who leave their union ranks.

• Productivity, not seniority, should take precedence in handing out new jobs.

• Work undertaken outside the family by children under the age of 14 should be made a criminal offence.

• Strengthening the rights of working women via a variety of measures: these include outlawing gender-based discrimination and making it easier for mothers to plan their work schedules.

• Improving regulation of work in mines, stepping up safety regulations and employee protections and mandating that firms cannot recruit children under the age of 18 for mine work.

• Tightening sanctions regulating federal labor laws. Fines up to 5,000 times the general minimum wage should be applicable for each offence.

Editing by Dave Graham and Todd Eastham

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