La Opinion: In Mexico, Labor Loses Out in New 'Reforms' New America Media
go to original November 18, 2012

Mexico's labor laws needed reform, since production and economic systems have changed in the past four decades. But an editorial in La Opinión argues that the results made things even worse for workers.

Editors blame the close relationship that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has with the unions and the complicity of the National Action Party (PAN) to pass a reform that helps the business sector, even if it means defending the corrupt practices of Mexican unions.

In elections of union leaders, efforts to ensure that voting is "free, direct and secret" were thwarted. The requirement for the unions to be accountable to their members was watered down. And two clauses that would have given workers the opportunity to vote on collective bargaining contracts and choose the union they want to represent them were eliminated outright and postponed for another time.

It is unacceptable for the PRI and the PAN to deny Mexican workers transparency by leaving them trapped in the clutches of union bosses, editors write.

The result of the union reforms "leaves workers with the labor insecurity of 21st-century globalization ... and unionism worthy of the Stalinism of the 1950s."

This is a victory for Mexican corporatism, editors conclude.

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