After a historic battle, Mexico will have fulfilled a crucial obligation under a North American trade agreement by letting thousands of pro-business union contracts to expire.
Labor Minister Luisa Alcalde said hours after the deadline that unions would attempt to approve 33,000 of Mexico’s 139,000 collective contracts via worker polls.
The remainder will be disbanded, but workers’ present salary and benefits will be maintained.
Under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a trade treaty that replaced the 1994 NAFTA, Mexico agreed to end these so-called “protection contracts.”
Because many contracts were written to protect corporate interests and lacked worker support or active unions, labor officials expected unions to abstain from voting on most contracts.
In an interview, Labor Minister Alcalde said, “This is historic because we finally managed to rid the labor market of pretend contracts and fake unions.”
Workers need skilled advocates to safeguard their rights and increase their remuneration and benefits.
Since the voting process began four years ago, workers in the auto, retail, and mining sectors, among others, have voted on around 20,000 contracts. Up to 13,000 more votes are scheduled for the month of July, although some unions may opt out.
Some experts have cited the fact that only about 400 contracts have been voted down as evidence of bias in union-run elections.
The Independent Mexico Labor Expert Board, a U.S. advisory organization, said in March that the low percentage of rejected contracts “raises serious doubts about the credibility” of the process
The Labor Ministry last month accused a major union of manipulating votes during a referendum at a Goodyear tire factory, in a situation similar to charges made against manufacturer General Motors in 2021, which led to the first USMCA labor complaint.
Alcalde has said that she expects unions to try to create new contracts to replace canceled ones.
Workers must first be “convinced that they will be represented better” by the new party, she said
