Statement from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on ensuring that workers in Mexico can freely organize and gain rights on the job through collective bargaining.
The AFL-CIO welcomes the decision by the President of Mexico to bring Convention 98 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) to the Mexican Senate for ratification.
Convention 98 on the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining is one of the fundamental international instruments protecting the rights of workers to establish democratic trade unions free of employer and government interference; to bargain collectively with their employers; and to strike.
In Mexico, the rights established by Convention 98 have been systematically denied to workers through the government-sanctioned practice of “protection contracts.” Protection contracts are agreements between companies and employer-dominated unions that are signed without the participation, and often without the knowledge, of the workers. These phony labor agreements are enforced by biased and corrupt government Labor Boards. These practices suppress the earnings of manufacturing workers in Mexico to less than one-fifth those of American workers, but they also drive down wages of comparable work done in the U.S.
While ratification is important, it doesn’t provide the tools to ensure workers can exercise their rights in the workplace. That’s why the AFL-CIO and the democratic trade union movement in Mexico have called for Mexico to enact key reforms to its Constitution and laws. The labor movement demands regulations to replace the Labor Boards with independent labor courts and eliminate the practice of protection contracts. If Mexico enacts and implements these reforms, working families in Mexico will be able to organize and bargain for a better life with the confidence that their government will defend their rights, not undermine them.
If Mexico fails to enact these reforms prior to receiving benefits in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the U.S. will have lost key leverage to ensure Mexican workers can exercise the rights they have been promised for more than 20 years under NAFTA. The shared prosperity that TPP supporters promise simply can’t happen when labor rights are only respected on paper, rather than in the workplace.
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Contact: Gonzalo Salvador (202) 637-5018