Fresh from a series of resounding legal victories, Mexican mine workers leader Napoleón Gómez has written a book that exposes the Mexican government’s seven-year campaign to destroy democratic unions and drive down workers’ wages. Gómez won the AFL-CIO’s Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award in 2011.

The National Farm Workers' Confederation (CNC) and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Canada signed a historic agreement to ensure the rights of migrant agriculture workers are protected and defended in Mexico, Canada and the United States, reports UFCW Canada. 

Like many people who come from other countries to work in the United States, Juan José Rosales left his homeland in Mexico to make a better life for himself, trading the prospect of a better financial situation for a temporary amount of time away from. He said a recruiter promised him he would get between $7 and $8 an hour while working in the fair and carnival industry on an H-2B visa. And that's when things went wrong.

As part of a six-day worldwide labor solidarity campaign, American union members protested outside the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., yesterday in support of greater trade union rights and protections in Mexico.

This Thursday at noon, working families in Washington, D.C., will be rallying at the Mexican Embassy in solidarity with workers in Mexico as part of a global Day of Action. The campaign is based around four basic goals to:

Tell PKC to Reinstate Workers in Mexico is a cross-post from IndustriALL Global Union's website. 

PKC [a Finnish auto-parts supplier] sacked more than 100 union supporters, including the entire union committee in December 2012 for campaigning for the election of an independent trade union, the National Union of Mine and Metalworkers (known as “Los Mineros”), at their plants in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico.

As President Obama meets today with Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling for improved rights for Mexico's working families. In recent months, Mexican workers have faced a series of challenges to their basic rights.

At 6 a.m., the AFL-CIO participated as an international observer as mineworkers and community members peacefully blocked access to the Canadian mining company Excellon Resources Inc. at La Platosa mine in Durango, Mexico. The protesters have maintained their camp at the entrance of the mine since July 8. They continue to seek negotiation and demand a resolution to the conflicts between Excellon, local landowners and workers in the mine.

This is an excerpt from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center's "Threatened with Death, Mexican Labor Activist Leaves Country."

Facing death threats for her work as a Mexican labor rights activist, Blanca Velásquez left the country earlier this month and suspended her two-year legal battle with the Mexican government over ongoing harassment and threats against workers in Puebla, Mexico.

In May, human rights defender José Enrique Morales Montaño, who worked with Velásquez at the Center of Support for Workers (CAT), was kidnapped by four masked men and physically tortured for 16 hours before being released. Other employees at CAT have received death threats, and the organization’s e-mail has been hacked in a cycle of harassment that began in December 2010. That month, Velasquez found a threatening message scrawled across her office wall: “No saben con quien metes” (“You don’t know who you’re messing with”).

After a monthlong journey through 26 American cities, the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity finally arrived in Washington, D.C., Monday afternoon. Caravaneros, as members of the Caravan are known, descended their bus, parked in front of AFL-CIO headquarters, holding up signs with pictures of their disappeared loved ones, chanting:

“¡Vivos se los llevaron!, ¡vivos los queremos!” (They took them alive! We want them alive!)