Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this report. 

Mexican independent union leaders traveled to Washington, D.C., to brief, educate and express urgency to congressional leaders on the labor struggles and issues they’re currently facing in Mexico. Members of the Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union (SME) have remained in Mexico City’s main square (Zocalo) for the past six months, demanding justice over the administration’s war on unions. The government fired the SME’s 44,000 members in October 2009 and over the past two years, the fight over the privatization of electricity and the repression of one of Mexico’s oldest and most democratic unions has escalated. The briefing shed light on this ongoing struggle and the need for U.S. solidarity.

Sponsored by the United Steelworkers (USW), the AFL-CIO and Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) on behalf of the Congressional Labor Caucus and International Worker Rights Caucus, the briefing focused on cross-border economic, social and family ties that bind the United States and Mexico. Mexican workers shared stories of how workers’ rights in Mexico have diminished since the approval of NAFTA. With the pending Colombia, Panama and Korea trade agreements in mind, workers emphasized that NAFTA and free trade agreements lower living standards for both U.S. and Mexican workers and have increased violence.

“More than 15 years ago, we were told that NAFTA would create a thriving middle class in Mexico,” said Michaud.

Economists and government officials said that the agreement would lead to growing trade surpluses and that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be gained. As our friends from Mexico can attest, NAFTA did not bring these benefits. Instead, workers’ rights are being violated on a regular basis, and both the U.S. and Mexico are worse off for it.

Panelists also noted that the decline in real wages in Mexico directly hurts U.S. workers by encouraging plant relocation and depressing Mexican consumption of U.S. exports. It also forces Mexican workers into the immigration stream to support their families. 

As USW President Leo Gerard told the congressional caucus:

It is to our advantage to help Mexican workers expose the kind of oppression and persecution they face every day. And it is very important to workers in America that Mexican workers get an opportunity to raise their standard of living.

Although Mexico’s independent unions—Los Mineros (the miners’ unions), the Mexican Union of Telephone Workers and Mexican Electrical Workers Union—are working to improve wages,  health and safety standards and overall living conditions, participants in the brief said 90 percent of registered trade union agreements in Mexico are “protection contracts” signed by “paper” unions, providing protection for the company, not the workers.

They said the government’s proposed labor law reforms not only fail to address the problems workers face but would further weaken workers’ rights by limiting the compensation an employer may be ordered to pay a fired worker. Worse, the government has proposed a national security law that specifically identifies labor disputes as grounds for a state of exception in which civil liberties could be suspended.

Marco del Toro, legal counsel of Los Mineros, said:

Our countries have a strong bi-national relationship, our goal should be to push Mexico to improve working conditions and union liberty instead of company unions doing the exact opposite.