We are requesting our supporters to participate in the online public consultation launched by the European Commission on the re-negotiation of the EU – Mexico Free Trade Agreement (online in English only here)
The deadline for the consultation is 31st August 2015.Â
This agreement will have a significant impact on workers in both the European Union and Mexico, especially in conjunction with the EU – Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) which has already been negotiated and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which is in negotiation.
Independent unions in Mexico, Global Unions and the ITUC have identified many serious violations of core labour rights in Mexico. Â The most serious of these are the practice of “protection contracts” – collective agreements signed between an employer and an employer-dominated union, often without the knowledge of the workers – and the institution of Labor Boards that are subject to corruption and manipulation by employers and employer-dominated unions. Â
The ILO Committee on Freedom of Association and Committee of Experts have drawn attention to these problems.
Below is a short summary of key issues that can be pasted into the online survey on pages 23-24 – For Mexico: Social issues and labour rights – Core labour standards. If negatively impacted, how could these impacts be mitigated?
We suggest you insert the following text:
Mexico must:
â– Enact constitutional reforms to eliminate the corrupt Conciliation and Arbitration Boards at the state and federal level, replacing them with labor judges who are independent from the executive power.
â– Make all collective bargaining agreements and union registrations public and transparent at the federal and state level, requiring employers to provide each worker a hard copy of his or her collective bargaining agreement and the basic documents of the union that represents that worker.
â– Make it illegal to file (depositar) a collective bargaining agreement that has not
been ratified by a majority of the workers covered by that agreement.
â– Make the union election (recuento) process more transparent and effective, establishing fixed dates for stages in the process and stipulating that objections are to be resolved after the election is held.
â– Eliminate the requirement of union certification (toma de nota) which is used to control and limit the legal existence of unions.
â– Ratify and implement ILO Convention 98 on the right to organize and collective bargaining.
