Cananea Mine Battle Reveals Anti-Labor Offensive in Mexico

[Derechos]

Overshadowed by narco-violence, another showdown with far-reaching consequences is unfolding near the Mexico-U.S. border. Striking workers have occupied a Grupo Mexico-owned copper mine and vow to resist any company or government attempts to evict them from the premises. Last month, a Mexican federal court blocked legal efforts to uphold a labor contract.

Since July 2007, Section 65 of the National Union of Miners, Metal, and Allied Workers in Cananea, Sonora, has held firm in a strike against Grupo Mexico over contract and safety issues. Three months prior to the strike, Mexico's Labor Ministry took 72 corrective actions. An inspection later that year by a delegation of independent Mexican and U.S. occupational health and safety experts discovered large accumulations of deadly dust. But hot on the heels of a January 2008 ruling by the Federal Labor and Conciliation Board that the strike was illegal, federal and Sonora state police violently removed the strikers. The union won legal appeals, but a higher labor court finally came down on the side of the company and the Calderon administration last February 11. Trade unionists, elected officials, and opposition activists sharply criticized the strike-breaking legal move. "We are back in 1906. There is no rule of law in Mexico," affirmed opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. "The judicial power is rotten, and as is the case with all the institutions, at the service of the oligarchy."

http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6694?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=9361321&utm_campaign=Anti-Labor%20Offensive%20in%20Mexico%20and%20the%20United%20States

[Wilms]

1. Sad. n/t