Politics: Despite it all, the labor situation is stable, as is the country’s long ossified union movement
López Obrador has gotten things right when it comes to labor policy. Even most of the government’s critics recognize this is the area in which the administration can claim its most notable achievements.
A broad consensus holds that the new law on outsourcing, which was approved with the support of the business sector, has proven beneficial for many whose working conditions improved thanks to the ban on abusive practices by the third-party firms that provided such domestic outsourcing services. And a 2019 labor law reform, along with some added help from the USMCA’s labor chapter, made it mandatory for the first time that workers vote by secret ballot on the terms of their collective bargaining agreements and the choice of union officials.
But despite expectations that such sweeping policy and legal moves might usher in a reform of the labor movement, in practice it seems little has changed. With the exception of a high profile case last year in which workers at a General Motors plant in Silao voted to break from the CTM and affiliate with an upstart union, the structures of the country’s long ossified labor movement have so far proven largely impervious to the winds of change. Even the two major union confederations that emerged in recent years are direct descendants of the old, corrupt, corporatist unions.
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