Week of Global Action Demands Respect for Mexican Workers

As recruiters know, improving one’s work can mean many things.  It might mean hiring the best people to work with.  It might mean arriving to work well-rested.  It might mean taking a class on the newest software program that everyone seems to be talking about.

Improving one’s work might also mean trading in job safety for the potential to gain better working conditions.

This Monday has begun a week of global action in which working people are demanding an end to the intimidation and labor rights violations of workers in Mexico.

Those who have paid attention to the mining accidents in Chile and the United States may be curious to know that the week of action coincides with the fifth anniversary of the deaths of 65 Mexican miners in 2006.  Workers are still demanding that the employer and government officials be held  accountable for the Pasta de Conchos mine explosion.

Participants in the week of action are urging an end to systemic violations of workers’ freedom of association, including employer-dominated “protection contracts” and interference in union elections.

They are raising public awareness to the use of force—by the state or private parties—to repress workers’ legitimate demands for democratic unions, better wages and working conditions, and good health and safety conditions.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO said, “The Mexican government is right to demand respect for Mexican workers living and working in the United States but it has an equal obligation to protect working families in Mexico and end its on-going assault on their basic rights to safety at work and to organize and participate in unions.”