The rights of workers in Mexico, in recent decades, have been systematically extinguished. We have witnessed the disappearance of what was called the unionism of the Mexican Revolution, collective contracting and the protectionist policy that was inscribed in the laws and that for a long time protected the working class.
These changes are attributed to the productive restructuring, the appearance of new technologies, and the corruption of the labor leaders in the country. Pretexts that served, in the decade of the 80s of the last century, to disappear, in Mexico, the legal contracts, hit the industrial unions and what we know as white unionism and protection contracts grew boldly. Dozens of rights were violated.
Contradictorily, since 2019 a new Federal Labor Law was decreed in response to the mandates of the Trade Agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC), which among many other things forced the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to improve the minimum wage and create the illusion of better conditions for labor competition, including new rules for equal pay between men and women, also promoting work environments free of gender violence and labor equality.
In this context, clearly, on February 9, how in the times of “union charrism” and productive restructuring, during the first hours of that day, the premises of the Independent Workers Union of La Jornada were taken by assault ( SITRAJOR) and the criminals took documentation that risks the secrecy of votes for the legitimacy of the union and its collective contract. They also stole personal data.
Regarding this fact, we do not have any information, neither from the labor authorities, nor from the Capital Prosecutor’s Office, nor from the company.
The matter seems to be the final point of a long union/company conflict in that publishing house, due to the dispute over the content of the collective contract, which in 1979 was considered a model to resolve labor rights, in accordance with technological change and gender equality.
In 2017, after a strike, which demanded the reinstatement of the contract, there was, for example, the dismissal of the union leadership and even criminal lawsuits against the general secretary, the journalist Judith Calderón. Despite everything, the union survived, and only in January 2023 did it manage to rescue some rights.
However, the workers experienced a systematic attack, reducing union freedom, under the calm gaze of the labor authorities, contravening the constitutional norm and conventions 87 and 89 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and affecting the right to the Liberty of expression.
Why the assault? So that? Some of us think that the objective is to completely eliminate the union, so as not to pay the compensation to which the dismissed workers are entitled; because the publishing house is a favorite of the regime, because there is a systematic environment of attack on journalistic work, because the Notimex strike was acted in the same way; because the doors to the protest were closed and there, in Sitrajor, the defense of decent work proposed by ILO Convention 189 had been reborn.
But above all, because they can, they have the full force of the government to eliminate an independent and critical organization. The last question I ask is whether the attack will remain unpunished, which in electoral times, no one seems to care about. We will see
*Journalist. Director of the information portal http://www.semmexico.mx