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Hundreds of Mexican Miners Fired for Striking
NACOZARI, Sonora, Mexico--Just days after conservative candidate Felipe Calderon declared himself the winner of Mexico's July 2 presidential election, the Mexican federal labor board lowered the boom on striking miners. At Nacozari, one of the world's largest copper mines, just a few miles south of Arizona, 1,400 miners have been on strike since March 24. On July 12 the board said they'd abandoned their jobs, and gave the mine's owner, Grupo Mexico, permission to close down operations.
Under Mexican labor law, during a legal strike a company must stop production. The use of strikebreakers is illegal, and no enterprise can close while workers are on strike. By ruling that there was no legal stoppage, and that Grupo Mexico could therefore close the mine, the board gave the company a legal pretext to fire every miner.
The closure was a legal fiction. In the days that followed, mine managers began soliciting applications from workers for jobs when the mine reopens. Some of the very miners who were terminated may be accepted back as new employees -- but with no seniority and no union contract. And not everyone will be going back. Those most active in the strike are on a blacklist.
On the day of the announcement, Sonora Gov. Bours Castelo issued arrest warrants against 21 strikers. The two striking local unions offered to sit down with the company to work out a solution to the conflict, but Bours Castelo responded that the union contract no longer existed. "Negotiations are no longer possible," he declared, "since the union no longer has any bargaining relationship with the company."
These were the latest efforts by Mexico's outgoing conservative Fox administration to force an end to a labor war that has rocked the country for six months, a war that has the beneficiaries of Mexico's privatization land rush worried. It is no coincidence that Fox moved quickly to crush the strike once Calderon, his hand-picked successor, declared himself elected, in the midst of accusations of fraud and huge demonstrations demanding a recount.
Unions in the country's mines and mills are determined to roll back the conservative economic reforms of the past two decades. A victory by Calderon's opponent, former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, would increase the political pressure for such a rollback. According to the country's business interests, however, Mexico must be brought back under control instead.
More
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=b9aad70bdc6a0aff110a3aec3bb8a5f8
The closure was a legal fiction. In the days that followed, mine managers began soliciting applications from workers for jobs when the mine reopens. Some of the very miners who were terminated may be accepted back as new employees -- but with no seniority and no union contract. And not everyone will be going back. Those most active in the strike are on a blacklist.
On the day of the announcement, Sonora Gov. Bours Castelo issued arrest warrants against 21 strikers. The two striking local unions offered to sit down with the company to work out a solution to the conflict, but Bours Castelo responded that the union contract no longer existed. "Negotiations are no longer possible," he declared, "since the union no longer has any bargaining relationship with the company."
These were the latest efforts by Mexico's outgoing conservative Fox administration to force an end to a labor war that has rocked the country for six months, a war that has the beneficiaries of Mexico's privatization land rush worried. It is no coincidence that Fox moved quickly to crush the strike once Calderon, his hand-picked successor, declared himself elected, in the midst of accusations of fraud and huge demonstrations demanding a recount.
Unions in the country's mines and mills are determined to roll back the conservative economic reforms of the past two decades. A victory by Calderon's opponent, former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, would increase the political pressure for such a rollback. According to the country's business interests, however, Mexico must be brought back under control instead.
More
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=b9aad70bdc6a0aff110a3aec3bb8a5f8
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