Strengthening Workers’ Ability to Exercise their Labor Rights in Mexico

After Mexico enacted its sweeping labor justice reform on May 1, 2019, significant obstacles impede successful implementation.  While the basic administrative and fiscal demands are daunting, reform is further complicated by profound worker mistrust of the industrial relations system and its most powerful actors. There are limited alternatives to protection unions, minimal public awareness of the new rights and responsibilities of labor actors under the reform, and there is an extreme imbalance of power between dominant protection unions and the weaker upstart democratic labor movement.  Mexico’s independent labor movement largely lacks the reach and clout to create a counter-narrative on worker rights, so workers that are not involved in or adjacent to active organizing campaigns are largely unaware of the changes. Although some independent unions with experience, political capital, legal support, and other resources are organizing new democratic unions and successfully negotiating authentic collective bargaining agreements in a few sectors, the independent labor movement overall needs greater capacity and support to fully take advantage of the opportunities that the reform has created.