28 June, 2010
Aggressive police attacks on workers and their families at Cananea and Pasta de Conchos on 6 June have moved the United Steelworkers (USW) and the National Union of Mine, Metal, Steel and Related Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM), or Los Mineros, closer together. The two trade unions have formed a commission, charged with increasing strategic cooperation and exploring a fusion together that would form a potential union of one million workers in Mexico, Canada, the US and the Caribbean.
Although the bi-lateral trade union commission had been operating for some time, Los Mineros General Secretary Napoleon Gomez announced its formation at the global "Triple Crisis of Sustainability” conference in Toronto on 19 June.
The commission is made up of five members from each of the union’s leaderships. The USW represents 850,000 workers in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean, while Los Mineros represents about 180,000 in Mexico.
Napoleón Gomez, Leo Gerard
In signing a 20 June joint declaration, announcing the establishment of the commission, Napoleon Gomez and USW President Leo Gerard affirmed their unions’ "common commitment to democracy, equality, and solidarity for working men and women throughout North America and throughout the world".
The declaration describes the ongoing systematic campaign of persecution against Los Mineros by the government of Felipe Calderón, which is motivated by the government policy of suppressing Mexican workers’ rights and wages, in order to attract foreign investment. While this policy has made enormous profits possible for corporations in Mexico, the strength and advances of Los Mineros has lead to them being attacked physically, financially, in the media, in the justice system, and with industrial homicide due to poor health and safety standards. The Los Mineros General Secretary Gomez is still forced to lead his union from exile in Canada, and has been supported there by the USW.
The two unions have worked closely together for years, marked by the Global Strategic Alliance, jointly signed on 13 April 2005, which committed to build power by increasing communication and coordination across national borders. While in recent times, they share similar experiences of long mining strikes, as the strike at Cananea nears the three-year mark, and USW’s strike in Canada against Vale Inco is into its 11th month.
See the full declaration on the USW website here.