25 June, 2008The Freedom of Association Committee makes nine recommendations to the Mexican government with a view to ending the two-year conflict
MEXICO: The Freedom of Association Committee of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has issued General Report 350, which deals with the Mexican mining dispute (case 2478) and makes nine recommendations to the Mexican government regarding the actions denounced by the National Union of Miners and Metalworkers (SNTMMSRM) and the IMF.
The first recommendation regrets the Secretary for Labour and Social Welfare's "illegal" recognition of Elías Morales and removal of Napoleón Gómez Urrutia as the union's general secretary and states that "the labour authorities' action was incompatible with article 3 of ILO Convention 87, which establishes workers' rights to freely elect their representatives."
The committee says that the Mexican government has not clarified "various irregularities" committed by the labour authorities, except for the falsification of a signature of a member of the union's Vigilance Committee. The ILO committee requests the government "to provide the information."
The committee "deplores the excessive duration" of the judicial procedures "regarding various aspects of the case and the serious prejudice caused to the plaintiff union" and asks the authorities to take "measures to guarantee prompt justice with regard to the exercise of trade union rights." The committee "urges the government to ensure the prompt conclusion of the judicial procedures."
The committee's fourth recommendation profoundly deplores the death of the worker, Reynaldo Hernández González, expresses the strong hope that the criminal procedures under way will be completed as quickly as possible and asks the government to communicate the court's sentence.
The fifth recommendation asks the government "to indicate whether the trade unionists arrested on 11 August 2007 have been released" (this refers to the workers who were attacked on the same day and place as Hernández González was killed, in Nacozari, Sonora). It also calls on the Mexican authorities to provide information about the dispute over representation rights for collective agreements at eight companies, where the SNTMMSRM has such rights. These rights are disputed by other unions. The committee also asked for information about the "violent expulsion of strikers at the entrance to the Cananea mine, and in general about the intervention of state security forces in the labour dispute in question."
The Freedom of Association Committee's final recommendation calls on "the parties concerned to continue negotiations to resolve the dispute to which the present case refers."
The committee also asks the government to respond, without delay, to allegations about death threats, illegal kidnappings and beatings of union members and their families, including the security forces' attack on the Sicartsa strikers, on 20 April 2006, and the kidnapping, beating and death threats against the wife of Mario García Ortiz, a member of the plaintiff union's executive committee."
The IMF General Secretary, Marcello Malentacchi, attended the ILO assembly on 12 June 2008 where he outlined the union's complaint.
The Mexican miners' union thinks that this ILO report obliges "the Mexican government to comply with ILO resolutions and recommendations, resulting from the condemnation it has received, and consequently take steps towards the comprehensive resolution of this dispute with the miners." The union also states that the dispute "has showed the government to be repressive, inefficient, arbitrary, despotic and unable to end this serious problem that it inherited and that it has been unable to resolve even though the dispute has now lasted 20 months."
A copy of the full report can be found at this link.