13 July, 2009Parliamentary and union leaders demand Mexican government cease attacks on mineworkers.
MEXICO/GLOBAL: Parliamentary and trade union leaders from 13 countries, including Jyrki Raina and Manfred Warda, General Secretaries of the IMF and ICEM, joined Mexican union leaders and legislators in Mexico City to call for an end to the persecution of the Mexican mine and metalworkers' union and its leader, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia.
Jack Layton, leader of Canada's New Democratic Party, raised the delegation's concerns in a meeting with Mexico's Labor Secretary Javier Lozano. "We made it clear that the government's interference in union governance, its jailing of union leaders and freezing union bank accounts, declaring strikes illegal and failing to prosecute the killers of union leaders, are serious and unacceptable violations of basic human rights," he stated.
Layton, Australian Labor MP Graham Perrett, and a group of union leaders including Raina and Warda also met with Marcelo Ebrard, the Governor of the Federal District of Mexico City. The delegation visited Juan Linares, one of the leaders of the union, in the prison where he has been held for several months without charges.
Members of the delegation held meetings with the Embassies of Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United States to inform them about the Mexican government's actions. The delegation's message, according to United Steelworkers District 7 Director Jim Robinson, was that, "when NAFTA was passed, we were told that it would raise wages for Mexican workers. Now the Mexican government and Grupo Mexico are trying to destroy the Mineworkers because they are doing just that."
On Sunday, the delegation joined 6,000 workers to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Los Mineros union, marching loudly through the industrial city of Lázaro Cárdenas. "The IMF and ICEM with their 45 million members worldwide, will never let you down. Your struggle is ours. Workers fighting for free, democratic and independent trade unionism in Mexico will never be defeated," IMF General Secretary Jyrki Raina told jubilant union members, clad in red shirts to demonstrate unity and support for their leadership.