COPE Joins Days of Action in Support of Mexican Workers

COPE Joins Days of Action in Support of Mexican Workers

February 18, 2013



From February 18 to 24 unions from around the world are taking part in days of action in support of Mexican workers’ rights. Union members are petitioning companies, visiting Mexican embassies, and sending messages of solidarity to Mexican workers.

The week is scheduled around the anniversary of a tragic mine accident at Pasta de Conchos in 2006, in which 65 miners were killed. 63 miners are still buried there as the Mexican government and employer Grupo Mexico refused to remove the bodies, which helped to hide the causes of the explosion and the inadequate efforts to rescue those trapped.

Mexican workers have struggled for years for the right to join a union to improve their working conditions, trying to fight a system of government-employer complicity. Most recently, according to IndustriALL, a global union federation to which MoveUP is affiliated:

PKC sacked more than 100 union supporters including the entire union committee in December 2012 for campaigning for the election of an independent trade union, the National Union of Mine and Metalworkers (known as ³Los Mineros²), at their plants in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. Ten of the sacked union leaders refused to take severance pay and, along with another leader who was sacked in April 2012, are fighting for reinstatement and the right to be represented by a democratically elected union at the plant.

Please take a minute to send a message in support of the workers at PKC.

The broader campaign calls on the government to:

  • Provide justice for the families of the 65 miners killed at Pasta de Conchos on 19 February 2006
  • End the use of employer-dominated protection contracts
  • Repeal the labour laws enacted on 1 December 2012

  • Reinstate unlawfully fired union activists (SME, PKC, Vidriera de Potosi/Grupo Modelo, Honda, Calzado Sandak/Bata) and allow free and fair elections (PKC, Excellon, Honda, Atento)

You can find more information on the campaign here: http://www.industriall-union.org/mexico-campaign.