The Mexican Supreme Court (SCJN), in a historic decision on September 11, granted workers the right to a secret ballot in union representation elections. Benedicto Martínez, a leader of the Authentic Labor Front (FAT), called the decision an important step toward union democracy. The demand for the secret ballot in elections where workers choose a union to represent them has been at the top of the agenda of the democratic workers’ movement in Mexico for decades.
Up until now, a worker in Mexico voted in such elections by speaking out loud in front of his or her boss, the rival unions seeking to represent workers in that plant, government authorities conducting the election, and sometimes while surrounded by hoodlums brought in to intimidate them. Company managers, union officials or gangsters often threatened workers on their way to the voting place and sometimes in the course of the elections they even beat up workers. Through such tactics, employers and bureaucratic, corrupt and gangsterized unions have been able to prevent workers from choosing an independent and democratic union to represent them.
The Center for Labor Research and Union Consultation (CILAS) called the Supreme Court decision a land mark event. “It’s a step toward real freedom to choose a labor union,” said a representative of the group. CILAS emphasized the continued need to protect workers during union elections from gangsters’ violent attacks and to prosecute those responsible.
The FAT and CILAS have been among the leading organizations in the fight for workers’ democratic union rights in Mexico, including the right to choose a union by a secret ballot. While they hailed the secret ballot decision as a tremendous victory, they also recognized that many things remained to be done to assure workers’ rights.
Martínez laid out an agenda for the workers movement in days to come, including financial reporting and transparency in economic affairs, impartial labor boards, and an end to “protection contracts.” Authorities believe that the great majority of union contracts in Mexico are such protection agreements with minimal conditions arrived at secretly by employers, lawyers and union officials without the knowledge of the workers.
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