Parliamentary, Union Leaders Demand Mexican Government Cease Attacks On Mineworkers

Contact:    Geneva            Tom Grinter, ICEM +41 22 304 1853
                                       Anita Gardner, IMF +41 22 308 5032
                Mexico City      Gerald Fernandez, USW +1 412 953 7531
                                       Ben Davis, Solidarity Center 044 55 5401 7433

MEXICO CITY – Parliamentary and trade union leaders from 13 countries joined Mexican union leaders and legislators yesterday to call for an end to the persecution of the Mexican mineworkers’ union and its leader, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia.

The international delegation with members of the special commission of the Mexican Senate established to investigate the strike at the Cananea mine, which has ruin for nearly two years.  The meeting also included federal deputies and leaders of the National Union of Workers (UNT) and Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union (SME).

Jack Layton, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), raised the delegation’s concerns in a meeting with Mexico’s Labor Secretary.  “We made it clear that the government’s interference in union governance, it’s 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 also met with Marcelo Ebrard, chief executive of the Federal District (Mexico City).

Members of the delegation held meetings with the Embassies of Australia, Canada, Germany, Norway, Poland, 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.”

“Workers should never be punished for demanding the right to collectively bargain.”

— President Barack Obama, May 17, 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGgsFjPG1I4)

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