Note published on February 22 in El Economista, Empresas [Companies] Section by María del Pilar Martínez.
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Even though there were no strikes during the month of December, the majority of the calls to strike that happened were mainly due to the salary review of the contract by law, followed by a salary review of the collective bargaining agreement and of the comprehensive review of the collective bargaining agreement.
Calls to strike during 2022, in order to protect collective or salary bargaining, happened at a rate of 20 recourses in average: the month of December, however, showed a different behavior; in face of the entry into force of the third stage of the labor reform, over 4oo% more calls to strike were registered, the National Commission on Minimum Wages (Conasami) explains in its monthly report,
“516 calls to strike were registered in 2022; normally, there is an increase in the requests for conciliation with calls to strike at the end of the year; thus, there was a significant increase of requests in December, most of them for salary reviews of the contracts by law, followed by the salary review of the collective bargaining agreement and the comprehensive review of the collective bargaining agreement”, the report explains.
Up to 52 calls to strike have been registered in 2023;
Meanwhile, 7 strikes broke out in 2022, and the only one that continues active is that of Farmaqro, S.A. de C.V., with the involvement of 20 workers (1,380 man days). There are currently 11 strikes in progress, 5 of them started between 2020 and 2022.
There were no strikes in 2018, there were 9 strikes in each year in 2019 and 2020; there were 2 strikes in 2021 and there were 7 in total in 2022.
Óscar de la Vega, partner at De la Vega & Martínez Rojas said that union organizations opted for strike calls in order to prove their own leadership, it is a strategy used because they don’t want to risk losing the collective bargaining agreement because of lack of knowledge by workers of its content and of who the leader is.
“Unions that make no calls to strike see their power greatly diminished, and what the workers want to see is a representative that does enforce their rights. An ideal way [of achieving this] is calling a strike, this is why there has been a significant increase.
De la Vega, however, does not rule out that these calls to strike could become actual strikes, as salary negotiations have become increasingly complicated in face of an inflation that does not decrease and that it is not possible to grant higher salary increases.
It is worth noting that union bases exert a strong pressure on leaders, as they are now the ones that will approve or not the agreements reached with the company, this situation could arise in the second semester of the year.
