Note published on September 18 in Reforma, Negocios [Business] Section by Verónica Gascón.
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The labor reform left a balance of 16 percent of formal workers that are unionized, which leaves the path clear for unions to seek the affiliation of the 84 percent of the people that were left without representation.
Blanya Correal, an expert of the De la Vega & Martínez Law Firm, pointed out that an increase of over 110 in certificates of representativeness was registered between May and August of this year; this means that more and more unions are seeking to add new workers to their ranks.
“(The number of certificates of representativeness) will increase, because what happened is that, after the 1st of May, when the legitimation of agreements ended, we have a remaining 82 percent of collective bargaining agreements that expired and all of the unions that held those agreements are surely looking for affiliations.
“In this sense, the growth of the number of certificates has been exponential”, Correal pointed out, based on an analysis of the statistics that were published by the Federal Center of Conciliation.
Within the sectors with the greatest union activity for the obtainment of certificates we find retail, manufacture, construction, and restaurants.
“The fact that unions can enter into branches, stores, places with fewer workers, facilitates things. The concern is, how sustainable is this? Because unions will have to live off the union fee and this will surely not be enough for covering the costs of representation in work centers that small”, Correal explained
She recalled that in order to obtain a certificate of representativeness, unions must have, as a minimum, the support of 30 percent of the workers at the work center.
“The sector in which there is movement is the services sector. There is a variety of companies, many gas stations and other services are observed. I find it interesting, the way in which it is growing”, she emphasized.
Blanya Correal added that, as a result of the changes in labor matters, unions are changing the way in which they negotiate collective bargaining agreements.
“We have seen that the flags are much more aggressive. In Mexico, we had a tendency of raising salaries one point above inflation; we are now speaking of an inflation that last year reached two digits and had an impact on the trend of salary increases, and this caused us to close last year with figures above 8 percent and now with figures above 9 percent for increases.”
“These results are concentrated in the automotive, maquila and retail sectors”, she explained.
