Posted: Wednesday, 19 August 2009

The CLC joined an international delegation of parliamentarians and trade union leaders in Mexico last weekend in a demonstration of solidarity with the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers (SNTMMSRM) and its elected leader, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia.

The union is one of just a few in Mexico that has resisted government control, by striking for wages above the minimum established by the Mexican government, criticizing labour law reform proposals that would weaken trade union rights, and by continuing to call for an investigation into the 2006 mine disaster in Pasta de Conchos that killed 65 miners.

The Mexican government has twice removed Napoleón Gómez Urrutia from his elected union office, without cause. Gómez now lives in exile in Canada, unable to return to Mexico for fear of his safety. Other leaders in the fiercely independent union have been jailed without charge, or face dubious criminal charges. In 2008 the Committee on Freedom of Association of the International Labour Organization [ILO] concluded that the Mexican government's actions towards the union were incompatible with ILO Convention 87.

Photos: The international delegation of parliamentarians and trade unionists visit Juan Linares, one of the union's officials, jailed without charge in Reclusorio Norte, a prison in Mexico City.