For decades, millions of Mexican workers have labored under “protection contracts,” signed behind their backs by corrupt unions who collected dues but did nothing for the workers. Often, workers never even knew they had a contract. Dissidents who sought to organize genuine unions faced intimidation, firing, and even violence. This was the situation facing the 6,000 auto workers at the GM plant in Silao, Guanajuato, who produce the profitable Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra.
But change has been opened up by new Mexican laws passed by the progressive Morena Party, and by the labor provisions in the new trade agreement among Mexico, the United States, and Canada (the USMCA). Now, all contracts must be ratified by workers in secret ballot elections—giving workers a major opportunity to replace their corrupt unions with genuine, democratic unions that fight for them on the shop floor.
This process has not been easy. So far, workers have voted out their corrupt union in only 16 of more than 2,000 votes. The most notable of these votes was at the GM Silao plant, where workers voted in August to oust the corrupt CTM local—after an earlier vote in April had to be thrown out when union officials, knowing they were heading for a defeat, broke into the ballot boxes and destroyed ballots.
But the GM Silao workers haven’t won yet. They still have to elect a union to represent them, and the old union is campaigning hard with its arsenal of lies, bribes, and threats. The newly formed democratic union SINTTIA—the Independent National Union of Auto Workers—must fight uphill against a well-organized, well-funded machine, with very few resources.
That’s where you come in. The GM struggle can help launch a new era in Mexican labor history in which democratic independent unions based on collective working-class solidarity will prevail. Please contribute generously from a sense of internationalism and solidarity!
Donate to support Mexican autoworkers’ fight for a real union!
