US complains of worker rights violations at Mexican call center

MEXICO CITY (CN) — A U.S. federal agency on Tuesday requested a panel to review the labor situation at a Mexican call center accused of union-busting activities.

The initial complaint, brought in December 2023 by the Mexican Telephone Workers Union to the United States claimed a "denial of rights" at the Hidalgo-based call center Atento Servicios. The call center performs services for the large Mexican bank BBVA México.

The U.S. Office of the Trade Representative asked Mexico in January to conduct a review under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

While the Mexican government found on March 27 that the company had interfered with collective bargaining efforts by denying the Mexican Telephone Workers Union access to carry out union activities and offering bonuses to workers who voted for another union, it decided the company had taken proper steps to remedy the issue.

The U.S. trade representative disagrees with the finding, saying in a statement that "certain of the wrongfully dismissed workers may not have received the full remediation owed to them under Mexican law."

The first panel of this kind occurred in August 2023 after U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai asked Mexico to review the events that led to the end of a 10-year strike at the San Martín copper, lead and zinc mine in the Mexican state of Zacatecas.

The mine is operated by extraction, infrastructure and transportation conglomerate Grupo México, owned by billionaire Germán Larrea Mota-Velasco. The initial complaint was brought to the U.S. trade representative by the National Union of Mine, Metal, Steel and Allied Workers of the Mexican Republic, or The Miners, in June 2023, causing a temporary suspension of the facility.

The Mexican government claimed no rights were violated, a decision the U.S. trade representative disagreed with, invoking an expert panel for the first time under the Facility-Specific Rapid Response Labor Mechanism of the USMCA. According to the Department of Labor, the mechanism "allows the United States to take enforcement actions against individual factories if they fail to comply with domestic freedom of association and collective bargaining laws."

A report released by the Brookings Institution in March found that under the USMCA, "Mexican workers have significant new labor rights, including access to democratic processes of participation in the decision-making of their union through personal, free, direct, and secret voting, as well as the right to approve or reject their collective contracts and contractual reviews."

Center for Labor Research and Trade Union Advisory researcher Luis Rangel agrees with this assessment. 

“In many cases, based on empirical experience, it is until the possibility of escalating conflicts to an international level arises that coercive and harassing actions against union organizers by companies and employer protection unions are limited," he said in a phone interview.

“No successful cases of change and defeat of a protection union have been detected without the action of the mechanisms of the new model. In general terms, we have considered that contrary to the calls of the Mexican authorities to resort to the USMCA as a ‘last resort’ what is being shown is that it is not possible for workers to be successful using local means exclusively,” he said. 

In May 2023, a remediation plan under the trade agreement resulted in $4 million in back pay to Goodyear tire plant workers in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi after a complaint was brought in April 2023 by the Mexican Workers' Trade Union League against the Confederation of Mexican Workers. The union accused the confederation of throwing out an election box the previous month after a union vote didn't go their way.

In May 2019, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador passed a labor law that increased the power of independent labor unions, a blow to the confederation — historically the powerful labor arm of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The law guarantees "personal, free, direct and secret" voting for unions. A union can be "canceled if it is confirmed that its leaders have committed acts of extortion against their employers. Mexican Labor Conciliation Boards will be replaced with labor courts that depend upon the judiciary for the resolution of disputes between employers and employees."

There have been 23 formal complaints brought by labor unions in Mexico under the USMCA spanning the automotive, textile and services industries.

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