Mexican steelworkers continue strike despite court case and union
On May 24, 3,500 workers at ArcelorMittal’s steel plant in the Pacific port of Lazaro Cárdenas in the Mexican state of Michoacán began a walkout that was declared a strike on June 4. Workers hung red and black flags on the plant’s main gate and blocked access to the plant. Workers also blockaded the company’s Las Truchas mining complex, located 27 kilometers from the mine.
ArcelorMittal, founded by Indian magnate Lakshi Mittal, who once served as Forbes as the sixth richest man in the world and a member of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs, it is the second largest steel company in the world. It is ranked 197th on the 2022 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest companies, is valued at around $94 billion, and posted adjusted profits of $4.9 billion last year.
The strike was called by Section 271 of the National Union of Mining, Metallurgical, Steel and Similar Workers (SNTMMSSRM), commonly known as “Los Mineros”.
The reason was a significant underpayment of the profit shares to which the workers are entitled under Mexican law. This recurring problem led to a short strike in 2022. The workers are also demanding a legally mandated bonus payment.
The plant provides 8,000 direct jobs and up to 50,000 indirect jobs and produces 30 percent of the steel for the Mexican market. It supplies key industries such as construction, automotive and appliance manufacturing. Downtime, in turn, impacts the U.S. supply chain.
ArcelorMittal claims that the illegal blockades have resulted in significant production losses in the order of 500,000 tonnes of steel and damage to the main blast furnace.
ArcerlorMittal obtained a ruling from three labour courts that the strike was illegal and an injunction on June 18. However, the workers continued their strike. A hearing on the legality of the strike is now scheduled for August 8 before a constitutional court.
Judgments also prevented the arrest of nine workers against whom the company had filed charges for instigating the conflict.
The company threatened mass layoffs of the strikers and announced the immediate cancellation of the collective agreement.
Despite its clamor and as a sign of the collective strength of the strikers, the company proposed the following solution to the strike on Monday, July 8:
- To pay employees the profit due as determined by an independent body for the year 2021 and to submit the question for the years 2022 and 2023 to an auditor selected by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs for the years 2023 and 2024;
- Each worker will be paid a net payment of 40,000 pesos (US$2,250), half in vouchers and half in cash. This payment will also be given to members of Sections 272 and 336 of the union.
- To cover 75 percent of the wages for the days not worked by the strikers, back to 24 May; and
- Not to exert any pressure on employees or to take any reprisals as a result of the current labour dispute.
Section 271 workers rejected the company’s proposal on Tuesday evening, July 9. It is unknown whether the company will now make further concessions.
The national union had already spoken out against Local 271’s strike action on May 24 and last week pushed for approval of the company’s proposal, which it undoubtedly helped sign.
At the head of the national union is the notorious Napoleon Gómez Urrutia, who fled Mexico and spent ten years there because he was accused of embezzling $55 million from the union’s assets.
Gómez Urrutia has previously collaborated with the Mexican government to deprive Mexican miners and steelworkers of their social benefits, pensions and wages.
The miners’ union has worked for years with the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, a long-standing tool for extending US imperialism’s control over foreign unions and labor disputes. Gomez is also the long-time president of the International Workers’ Confederation (in Spanish, Confederación de Trabajadores, CIT), which has ties to major unions in the US, Canada and Britain, such as the AFL-CIO and the United Steel Workers.
Los Mineros supported the 2017 presidential campaign of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, and Gomez Urrutia ran for AMLO’s Morena party and became a senator in Congress in 2018. He also served as president of the Labor and Social Affairs Commission and secretary of the Economic Commission.
Gomez Urrutia has reportedly been persistent in trying to meet with Morena’s incoming leader, Claudia Sheinbaum, in recent weeks, presumably to use her influence to end the strike, but so far he has been rebuffed. There is speculation in the Mexican press that this may be partly because the incoming leader of the Morena deputies, Ricardo Monreal, has other high-level contacts in the union bureaucracy who oppose Gomez Urrutia.
In 2019, AMLO met personally with the steel company’s owner, Lakshmi Mittal, to thank him for his promise to invest another billion dollars in Lázaro Cárdenas and guarantee “security for your investments.”
The miners’ strike is at a dangerous crossroads: it faces a ruling favorable to the company and reprisals that cost them their livelihood. One only has to remember the thousands of layoffs following the wave of wildcat strikes in Matamoros in 2019, after the companies had pledged not to retaliate.
The strikers at ArcelorMittal must prevent their struggle from being subordinated to the corrupt calculations of any faction of the union bureaucracy whose privileges and careers ultimately depend on winning the favor of management, government and imperialism. These corporate stooges cannot be trusted.
Strike committees must be set up immediately under the democratic control of the workers themselves, to oversee all negotiations and collective bargaining and to enforce workers’ demands based on their real needs – not on what the company can supposedly “afford”.
The steelworkers are facing a huge multinational corporation, backed by even more powerful financial groups and governments. Their action committees must appeal above all to the steelworkers, miners, autoworkers and their class brothers in other sectors in North America and internationally and actively mobilize them to support their struggle.
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