The US Department of Labor announced in late June a request to Mexico to review the case, following a complaint from the Mexican union Los Mineros and two major US labor organizations, the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers.
Days later, on August 1, Mexican authorities said that the United States complaint under the rapid response labor mechanism of the North American Trade Agreement, TMEC, does not apply to a conflict in the San Martín mine, belonging to Grupo México, and added that the dispute will be resolved by the local courts.
In the absence of prior agreements, the neighboring country to the north requested to open the first labor panel under the T-MEC treaty. Now the company sees in the activation of the panel USMCA Dispute Resolution “an opportunity to confirm, once and for all, that the Law has never been violated and even less has its workers been prevented from exercising their constitutional rights to have decent work and join the union organization of their choice.”
The tycoon’s signature German Larrea asserted that “fully trust” in the actions of both the Ministry of Economy and of Labor and Social Welfare in the case of the San Martín mine, adhering to the law and guaranteeing the free will of the workers.
“An entire community in Zacatecas depends on the work that is carried out in the mine, the opening of this Dispute Resolution Panel will finally give certainty and tranquility to all the inhabitants of Sombrete, Zacatecas,” he concludes.