LatinNews Daily - 19 June 2023

* The US Department of Labour has announced that the US has asked Mexico to review whether workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining are being denied at the San Martín mine in Zacatecas state. The mine is owned by Industrial Minera México S.A. de C.V., a subsidiary of Grupo México, one of Mexico’s biggest conglomerates. The Department of Labour noted that this was the eleventh time that the US has formally invoked the Rapid Response Labour Mechanism (RRM) in the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement (USMCA), following another recent request concerning an Industrias del Interior (Inisa) garment factory in Aguascalientes state. The decision to trigger the RRM was made in response to a petition filed by the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the US-based union United Steelworkers and Mexican union Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores Mineros, Metalúrgicos, Siderúrgicos y Similares de la República Mexicana (SNTMMSSRM), which alleged a violation of the SNTMMSSRM’s rights “as title holder of the collective bargaining agreement at the San Martín mine and the hiring of workers to replace striking workers in violation of the collective bargaining agreement and Mexican law.” Mexico’s government has 10 days to decide whether to conduct a review and 45 days to investigate the claims and present its findings.