As noted on the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union website, “The international trade union movement is holding various actions including rallies, meetings with Mexican ambassadors, and letter and mass email communication http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=863 in at least 30 countries around the world from February 14 to 19, 2011. The date coincides with the fifth anniversary of the deaths of 65 miners at the Pasta de Conchos mine disaster in Mexico on February 19, 2006. …CEP is joining trade unions across Canada and around the world in actions calling for trade union rights in Mexico.”
CEP explains that, “Over the last five years, there has been a serious escalation in the systematic and brazen violation of the rights of Mexican workers. Mexican workers seeking to join or form independent democratic trade unions not only face the threats and intimidation of their employers, they face hired thugs (in the workplace and at government hearings), biased law enforcement, federal security forces occupying their work places, attacks on union leaders as well as illegal and unconstitutional government resolutions to annul freedom of association. These violations of the right to freedom of association by the Mexican government must stop!”
Additionally, CUPE Today reports that, “When over 40,000 electrical workers were fired in 2009 by the Mexican government in order to privatize the company and liquidate the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), CUPE members responded in solidarity by participating in a delegation to Mexico and sending financial support to the union and as part of the Tri-National Energy Sector working group. The Mexican government has systematically and repeatedly violated Mexican law and international standards to crush independent trade unions.”
TAKE ACTION
Council of Canadians activists are encouraged to join the demonstrations of support that have been organized in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver – Toronto: rally at the Mexican Consulate, 199 Bay Street, on February 14 at 1:00 p.m.; Montreal: rally at the Mexican Consulate, 2055 Peel Street, on February 15 at 11:30 a.m.; Ottawa: rally at the Mexican Embassy, 45 O’Connor Street, on February 15 at 3:00 p.m.; Vancouver: rally at the Mexican Consulate, Harbour Green Park, West Cordova & Bute, on February 17 at 10:30 a.m.
For more information, please go to http://www.cep.ca/event/letter-fact-sheets-and-poster-global-days-action-trade-union-rights-mexico-feb-14-18-2011 and http://cupe.ca/global-justice/mexico-global-days-action-february-14.
