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On Capitol Hill, Mexican Miners Tell of Police Violence to Break Strike |
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A leadership delegation of striking miners from a Grupo Mexico copper mine in Sonora, Mexico, and the United Steelworkers (USW) today asked members of Congress to withhold a $1.4 billion funding package for Mexico’s security forces proposed by the Bush administration until congressional public hearings are held to investigate use of the police and military to violently crush a six-month-old mine strike over unsafe conditions.
Says USW President Leo Gerard:
Mexico cannot be allowed to violate workers’ human rights with impunity under the pretense of securing borders and combating narco-trafficking. The attack on the Cananea miners is just the most recent in a series of repressive actions by the Mexican government.
Nearly 1,000 federal police now are occupying the Cananea copper mine, one of the world’s largest, and the surrounding area, located 70 miles from the U.S. border.
Police and soldiers using tear gas and pellet guns broke up a worker blockade of the Grupo Mexico mine on Jan. 12, following a ruling by Mexico’s labor board that declared the strike illegal and gave miners 24 hours to return to work.
After workers appealed, courts ruled the strike was legal—yet the police and the government are continuing to keep them from picketing or blocking the mine.
Grupo Mexico, a mining and railroad company that is the world’s third-largest copper producer, has ties to ASARCO Inc., an Arizona-based metals company that employs USW members in Arizona and Texas. USW members in Arizona struck Grupo México-owned copper mines for four months in 2005 over the company’s refusal to bargain in good faith.
More than 1,000 miners represented by Mexico’s National Union of Mine and Metal Workers walked out July 30, 2007, to fight for safer working conditions and other rights.
The strike is taking its toll on Grupo Mexico. The company posted a 54 percent drop in income in the fourth quarter of 2007. Its net profit was $207 million in the last quarter, compared with $453 million a year earlier. Revenue in the October-December period was $1.558 billion, down 17 percent from the same period in 2006.
Labor unions and community groups across Mexico have joined to protest the use of police force to bust the strike. More than 25,000 miners across Mexico walked off the job for a day on Jan. 16 in protest. Six days later, 1,500 teachers, electrical and telephone workers, and farmers marched on the Mexico City office of the labor secretary to demand that the government withdraw police from the mine. On Jan, 18, hundreds of women began blockading Cananea’s schools to protest the police occupation.
The workers went on strike after a deadly February 2006 explosion at another Grupo Mexico mine in the Mexican state of Coahuila that killed 65 miners. There rescue efforts were shut down after only six days, leaving the 65 coal miners entombed for eternity.
An independent panel of health and safety experts investigated the explosion and concluded it was the result of company negligence. The report outlined many problems. Troubles included no preventative maintenance, failing equipment, high levels of toxic dusts and acid mist and a refusal by Grupo Mexico to properly implement worker health and safety programs.
The experts who studied Canenea found a high concentration of silica dust, which is a carcinogen, and discovered that the company was not implementing its safety program. They also found inadequate ventilation in the mine, lack of safety equipment and a very high rate of accidents—“problems that unfortunately we’ve seen before in the Mexican mining industry and especially at Grupo Mexico,” said Ben Davis of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center in Mexico City.
The report was conducted by a volunteer team organized by the Maquiladora Health and Safety Support Network (MHSSN). The network of 400 occupational health and safety professionals provide information, technical assistance and on-site instruction regarding workplace hazards in the 3,000 maquiladora, workplaces along the U.S.-Mexico border.
In 2006, the USW filed a complaint with the U.S. Labor Department charging the Mexican government violated the labor side agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) when it removed from office Napoleon Gómez Urrutia, leader of the National Mineworkers’ Union (Los Mineros).
His supporters claim the Mexican government targeted Gómez, who now lives in Canada, shortly after the explosion in the Pasta de Conchos mine. Many Mexican union leaders say the government cynically tried to deflect public criticism of its failure to protect workers’ lives at the mine by shifting blame to the union.
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