SEARCH
New Steelworkers’ Website Sets Record Straight on Grupo Mexico |
 |
|
The United Steelworkers (USW) has launched a new website to shine the spotlight on the business practices of Grupo México, a Mexican conglomerate that owns numerous businesses in the Western Hemisphere.
The Record Speaks for Itself hosts links to resources to educate the public about Grupo México’s treatment of its workers at home and abroad, and its sorry record on the environment.
Grupo México, a mining and railroad company, is the world’s third-largest copper producer. It 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.
In January, nearly 1,000 federal police and soldiers using tear gas and pellet guns broke up a worker blockade of Grupo México’s Cananea copper mine, one of the world’s largest, 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 kept them from picketing or blocking the mine.
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 workers went on strike after a deadly February 2006 explosion at another Grupo México mine in the Mexican state of Coahuila that killed 65 miners. The 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 resulted from company negligence. The panel’s report outlined many problems, including inadequate preventative maintenance, failing equipment, high levels of toxic dusts and acid mist. Further, Grupo México has failed to properly implement worker health and safety programs.
That same month the police broke up the strike, the Mexican government removed Napoleon Gómez Urrutia, the leader of the mine workers’ union, creating an international outcry and protests in Mexico demanding his reinstatement.
Terry Bonds, director of USW District 12, says:
There have been several excellent reports and videos created by a number of groups recently that examine Grupo Mexico’s behavior over the course of many years, and the USW has gathered those documents into one place. USW members working for ASARCO in Texas and Arizona are familiar with Grupo Mexico’s record; we feel the public should be as well.
The website hosts links to The Record Speaks for Itself, a report released by the USW last month (see video) and An Injury to One, a report released by the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF). The site also offers information about and a trailer for “Los Caido,” an independently filmed documentary about the mine explosion at Pasta de Conchos. Copies of the documentary are available through the site.
1 Comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
What this article fails to mention is that Grupo Mexico’s chief financial officer, J. Eduardo Gonzalez, is a former executive of Kimberley Clark de Mexico, the Mexican subsidiary of the US-based paper corporation Kimberley Clark. That company was founded by the family of Wisconsin Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner, one of the most vociferous opponents of Mexican immigration to the United States.
36 phony Democrats voted with mean-spirited Republicans to pass Sensenbrenner’s anti-worker, anti-immigrant HR 4437.
Sensenbrenner and his ilk are not good and just people. they are exploiters of the first order. That they even get elected to office here in the US is a national disgrace.