Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, November 09, 2012

Reform and politics

What happens if the president-elect suffers a legislative defeat before he takes office?

Reform in Mexico: Labour pains

WALK into a restaurant in Mexico mid-morning and you will find a surplus of idle waiters… restaurants are alternately over- and understaffed because the ancient labour laws restrict part-time work…

The labour code was last overhauled in 1970, and it shows. Mexico is the only country in Latin America where it is legal to sack a woman for being pregnant…

A bill before Congress aims to modernise the labour code, introducing hourly pay, trial periods of up to six months and a tighter cap on severance pay, though it does nothing to encourage dispute-settlement without recourse to tribunals. It would also introduce clearer rules on outsourcing and bring women’s rights into the 21st century…

But the bill risks foundering over the ambition of the outgoing government of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) to clean up Mexico’s powerful trade unions. The bill requires unions to elect officials by secret ballot and to submit accounts for auditing. That threatens the hitherto unchallenged power of some union bosses…

Enrique Peña Nieto

The proposals would affect only private-sector unions and the state-run oil industry. But the unions have long been a corporatist pillar of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Enrique Peña Nieto, who takes office as Mexico’s president on December 1st…

Mr Peña… has promised some far-reaching reforms. The easy passage of the labour-market part of the bill suggests that he can count on the PAN to support his plans to open the energy sector and simplify the tax code. But the PAN’s insistence on the union-busting clauses, and his own party’s rejection of them, suggests trouble ahead…