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On May 30 - 31st, a team of nine international observers participated in the first secret ballot election ever ordered by a labor board in Mexico. The decision by Lic. Libia Gomez Padilla, the president of the Junta Local de Conciliacion y Arbitraje in Leon, Guanajuato, to hold an election by secret ballot was unprecedented and a major step forward. The general practice in Mexican labor board elections is that workers are required to express their choice out loud in front of the labor authorities and representatives of the employer and competing unions. This is obviously an extremely intimidating and often risky proposition, as workers are subjected to psychological and often physical violence.

Excellent news! Finally the SITESABES union teachers are seeing the fruits of their labor.  Thanks to the bravery and resistance of the leaders and your support, the workers have won a written agreement with the Labor Board (Junta de Conciliación y Arbitraje), which includes the following:

· The union elections will take place on the 31st of May, 2005

· The election will be done by SECRET BALLOT, something never before seen in Mexico

· There will be international observers

This victory is historic.  Unfortunately, Mexico has a history of violence, manipulation and blackmail associated with the “charro” or company unions.  The common practice in elections is the following: all the workers individually pass by a group of henchmen who threaten them before voting, “if you don’t vote for the company union then you know what awaits you” and then one-by-one they have to say aloud who they are voting for in the presence of 3 or 4 company unions and the independent union.  This has been the prevailing practice for years.  But this time, workers will be voting by secret ballot in the presence of international observers. The local government has also pledged police protection for the workers. This decision is an amazing achievement that can change the history of unionization in Mexico. 

SITESABES is an independent union of adult education workers which, with the assistance of the FAT, has been fighting to gain the right to represent approximately 1,000 adult education workers in high schools and universities. The workers are employed by a state-funded program in the State of Guanajuato, called SABES.

This struggle is of particular significance to Mexican workers because the state government has engaged in a series of maneuvers to cancel the registration of the new union, depriving it of the legal authority to represent workers required under Mexican law. If the government succeeds, this tactic will have ominous implications for all workers seeking to establish real, democratic unions.

Through the FAT, these workers have excellent legal representation and we recently reported that they had won a decision from a three-member appeals court. The case was sent back to the labor court for reconsideration on the two technical issues that stood between SITESABES and the legal right to represent the SABES workers. The decision of the appeals court was an extremely positive development. Unfortunately, the lower court judge re-asserted his decision, apparently without considering either the order of the higher court or the additional materials that had been submitted. SITESABES has therefore been forced once again to file an appeal to the three-member appeals court.

Meanwhile, a very positive result was reached in the first of the cases of the fired union activists to be decided: not only was she ordered reinstated with full back pay, but she also was awarded full benefits—40 day’ bonus, 30 days’ vacation and credits in the savings (SAR) and housing (INFONAVIT) programs from 1997, when she was hired. This is a major victory, and will serve as an important precedent in the up-coming cases. The board has finally begun to set hearing dates for those: three are scheduled for November 13; four for November 27th and the remainder are expected to be scheduled soon.

Although we have received word that SABES complied with the decision, it then turned around and immediately fired her again. This is not surprising, as it is unlikely that there will be a positive resolution regarding the fired union activists without a resolution of their demand for representation.