Mexico’s Independent Union Movement: Overview Of Victories And Challenges
Mexico - The labor regime of the neoliberal period in Mexico is in full decline. It was already a degeneration of the successful corporatist system, a one-party political structure in which the state controlled the unions under the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. Unions not only became state dependent under the PRI's corporatist system, but also entered a social pact with corporations to suppress wages and labor strife through “protection contracts,” so named because they protect employers from genuine worker organizing.
This corporatist system was in full swing from the 1930s through the 1960s, when the Mexican economy grew rapidly—the fastest in Latin America—and workers organized in national industrial unions and confederations like the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC), and the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM) were rewarded with relatively good salaries and conditions.