The Rapid Response Labor Mechanism (MLRR) is not regulated in Mexico, and is only found at the trade agreement level (USMCA), which makes it evident that legal certainty is needed in our country, even to ascertain whether the employer can be informed about the complaint beforehand or not, about what evidence has been presented, and this is all required to know whether the right process has been followed.
The above because union organizations have used the mechanism to denounce happenings that are unrelated to union freedom or collective bargaining, said Óscar de la Vega, partner at the Firm with the same name and who has had to handle several of the complaints that have reached Mexico.
“This Rapid Response Labor Mechanism, in the way in which we have been currently operating, well, is actually comparable to a trial by the Holy Inquisition, in which you do not know who is accusing you, why they are accusing you, you have no knowledge of the evidence that they have presented, you have no opportunity to object to any evidence. Thus, there is a black hole in the whole matter”, the labor lawyer explained.
De la Vega pointed out that the “American government has no boundaries, they decide what they investigate and what they do not investigate.” What is happening now is that certain groups of organizations, mainly NGOs, or independent unions, see this as an alternative for solving any labor dispute. But that is not the objective of these issues, because we have judges and mechanisms in our Federal Labor Law, and that is the way in which any union dispute should be settled.
Pirelli should not return to the Industry-wide Labor Agreement for the Rubber Industry
The specialist said that the American government currently reviews whether it admits or not a complaint filed by the workers of the Pirelli company, claiming that the Industry-wide Labor Agreement of the Rubber Industry should be applied, and not the collective bargaining agreement currently in force, which was legitimated before the labor authority.
“In the Pirelli matter, the non-application of the Industry-wide Labor Agreement of the Rubber Industry is being questioned; this agreement has not been reviewed since 2017 and, according to the legislation in force in 2017, that collective agreement has been extinguished and no longer exists as it was not reviewed and the Convention of Unions was not called to request the revision of this document.”
He pointed out that the US government intends to apply the Industry-wide Labor Agreement, but “it has no jurisdiction over this matter, since the jurisdictional competence belongs to a Federal Judge in a Labor Court.”
He emphasized that the process of the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism requires that the remaining legal loopholes in Mexico, which have led to a remarkably high use of labor complaints, be reviewed.
It is worth noting that Pirelli has 19 factories around the world, the one located at Silao is the second one with the highest production, with 26,000 tires per day in average.
