(Expansión) – Months have passed since the beginning of the implementation of the labor reform in Mexico, time that has served some companies and unions to prepare and ensure their sustainability in the new scenario; however, this period has not been enough to achieve the transformation in the culture and even the understanding of the new collective rules.
That is why we continue to hear this question on a recurring basis about the best way to deal with the entry into force of regulations in collective matters.
We are a country that, in the last four decades, navigated in an environment of super flexibility in terms of labor issues, almost everything was allowed in the framework of productivity and competitiveness. The reform came to fundamentally modify, not only the rules, but more importantly, the mentality with which we conceive the worker in the productive system.
Therefore, asking if it is mandatory for a company to have a union is, in itself, a way of violating this change.
Let’s first analyze the root of the question; For years, 85% of companies lived with protection contracts, which really means that we live in union-free environments, where white unionism consolidated a business model aimed at “shielding” the entry of new collective representatives of workers, so that neither one nor the other exercised the defense of the rights of the people within the framework of the balance with the possibilities and results of the companies.
So the improvement or not of the conditions depended on the will of the company administration, pressured by the rotation of workers or motivated by a genuine interest in achieving a productive and positive work environment.
Today the rules change, putting the will of the worker at the center of the process, which currently generates the greatest challenge, because that will today is moved by very diverse interests, even politicized, which put a very high rate of uncertainty in the future of revisions of Collective Contracts and the sustainability of companies.
We hear campaigns inviting workers to vote negatively in revisions or legitimization of contracts, where it is not clear if there is really an interest in claiming and improving conditions, or if it is only a mechanism for new actors to enter their representation. Time will tell if they have a truly social purpose or it’s just a way for the business to change hands.
On the other hand, we continue to see protection unions that continue to insist to companies that the best way to prevent the entry of radical labor groups is to activate the contract and legitimize a relationship that has not really been chosen by the workers. Seeking to maintain the scheme that sustained them economically for so many years. Again the question remains whether the real intention is to play a representative role or just to maintain the business.
And in all these situations, the center of the reform remains outside, which is precisely the exercise of freedom of association. It is not mandatory to have unions, just as it is not mandatory to live without them. The entry of a union must arise naturally and associated with the decision of the workers who find in this figure the answer to their needs.
Probably therein lies the underlying problem, as long as some unions continue to play a destabilizing role in companies and some companies continue to be afraid, the “protection” models, now surely redesigned to turn around the surveillance of the authority, will be perpetuated.
Editor’s note: Blanya Correal is an Industrial Engineer with more than 25 years of international experience in Human Resources and labor strategy, in various multinational companies such as Coca Cola Femsa, Danone and Nissan. She has been recognized for two consecutive years as one of the 30 best CHROs in Mexico and is in the top 20 of the ranking of the Most Powerful Women in Mexico, according to Expansión magazine. Follow her on . The opinions published in this column belong exclusively to the author.
