Trade unionism in Mexico is recomposed while tariff uncertainty threatens employment

Mexico City – The tariff uncertainty generated by the protectionist policy of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, took the trade union movement in Mexico in the midst of a process of recomposition and restructuring of forces and creed before the change of hegemonic party after the presidential election.

Mexican unions commemorated the labor Day 2025 With the old slope of achieving the unity and the slogan of defending the jobs of the threat of tariffs, in what is the prelude to the revision of the treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC).

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Rodolfo González, general secretary of the Mexican Workers Regional Confederation (CROM), said in an interview with Bloomberg Line that since October a group of unions seeks to integrate into a new central called General Association of Workers (AGT) with the hope of union recomposition in the face of uncertainty.

“We are trying to recompose the labor movement and work together with the working class, we lack a lot

Rodolfo González, general secretary of the CROM

The CROM leader, the first National Confederation of Workers in Mexico, said they have asked President Claudia Sheinbaum be included in the room together for the review of the T-MEC and be part of the talks as their US counterparts and Canada do.

“Only here we seem that we are invisible,” he said.

Corporate workers related to CTMcalls like this for being biles of the governments of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for decades, they cross a reorganization process to demonstrate to the governments of Morena that they are now more democratic and that can be allies of the president Claudia Sheinbaum.

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Independent unions, agglutinated in the UNTthey battle to be seen by Sheinbaum and the governments of Morena, even though for years They walked together as opposition and supported the 2019 labor reform in terms of labor justice and union democratization.

While centrals like the Catemthat before the sexennium of the former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador They did not paint on the union map, They resurfaced with Morena in power.

In this rearrangement, it is now possible to see, for example, the leader of the Mining Union, Napoleon Gómez Urrutiamarching next to COC leader, Isaías Gonzálezwho in PRI Sexenia was impossible to see together because the miners considered “charros” to centrals such as the CTM or the CROC.

In May 2019, in the first year of the AMLO administration, as the former president is known, he entered into force Labor reform in justice and union democratization which was part of the demands of commercial partners to sign the T-MEC.

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The reform included a process of Legitimation of collective work contracts which sought to eliminate employer protection contracts and forced the union leaders to be elected by free, direct and secret vote. These changes stirred the trade union movement who was accustomed to discretion already elected lift leaders.

Alejandra Morales, general secretary of the National Independent Union of Workers of the Automotive Industry (Sinttia), He said that, despite the uncertainty that tariffs bring, in the first quarter of the year they continued normal at the plant of General Motors Silao.

The Symptia leader, a union that was born under the legal framework of the labor reform and after a dispute of the collective contract with a CTM union, told Bloomberg Line that trust that Sheinbaum will make the right decisions to conserve jobs.

Morales said that Trade union is necessary before the episode of uncertainty that the country is experiencingHowever, he criticized that despite the labor reform there are very old union leaders within their union plants, so they no longer get involved in workers’ issues.

“It has always been the call to unity between workers and that we change our unions by unions that really represent the entire working base.”

Alejandra Morales, General Secretary of Symptia

The engines of formal employment in Mexico contracted in the middle of the tariff threat that Trump maintained in the first months of his mandate and before the US president imposed the world a package of reciprocal tariffs that knocked down the financial markets.

Employment creation in the first three months of the year was less than expected Because the construction and manufacturing industries reported a fall in the generation of places, while in Mexico City the generation of employment and in border entities with the US were stagnated.

Luis Monsalvo, co -director Monsalvo Duclauda legal advisory firm in labor law, noted that unions have always been linked to politics, that is, part of their nature is to do political work and in that game, having a change of party in the government, The corporate unions of yesteryear have had to find a way to be linked to power.

The CTM, the CROC, the CTC and in general the unions of the Labor Congress, have had to be linked to the Governmentwhile there are new players who have created their organizations to be connected to the Executive Power and with the Legislative Power, as is the CATEM and the cit.

“I think we are never going to see a union hegemony like the one at other times in history (…) trade unionism, as well as politics in Mexico, it is being restructured and now you suddenly have the chrom with the CROM with the UNT or with the CTC.”

Luis Monsalvo, co -director Monsalvo Duclaud

Monsalvo said that there is a group of unions that is raising the hand to participate in the room together in the review of the T-MEC, which seems legitimate by organizations to want to be part of a consultation organ, although this is not a binding organ or a mandatory organ.

The expert considered that, although the unions They want to participate in the review of the T-MEC, still They are in a transition and relocation stage of the guilds in the face of the diversity of perspectives arising from the application of the 2019 labor reform and the changes it brought to the interior and in the union hegemony.

“The trade unionism in Mexico is still in a stage of cohesion in front of the labor reform where the collective contracts that were refined are beginning to see the real negotiation activity of the parties and it seems to me that we are still going to take this sexennium in which this situation is stabilized”

Luis Monsalvo, co -director Monsalvo Duclaud