MEXICO. – The labor reform bill that was sent on a "preferred" status by the Mexican president, was postponed "but not frozen" and will follow its normal course as that of any other law, legislative sources said during the weekend.
The chairman of the Committee on Labor and Social Welfare of the House of Representatives, Carlos Aceves del Olmo, said the initiative has "cooled" but not "frozen".
The lawmaker explained that the committee next Tuesday will formally receive the initiative delivered by the Senate, which "will undergo ordinary procedure, because it is no longer a preferred initiative".
On September 1st, President Felipe Calderon sent this initiative to Congress to be discussed and to be approved within 60 days, then days after it was sent the House it was approved, but with modifications including the removal of items requiring transparency and democracy in the unions.
As the Senate approved the proposal, they had also restored the controversial items regarding on the operation of unions, which most of them were strong allies of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Senators from the opposing parties also joined the PRI party votes to include controversial items, forcing the initiative back to the lower House.
In the initiative they also included a requirement that union elections were to be held freely, direct and secret and not as how they are currently held, which is behind closed doors and freehand that allows the manipulation and control of the leadership.
For Aceves del Olmo, this new procedure overrides the "urgent" status, which will allow for this initiative to be analyzed without a fixed term.
The left wing party deputy Martí Batres, said that the return of the proposal is a good opportunity for the controversial law to be discussed again "from scratch" in order to "make a real reform that benefits the country."
Batres, who is also secretary of the Labor Committee of the House of Representatives, insisted on the need to take "the necessary time to pass this reform", for it to be able to become a regular initiative.
This debate is occurring in the transition process of the change in government power in Mexico between the Calderon Administration of the National Action Party (PAN), to the new president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto from the PRI party, who will officially begin his term on December 1st 2012.
According to the Government, this initiative seeks to promote formal employment and regulate outsourcing employment, and to establish a trial period of three months that currently is nonexistent in the Mexican labor law.
Editorial@sandiegored.com
Translation : Omar.Martinez@sandiegored.com
