Will Mexican GM Workers Get a Fair Union Election?

Workers at a second General Motors assembly plant in Mexico are campaigning to join SINTTIA (the National Auto Workers Union), the independent union that won a landmark election to represent workers at another Mexican GM plant in 2022. The 6,500 workers at the San Luis Potosí plant produce the GMC Terrain and the Chevrolet Trax and Equinox SUVs.

Days after SINTTIA filed to represent workers on April 21, a second union, Carlos Leone, began collecting signatures, in what appears to be an effort to ward off a legitimate union at the facility. SINTTIA supporters allege the rival union is being assisted by GM management.

Workers at the plant have been without a union since they voted out their previous union, a Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) affiliate, in 2023. Workers across Mexico had the chance to vote to keep or oust their existing unions as part of Mexico’s 2019 labor law reform, which aimed to allow workers to replace the pro-boss “protection unions” like the CTM that dominate the country’s labor scene and have long thwarted genuine union representation. The CTM is notorious for imposing pro-employer contracts that lock in abysmal pay and working conditions.

Immediately after workers voted out the CTM, GM created a “labor council” at the facility, largely made up of CTM loyalists, to address labor relations at the plant. “It was a way for General Motors to say, ‘We take the workers into account,’” said SINTTIA advisor Willebaldo Gómez Zuppa.

The day that SINTTIA’s effort to represent workers at the San Luis Potosí plant went public, the majority of representatives on the labor council resigned and began collecting signatures for the Carlos Leone union.

The 6,500 workers at GM’s plant in Silao voted overwhelmingly to join SINTTIA in 2022, ousting an employer-friendly union affiliated with the CTM there. Since then, GM management at San Luis Potosi has matched everything SINTTIA has won in Silao.

“HR even tells people: ‘Why join the union? They’ll take dues, where here, at the end of the day you make the same,’” said Gómez Zuppa.

WITH HELP FROM GM?

In order to represent employees at a workplace in Mexico, a union must gather signatures from at least 30 percent of the workforce. The union can then file for recognition. If another union submits signatures from 30 percent of workers within 10 days, an election will be held.

On May 21, Mexico’s Federal Center for Conciliation and Labor Registry announced that the Carlos Leone union had also reached the 30 percent threshold at the San Luis Potosí plant. An election date has yet to be set.

When SINTTIA first sought to represent workers at GM Silao in 2022, three other unions emerged from the woodwork, stating that they too had reached the 30 percent bar to represent workers—among them one CTM affiliate and another union claiming to be independent but quietly operating out of CTM offices.

Even though there were three other unions on the ballot, each of which had allegedly collected signatures from 30 percent of the plant’s workers, SINTTIA swept the election with 78 percent of the vote. “This supposed support for these ‘ghost’ unions was mathematically impossible,” SINTTIA insists, and it remains a mystery how the others got on the ballot.

At the San Luis Potosí plant, SINTTIA alleges that GM management has helped the Carlos Leone union gather signatures.

According to SINTTIA, the Carlos Leone supporters who resigned from the labor council did not return to their jobs on the line, but were still paid their full-time salaries while they collected signatures from workers in the plant. They also had access to a full list of workers’ personal information: full names, date of hire, and CURP (a unique identity code much like a Social Security number), all of which are required for the filing, and which Gómez Zuppa says could only have come from the company.

SINTTIA organizers did not receive this list, and had to collect signatures outside of work hours.

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“We are alarmed by credible reports of GM management colluding with a protection union to block SINTTIA, including misuse of personal data and illegal on-the-job campaigning,” said the United Auto Workers, which represents GM workers in the U.S., in a statement.

"At GM, we respect the freedom of collective association and the exercise of trade union rights, and as always, we will act in accordance with the law and cooperate with the authorities throughout this process," said a GM spokesperson in an emailed statement.

‘A PAPER UNION’

The Carlos Leone union also cropped up recently in Silao, where workers at a Pirelli tire plant have been seeking to join an independent union, the Mexican Workers’ League (La Liga Sindical Obrera Mexicana), and bring the plant under the sector-wide agreement covering the rubber industry. Both the League and Carlos Leone have filed to represent workers there, but an election date has yet to be set.

Some allege that the Carlos Leone union is a front for the CTM and has ties to organized crime. “It’s a paper union,” said a longtime Mexican labor activist who asked not to be named. “It’s for sale to the highest bidder.”

Anti-union strategists have a flair for the dramatic. In a video that has been widely shared among Mexican GM workers on social media, a person collecting signatures of support for the Carlos Leone union is shoved and yelled at by a supposed SINTTIA organizer. But there’s one small wrinkle: “It’s not a member of SINTTIA,” said Alejandra Morales Reynoso, general secretary of SINTTIA. “It’s not a worker.”

SINTTIA leadership brought the video to GM’s legal team and laid out three inconvenient facts: “First, the language and accent that the person uses. She’s not from San Luis,” said Morales Reynoso. “Second: she had a 100 percent new GM shirt. GM hasn’t given out new uniforms; they give out maybe three per year. It’s impossible for someone to have a 100 percent new shirt, because workers wear them. Third, she was wearing sneakers. In the video, you can see that everyone else is wearing safety shoes..

“I told the company: ‘If it was someone from my union, human resources would be there [in an instant] … no question,’” she said. “Because they surveil us day and night.”

A COLLECTIVE PUSH

SINTTIA members at the GM factory complex in Silao assemble the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks, among the company’s most profitable vehicles. Since winning their union in 2022, they have been steadily winning double-digit raises, which the company has matched at its other facilities in a move SINTTIA says is designed to keep the protection unions in and keep SINTTIA out.

SINTTIA won a 10.25 percent increase at the Silao plant earlier this year, bringing hourly wages up to $3 for the lowest-paid and $7 for the highest. Days later, at the CTM-represented GM facility in Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila, workers got a 10.8 percent raise days—suggesting the CTM and the company waited to match what workers at Silao won.

It signals that GM is well aware of what could be won should SINTTIA manage to bargain a shared contract across its facilities in Mexico—a precedent that auto companies across Mexico have resisted for decades. A shared collective bargaining contract across even two plants is something that hasn’t been seen in the 100 years of the industry’s history, according to Gómez Zuppa—even where the same union has successfully organized at multiple plants under one employer.

This leverage, he says, would allow SINTTIA to establish a shared wage floor, and in so doing continue pressuring do-nothing “charro” unions to keep up.

“The vision has always been: it’s no use having a little plant with great working conditions and pay,” said Gómez Zuppa. “Because ultimately, across the auto sector, all of the other plants are pushing conditions downward.” Improving standards for the long haul will depend on independent unions like SINTTIA building density in the sector as a whole, starting with key players like GM.

“The tail doesn’t wag the dog,” said one Mexico-based organizer. “You have to go to the heads of the monster.”