Unregulated mines in Mexico

The state of Coahuila, Mexico produces 95% of Mexico's coal (15 million tons a year). Most of the mines are now unregulated with no health, safety or environmental protections & notoriously unsafe with frequent accidents, explosions, flooding, gas leaks, fires. In August 2012 the government closed down 32 small coal mines due to safety issues that have caused the deaths of dozens of workers. But of course nothing will actually be done to regulate the mine owners because that would conflict with the restructuring & privatizing of the industrial sector & neoliberal labor policies required by the World Bank & NAFTA.

Mexico once had more progressive labor laws than the US (which are by no means the gold standard of labor legislation) but with the adoption of an IMF structural adjustment program in 1982 & NAFTA in 1994 those rights have been systematically gutted. This put the government on a collision course with the Mexican unions, in particular the mining union. One of the methods used to weaken & gut union power was hiring non-unionized contract workers without labor protections. Contract workers were a new phenomenon in Mexico to enforce neoliberal privatization. Striking miners were also punished by being blacklisted. In one notorious instance, 800 were blacklisted & forced to move to the US to find work--weakening the miners union in Mexico (but their militancy a mighty advantage to the US labor movement). In 2006, Gomez Urrutia, the militant head of the miners union actually had to flee trumped up charges in Mexico & run the union from exile in Vancouver, Canada. Miners have also reportedly faced coercion & violence from police authorities, mining companies, & contracted paramilitary operatives.

The Mexican government is now reporting evidence of “criminal infiltration” in Coahuila's mines by drug cartels looking to diversify from drug smuggling, kidnapping, & extortion. The Mexican newspaper Reforma estimated organized crime syndicates, in particular the Zeta cartel, are making half a million dollars a week off small, unregulated mines & selling the coal to legal businesses. The distinction between organized crime & legal business is not at all apparent to the miners. But the “legal” mine owners are reportedly quite distressed at being bested in their plunder.

This man is a miner in one of the unregulated coal mines in Coahuila working without health & safety protections & lacking even basic equipment. (Photo by Reuters)