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CANCÚN, Mexico — On a latest Friday, like practically day by day, Maricela de la Cruz awakened at 5 a.m. She caught two buses to get from her dad and mom’ modest house on the outskirts of Cancún to the J.W. Marriott Resort & Spa. As vacationers sunned on the white-sand seashore exterior, she spent eight hours scrubbing bogs and making beds.
The 28-year-old housekeeper works six days each week. So do tens of millions of different working-class individuals in Mexico — lodge workers, auto assemblers, waiters.
However now, employees in america’ No. 1 buying and selling accomplice are rebelling. The Mexican Congress is debating a constitutional modification to ensure workers two days off per week, a proposal pushed by unions. Over eight many years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered within the five-day workweek in america, it lastly could be coming to Mexico.
“Each employee goals of this,” de la Cruz mentioned. “Extra social justice.”
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The Mexican employees’ battle for the 40-hour week comes amid a rising international debate over work schedules. But there’s a huge divide in how that dialog is enjoying out. Whereas North Individuals and Europeans experiment with a four-day week, many workers in creating international locations toil six days — or extra. (In India, a tech billionaire not too long ago brought about an uproar by suggesting a 70-hour week.)
The talk goes to basic questions of employees’ rights and their obligations to their corporations and their nations’ growth.
De la Cruz joined hundreds of cooks, waitresses, bellboys and gardeners marching by way of downtown Cancún below a late-afternoon solar final month, chanting “Sure to 2 days off!”
“We’ve seen how different international locations have shorter hours than us,” she mentioned.
However Mexico is much less productive than extra developed international locations, mentioned Jesús Almaguer, president of the Lodge Affiliation of Cancún. “First, we’ve got to develop economically and industrially with a purpose to have these” — he paused — “these privileges.”
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A brash lawyer says: ‘That is the second’
The five-day battle’s most seen champion is Susana Prieto, a raspy-voiced labor lawyer who as soon as labored in an meeting plant in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the maquiladora middle throughout from El Paso After she received election to Congress in 2021 with the governing Morena get together, she found there had been prior efforts to legislate a five-day workweek. Seventeen of them, to be exact.
“I mentioned, ‘I feel that is the second,’” Prieto recalled.
Morena had a majority in Congress and managed greater than half of state legislatures — essential for amending the structure. And get together founder Andrés Manuel López Obrador had emerged as Mexico’s most pro-labor president in many years.
Since taking workplace in 2018, he has tripled the minimal wage, to the equal of round $1.80 an hour. He has doubled mandated trip time, to 12 days a 12 months. He has outlawed the abusive “subcontracting” of full-time workers.
And Latin America was starting to vary. Historically, “our mannequin of growth has been based mostly on low salaries and uncooked supplies,” mentioned Juan Carlos Moreno Brid, an economist on the Nationwide Autonomous College of Mexico. However Colombia and Chile, each led by leftists, handed legal guidelines this 12 months to shorten the workweek.
In April, Prieto’s invoice was permitted by the Home Committee on constitutional Points.
“The enterprise homeowners had a coronary heart assault,” she mentioned.
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Mexican unions develop into an actual factor
The push for change hasn’t come solely from above. Unions have develop into extra impartial, partly due to the revamped North American free-trade settlement that took impact in 2020. Within the negotiations, Mexico agreed to reform its system of weak, business-controlled unions. Now, employees have the appropriate to decide on their labor leaders by secret poll.
That has empowered individuals akin to Mario Machuca, the Cancún-based regional consultant for the Revolutionary Confederation of Staff and Peasants. The union has spearheaded protests in favor of the five-day workweek.
“At the moment, these of us who’re [union] leaders can elevate our voices in favor of the employees,” he mentioned. “As a result of we actually are their legit representatives.”
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The labor reforms are getting a further enhance from a brand new era of Mexicans who’re extra related to the world — and one another — by the web, migration and tourism.
Alejandra Chang, 32, grew up watching her father work six days per week as a waiter. Now she does the identical at a Cancún resort, Seadust. Between work and her commute — no less than an hour every means — she has little private time. She is set to vary that.
One other time without work every week “would change my life,” she mentioned. “I’d see my household.”
José Rubén Cob, 33, a prepare dinner on the Hyatt Ziva resort, has little doubt what’s driving the employee mobilization. He holds up his iPhone. “It’s due to this,” he mentioned. Staff are utilizing Fb and WhatsApp to arrange demonstrations. “Now, if we share one thing right here in Cancún, you’ll find out about it everywhere in the nation.”
Mexicans work lengthy hours, however productiveness lags
Mexico is among the many hardest-working of the main industrialized international locations, based on knowledge from the Group for Financial Cooperation and Improvement, or OECD. The common employee clocks 2,226 hours a 12 months — 415 greater than in america, and 540 greater than in Canada.
However Mexico has lagged woefully in productiveness: GDP per employee grew simply 0.1 % a 12 months from 1991 to 2020, based on the World Financial institution. Development throughout the OECD, a bunch of largely rich North American and European international locations, averaged 1.1 % throughout that interval. And round half the workforce nonetheless labors within the casual sector, with little entry to authorized protections or advantages. Economists warn that the casual sector might develop as employers attempt to dodge new wage and schedule reforms.
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In Cancún, a high overseas vacation spot for American vacationers, employers fear they should rent extra employees to fill shifts, after which cross on the prices to shoppers. Angélica Frías, the state consultant of Coparmex, the nationwide enterprise homeowners’ affiliation, has two phrases for the pro-labor people: Punta Cana.
The Dominican resort “will take away the vacationers,” she mentioned. “Will probably be cheaper to go to different locations.”
Frías, head of a consulting agency, prides herself on operating a contemporary firm. She wears a banana-yellow blazer and denims. On the wall is a huge stencil of Steve Jobs. However even she has been stunned by the flurry of labor reforms snaking by way of Congress.
There’s a transfer to provide new dads a paid, month-long paternity depart. A “chair legislation” mandates seats and relaxation breaks for workers who work on their toes. It might not be totally coincidental, she mentioned, that the presidential elections in June is looming.
Prieto factors to research that present that decreasing the workweek can lead to better-rested, more-productive workers. However López Obrador, dealing with blowback from employers, not too long ago urged Congress to carry a brand new spherical of negotiations on the change.
The delay hasn’t discouraged the employees in Cancún, who’re ready to march once more.
“That is one thing we want,” mentioned Chang, the Seadust employee. “Two days off.”
Lorena Rios and Gabriela Martínez in Mexico Metropolis contributed to this report.