Mexico Promulgates the Organic Law of the Federal Center for Conciliation and Labor Registration

On January 6, 2020, the Official Gazette of the Federation (Diario Oficial de la Federación) published the Organic Law of the Federal Center for Conciliation and Labor Registration, which became effective on January 7, 2020, the day after its publication.

A February 2017 decree that reframed various provisions of the Constitution of Mexico contemplated the creation of a decentralized public body of the Federal Public Administration. This decentralized body will have the purpose of guaranteeing democracy and union representation, and carrying out the conciliatory function in labor disputes of federal jurisdiction. Further, it will handle union registration, collective bargaining agreements, and internal work regulations, thus guaranteeing workers the full exercise of their collective rights.

The Center will be based in Mexico City and will have a local presence through various state offices.

In addition to the duties mentioned above, the Center will do the following:

• Handle federal individual and collective conciliations
• Help unions or employees elect union directive boards
• Convoke and organize a scrutinizing process at the request of employees regarding documents filed in relation to the election of union directive boards
• Issue the non-conciliation certificates
• Issue representation certificates
• Verify employees’ majority support for collective bargaining agreements (and their revisions) and monitor the exercise of personal, free, direct, and secret votes
• Verify that employees are made aware of the content of collective bargaining agreements
• Provide documentation and information to courts related to the registration of collective bargaining agreements, rates, lists of affiliated employees to the disputing unions, and all the information that it possesses
• Place information about unions in the public domain and provide copies of the documents in the registered files
• Impose fines for noncompliance with the provisions of the Federal Labor Law

Finally, the third transitory article (from the Organic Law of the Federal Center of Conciliation and Labor Registration) states that the procedure for legitimizing existing collective bargaining agreements (provided in the 13th transitory article of the decree published on May 1, 2019, and then regulated by the Protocol for the Legitimation of Existing Collective Bargaining Agreements, issued on July 31, 2019) will be carried out by the Center until it starts its registry functions and a new protocol is issued.

The files of the procedures for the Legitimation of Existing Collective Bargaining Agreements, performed before  by the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, will be transferred to the Center, which may determine the termination of those collective bargaining agreements that do not meet the requirements set forth in the Federal Labor Law.

The Mexico City office of Ogletree Deakins will continue to monitor and report on labor and employment law developments in Mexico and post updates on the Cross-Border blog.