UPDATED ASSESSMENT OF MEXICO'S WAGE RATE GAP 1996-2011

UPDATED ASSESSMENT OF MEXICO'S WAGE RATE GAP 1996-2011
The Mexican State, which has been permanently challenged for the lack of legitimacy of its elections in 2006 and 2012, corroborates every year its vocation as a customary violator of the labour rights of its citizens
The premeditated and carefully designed State policy of all governments in power since the 1980s –which deliberately pauperises the Mexican labour force– leaves no alternative but to continue exhibiting the nefarious consequences of such policy on the real wages of workers and the huge wage gaps with equivalent workers in the U.S. and, barring the Philippines, in all 31 countries included in our assessments. Moreover, it is necessary to depict once again the political context in which this planned pauperisation is imposed. Assessing the wage data of Mexico's manufacturing sector since 1975, irremediably exhibits the exploitative and repressive character of the group that has wielded real power for more than three decades. A group that has completely submitted itself to international financial capitalism and the interest of its corporations, by working as its market agent in exchange for the benefits of its full support to remain in power. This ethos stands out on a global scale for the tremendous erosion of labour rights. The illegitimate and mafia-like nature that accurately delineates the Mexican State, has imposed an ethos of modern-slave-work, of near labour bondage that drags the country back to conditions prevailing before the social revolution of 1910.

The future of wage rates for all employed in the manufacturing sector in Mexico is absolutely ominous unless society removes from power those who have imposed the Mafia State and impose a citizen's government of real democracy. Every year the government's economic policies contain or further erode real wage rates. Additionally, the State has unleashed a policy of repression of the rights of freedom of association and to organise and collective bargaining. Contrary to what corporate media, (such as The Economist) like to portray, the deep impoverishment of Mexicans is an incontrovertible fact. Official data acknowledge that 81% of Mexicans are poor (Coneval 2009). By the same token, in 2011 the minimum wage was able to afford 11,9% of the 40 goods of the CBIor indispensable basket of goods, down from 49% in 1994, a 77% loss of purchasing power in 17 years (1) STPS: SalariosMínimos Vigentes 1994 & 2011; 2) Laura Juárez Sánchez: Polítíca económica neoliberal y salarios, Trabajadores, Universidad Obrera de Mexico VLT, Vol. 61, julio-agosto de 2007: 3) Laura Juárez Sánchez: Violencia económica en contra de los trabajadores mexicanos, Revista Trabajadores, Universidad Obrera de Mexico, VLT, Noviembre-Diciembre2011, Número 87), which is deemed essential for survival. Moreover, the new government maintained in 2013 the policy of strong price increases in the energy sector, which guarantees a greater pauperisation of real wages. Parting from these findings, it is estimated –with a great degree of confidence– that less than 10% of all salaried workers can afford the CBI in 2013. This prospectus remains with exactly the same tone conveyed in previous reports since 2007, for the deprivation, depredation and deliberate pauperisation – as a State policy– continue deepening.

In summary, three decades of predatory capitalism in Mexico exposes, decisively, a government's policy –from the perspective of manufacturing wages rates in particular and all wages in general– of perverse and premeditated pauperisation and exploitation of Mexican labour, for the only public policy of the Mafia State is to govern for the benefit of domestic and foreign institutional investors and their corporations. In this way, as long as the "robber baron" elites currently in power remain in control, the deepening of the pauperisation of Mexico's population is more than guaranteed, in such a way that the odds in favour of making the closing of Mexico's living-wage gap a reality in the term of thirty years is currently zero.

Downloadthe pdf file with the analysis of Mexico's wage rate gap here.