News Summaries in December 2023
“Forget the 4-Day Week. Mexican Workers Are Fighting the 6-Day Week,” Washington Post, Dec. 31, 2023 Millions of Mexican workers are on the job six days a week. Now, however, newly strengthened unions are pushing for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing employees two days off per week, writes Post reporter Mary Beth Sheridan. Eight decades after FDR ushered in the five-day workweek in the U.S., the two-day weekend may become a reality in Mexico. Or not. “First, we have to develop economically and industrially in order to have these…these privileges,” said the president of the Hotel Association of Cancún, Jesús Almaguer. Labor lawyer Susana Prieto counts 17 prior failed attempts to enact the five-day week. But the governing pro-labor Morena party of which she is a part has had a majority in Congress and controls more than half of the state legislatures. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has tripled the minimum wage to $1.80 per hour and mandated vacation time to 12 days per...