América Latina & Caribe

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/60261

Chanting, “We are not partners, we are workers,” hundreds of workers across Mexico who provide rides and deliveries through apps held a two-hour work stoppage on May 15 demanding fair rates, an end to unjustified deactivations, and ultimately, a collective labor agreement with app giants like Uber, Didi, and Rappi (two Uber Eats-style delivery platforms).

The National App Workers Union (la Union Nacional de Trabajadores por Aplicación, UNTA) said the work stoppage included workers in five states and Mexico City. They were joined by app workers in at least 15 countries who held similar stoppages during peak hours.

President Claudia Sheinbaum advanced a landmark federal labor law reform in 2024 recognizing Mexico’s 1.2 million app-based workers as employees — granting them access to social security, profit-sharing, and federal housing credits. But the bar to access these benefits remains too high, workers say: only 10 percent of app workers earn enough to be eligible.

Luis Fernando Mora Reyes, an app worker for seven years and the union’s Secretary of Training and Culture, said he took inspiration from the Flint Sit-Down Strike at General Motors in 1936-7, a landmark in the organizing of auto workers in the U.S.

“Getting off your motorcycle or [out of your] car, and sitting on the sidewalk with a group of workers while you’re discussing, talking, exchanging ideas about the union,” he said, “it reminded me a lot about these images of strikers within the plants at Flint.”

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