Transition financial burdens should not fall on workers: Gómez Urrutia

Mexico City. In the face of technological and environmental changes, the president of the International Confederation of Workers (CIT), federal deputy Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, demanded to guarantee that the financial burdens of this transition “do not fall on workers and their families in the form of policies of austerity.”

In Geneva, Switzerland, when participating in the 21st Meeting of the World Council of the Construction and Wood International (ICM), the union leader proposed establishing public policies to improve decent housing and social protection for the working class that will be responsible for build Mexico’s priority works.

Likewise, before representatives of more than 300 affiliated unions of the BWI that bring together 12 million workers, the leader of the National Mining Union highlighted the importance of strengthening the union movement and international solidarity to forge a just and equitable future.

The CIT—which has a presence in 26 entities in Mexico and affiliates 40,000 construction workers—is the only labor union in our country that signs part of the ICM, which has a presence in more than 130 nations for defense. of construction and wood workers.

At the international meeting, the role of the ILC was highlighted as a democratic union organization that, in addition to combating labor abuses and injustices, “has focused on promoting decent and fair work policies, and in the face of the 2026 World Cup in which Mexico It will be the headquarters together with the United States and Canada.”

In this sense, greater emphasis and attention is being placed on labor-management relations within the remodeling work of stadiums and other infrastructure works related to the World Cup.

In this framework, the World Summit on Climate Justice was held, where Gómez Urrutia highlighted the commitment of President Claudia Sheinbaum to environmental sustainability and the fight against climate change, in order to position Mexico as a reference in the adoption of policies. greens, among which the energy transition, the National Water Plan, reforestation, the circular economy and electromobility stand out.

During the discussion table “Fair transition in construction,” the union leader asserted that the years of persecution he experienced occurred largely for demanding that the Grupo Mexico company repair the damage caused by the ecocide committed in the Bacanuchi and Sonora rivers. In this sense, he called for “establishing parallel measures and criteria that, on the one hand, guarantee that natural resources are not damaged, and on the other, that fundamental rights are not violated for the full development of the working class, their families and of their communities.”

He stressed that as union members we must meet the basic needs of justice and dignity for the workers who daily risk their lives in construction tasks, since, without them, the growth of our country would be impossible.