The Mexican State, still challenged for the lack of legitimacy of its election, corroborates every year its vocation as a customary violator of the labour rights of its citizens

Once again, the following assessment may seem redundant to those who have read our analyses of previous years. Yet the stubborn policy of the government in power –which deliberately pauperises the Mexican labour force– compels us to insist on the same assessment that exhibits the nefarious consequences of such policy. Moreover, it is necessary to depict once again the political context in which it is imposed. Assessing the wage data of the manufacturing sector of thirty- five years, irremediably exhibits the exploitative and repressive character of the group that has wielded real power for the last three decades. A group that has completely submitted itself to the Washington Consensus, with the goal of remaining in power. This has engendered an environment that 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 labour bondage that takes the country back to conditions prevailing before the social revolution of 1910.

The future of production-line manufacturing wages 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 wages. Additionally, the State has unleashed a policy of repression of the rights of freedom of association and to organise and collective bargaining. The deep impoverishment of Mexicans is a fact. Official data acknowledge that 81% of Mexicans are poor (Coneval 2009). By the same token, in 2009 the minimum wage was able to afford 17,5% of the 40 goods of the CBI or indispensable basket of goods, down from 49% in 1994, a 64% loss of purchasing power in 15 yearswhich is deemed essential for survival. Moreover, the government began 2010 and 2011 with strong price increases in the energy sector, which guarantee a greater pauperisation of real wages. Thus, 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 2011. This prospectus remains with exactly the same tone conveyed in the 2007 and 2008 reports, for the deprivation, depredation and deliberate pauperisation – as a State policy– continue deepening.

In summary, more than a quarter century of predatory capitalism in Mexico exposes, decisively, a government's policy –from the perspective of manufacturing wages 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.

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