Grupo México Loses Appeal to End Strike at San Martín Mine
This article by Jared Laureles originally appeared in the October 31, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
Mexico City. The National Mining Union, headed by Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, obtained another favorable ruling against Grupo México (GM), after a collegiate court rejected the appeal filed by the company and its employers’ union, which sought to end the strike at the San Martín mine in Sombrerete, Zacatecas, which has lasted more than 18 years.
This resolution represents a new setback for the company Industrial Minera México, a subsidiary of GM owned by Germán Larrea, and also confirms the constitutional right to strike that began on July 30, 2007, by the workers of section 201, who must be paid their back wages, highlighted Nahir Velasco, legal coordinator of the National Mining Union.
Unanimously, the judges of the collegiate court in labor matters approved the project by which it was resolved to declare “inadmissible” the appeal of nonconformity promoted by an employers’ organization affiliated to the National Federation of Independent Unions.
Velasco recalled that Grupo México has made countless failed attempts, by any means including “illegal acts”, to break the strike, to the point that the case of the San Martín mine escalated to the USMCA’s rapid response labor mechanism and that it would later give rise to the first international dispute panel.
It was within this framework, in June 2023, that the Federal Board of Conciliation and Arbitration (JFCA) “had no other option” and determined – after nine years of filing the liability lawsuit – the responsibility for the strike on the employer side, thus ordering the payment of back wages and social security contributions to the striking workers from 2007 to date, as well as the reparation of various violations, he pointed out.
This rendered ineffective the agreement issued by the same labor authority in August 2018, which ended the strike through an agreement signed between Grupo México and a coalition of workers.
In that year, the company resumed operations in the midst of a strike and participated in collective bargaining with a coalition of 253 “scab workers”; most of these had already been laid off, others were pensioners, and most belonged to a different company, the mining union noted.
In August 2024, the JFCA ruled that the agreement signed between Grupo México and said coalition of workers was illegal.
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