Mexico 2024 election summary for Friday, March 1, 2024

Claudia Sheinboam during her election campaign launch event. (Photo: Jaime Lopez/Getty Images)

During her speech at the start of her election campaign, the candidate of the ruling Morena Party presented her 100 election commitments, in which she highlighted policy proposals related to work and labour.

“We will support the presidential initiative that restores fair pensions, and the pension reform will be reversed in Zedillo's neoliberal period,” he said, referring to the so-called “Law 97” on pensions. Issued during the presidency of Ernesto Zedillo, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which today forms part of the opposition coalition Broad Front for Mexico.

Some context: Nearly 27 years ago, Mexico changed its workers' pension system. Then we moved from a model in which the government pays a pension to the worker from its resources, according to the value of his last salary, to a model in which each worker saves for his retirement, which is what he receives as a pension.

On July 1, 1997, the new Social Security Law, which has been in effect until now, entered into force, the model of which is that each worker has an individual account in which his contributions, employer contributions, and employer contributions are added. .

On February 5, the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, introduced a pension reform “so that 65-year-old workers who started contributing after July 1, 1997 – when the current pension reform took effect – will be able to receive On a salary “equal to their last salary, up to an amount equivalent to the average salary registered at the IMSS (Mexican Institute of Social Security).” This, provided that “the pension they receive under the law is less than the stated average.”