CONCILIATION IN LABOR LAW, THE HINGE THAT FAVORS A FLEXIBILIZATION OF THE LABOR JUDICIAL PROCESS

This article discusses my ethnographic findings on conciliation processes in individual labor cases in México City. The constitutional reform (2017) and its implementation (2019) places in the center of labor justice the conciliation process. This text focuses on analyzing empirical data of how this figure operates and questions what are the possible consequences of strengthening it. The principal research methodology used was participant observation done in the labor jurisdictional authority (Junta de Conciliación y Arbitraje), a legal office and the public defender in labor law for Mexico City. The theoretical proposition of this article is that conciliation is a procedure that gives flexibility to labor cases in their judicial process. It is through its practice that everything that happens in the case before the labor jurisdictional authority (Junta de Conciliación y Arbitraje) and what happens outside of this process, far away from the eyes of the law, merges. This article concludes that the conciliation favors a flexibilization of the labor judicial process, but it also works against effective justice for the working class, as it contributes to the precariousness of the work relationships in México.