District Court rules unconstitutional the cap on profit sharing

Executive Summary:

• On August 3, 2023, the Eighth District Judge for Labor Matters in Mexico City granted an injunction to a group of workers in relation to the Decree to establish a maximum limit to the participation of workers in profits (“PTU").
• The protection granted to workers was granted exclusively to those complainants who signed the Amparo and accredited the payment of PTU with the mentioned ceiling.
• This sentence is only applicable to the group of workers covered, being up to now a mere isolated precedent.

El 3 de agosto de 2023, la Juez Octavo de Distrito en Materia de Trabajo en la Ciudad de México,  concedió un amparo a un grupo de trabajadores integrantes de la Sección 120 de la Ciénega, en Santiago Papasquiaro, Durango, perteneciente al Sindicato Nacional Minero Metalúrgico “Frente”, en relación con el “Decreto por el que se reformaron, adicionaron y derogaron diversas disposiciones en materia de subcontratación laboral”, publicado el 23 de abril de 2021, en el Diario Oficial de la Federación (el “Decreto”) que adicionó la fracción VIII al artículo 127 de la Ley Federal del Trabajo, para establecer un límite máximo a la participación de los trabajadores en las utilidades de las empresas (“PTU”) de 3 meses de salario del trabajador o el promedio de los últimos 3 años, lo que resulte más benéfico al trabajador. 

In terms of the resolution, the workers who appealed the Decree (considering the first time it was applied when paying the PTU from fiscal year 2021, which was limited to the average of the last 3 years, and covered in April 2022) proved an affectation derived from the aforementioned rule, since “…the Constitution orders that profit sharing within a company shall be paid in full to the workers…”, and moreover “…the right to receive profit sharing is established in Article 123 of the Constitution, on which, the law shall not establish any cap, in view that the Mexican Constitution does not include any limitation”. To reach this determination, the Judge also considered the rationale supporting the subcontracting reform of 2021. 

In this sense, the protection granted to the relevant workers regarding the Decree, was issued exclusively in favor of those workers who signed the Amparo and evidenced the payment of PTU with such a cap, so that: 

““The Section VIII, of Article 127 of the Federal Labor Law, which was added in the Decree, is not observed within the legal sphere of the complaining workers, since it limits the payment of profit sharing.””

It is important to highlight that this resolution is only applicable to the group of workers who received such favorable Amparo, thus being as of the moment in which this document is published, merely an isolated precedent.

Likewise, it is relevant to consider that this resolution could still be challenged through an appeal motion (“Recurso de revision”) which, if filed, should be settled by the Supreme Court of Justice, considering this is a constitutionality issue.

Considering the relevance of this criterion, we recommend following up closely on the related procedural repercussions, since the same could eventually generate a definitive and binding precedent on the constitutionality aspect of the PTU cap.  

Authors

Juan Carlos de la Vega
Partner
jdelavega@s-s.mx

Andrés Rodríguez
Partner
arodriguez@s-s.mx

Francisco Udave
Partner
fudave@s-s.mx