On Dec. 19, 2024, a reform to the Mexican Federal Labor Law (“FLL”) was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation (“DOF”), aiming to force employers to provide chairs with a backrest to workers and agree on mandatory rest periods during the workday.
Various provisions of the FLL were modified to establish the obligation for employers to provide a sufficient number of seats or chairs with a backrest to all workers in the service, commerce, and similar work centers, for the execution of their functions or for periodic rest during the workday. Likewise, in the case of periodic rest, the employer must provide seats or chairs with a backrest, and they must be located in specific areas designated for this purpose in the same facilities as the workplace. These provisions must be applied in industrial establishments wherever the nature of the work allows it.
Another purpose of the reform is to prohibit employers and their representatives from forcing their workers to remain standing for the entire workday.
Additionally, provisions related to the use of seats or chairs with backrests must be included in the internal work regulations (“IWR”) as instruments that regulate relations within the workplace. According to the FLL, employers are required to deposit and register the IWR with the Federal Center for Conciliation and Labor Registration once it has been modified.
The transitional articles of the reform establish that the provisions will take effect 180 calendar days after the day of their publication in the DOF, that is, June 18.
However, the Ministry of Labor must issue the corresponding regulations on work risk factors within a period of no more than 30 calendar days after the entry into force of the reform, that is, no later than Jan. 19.
Likewise, it is established that employers will have a period of 180 days from when the reform takes effect to adapt their internal regulations to comply with the provisions of the FLL.
According to the new provisions, the employer is obliged to provide a sufficient number of seats or chairs with backrests in the service, commerce, and similar work centers. It is therefore recommended that employers in Mexico conduct a cost and feasibility analysis to provide seats or chairs with backrests in the workplaces for which they are responsible.
In addition, industrial workplaces are not expressly exempt from the application of the reform; they are only exempt when the nature of their activities requires it. It will require a case-by-case analysis to determine those workplaces in which the obligations described above must be met. In industrial workplaces, the impact this reform could have on existing collective labor relations must be analyzed.
Alfredo Kupfer-Domínguez is an attorney with Sánchez Devanny in Mexico City. Fermín Lecumberri-Cano and Sebastián Rosales-Ortega are attorneys with Sánchez Devanny in Querétaro, Mexico. Hugo Adolfo Gutierrez-Flores is an attorney with Sánchez Devanny in Monterrey, Mexico. © 2025 Sánchez Devanny. All rights reserved. Reposted with permission of Lexology.
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