industry. During the hearing itself, no ruling is made by the judge. At the conclusion of the hearing, the judge instructs one of her clerks as to the basic content of the ruling, which the clerk then writes and submits to the judge for comments and revision.<sup>28</sup> The decision entails a ruling on all matters of fact, as well as matters of law.<sup>29</sup> Once the judge is satis...ed with the ruling, she schedules a meeting of the labor board, consisting of herself along with a representative of each one of the parties.<sup>30</sup> In order for a decision to become ...nal, at least one of these representatives must vote along with the judge in favor of the resolution. At least 8 days before voting takes place, the judge must provide the rest of the labor board with a copy of the proposed ruling, and each of these representatives may request an additional hearing in order to allow the parties to present new evidence.<sup>31</sup> In the voting session, labor and management representatives can only vote in favor of or against the ruling, but cannot dispute or request changes in any speci...c part of the decision.

Parties may resolve their dispute during the conciliation hearing or at any other point in the process before the voting session that ...nalizes the judge’s ruling. According to Article 876 of the LFT, settlement agreements that terminate a ...led lawsuit must be approved by the judge. All settlements that are not rati...ed by the relevant tribunal are not binding, so that an employee cannot credibly promise not to pursue a suit against his employer unless their settlement is approved by the court. In the data there is no evidence that judges reject settlements, so that the judge’s approval appears to serve only as a mechanism for notifying the tribunal and making the agreement binding at law.

While Mexican labor law openly promotes the settlement of disputes, it takes an extreme position against the con...dentiality of settlements. Each tribunal must record details about settlements it rati...es, such as the date of the settlement and the amount paid to the plainti¤. In addition, given that settlement agreements made before a lawsuit is ...led are not legally binding without a labor court’s rati...cation, employers and workers very often jointly submit a settlement to the labor court to obtain rati...cation, even though the worker has not sued his employer. Hence, we collect data from ...led settlements as well as

> 28 Article 885, LFT.

> 29 Article 21, Reglamento Interior de la Junta Federal de Conciliación y Arbitraje (Internal Regulations of the Federal Labor Board).

> 30 For each industry in the jurisdiction of the federal labor courts, the Secretary of Labor appoints a labor representative and a ...rm representative. These representatives need not be licensed lawyers. Appointments are often political and usually related to general agreements between the Secretary of Labor and unions or trade associations in the industry. Article 605, LFT.

> 31 Article 886, LFT. According to this article, representatives of workers and ...rms can provide the parties with an additional opportunity to present evidence, thus possibly altering ...ndings of fact made by the judge. The representatives may not challenge ...ndings of law, except by voting against the resolution. Based on interviews with judges and labor lawyers, we believe that representatives’prerogative to request an additional hearing is almost never exercised, and votes are cast simply based on whether the decision generally favors the worker or the ...rm. To the extent that any given ruling must almost always favor one party or the other, the judge obtains the one vote that she needs besides her own, and the resolution stands.

14