Benedicto Martinez Orozco is a nationally elected co-president of the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT). One of the only independent labor federations in Mexico, the FAT is composed of labor unions, worker owned cooperatives, and farmworker and community organizations. In addition, a national women’s network which coordinates work on gender and equity is represented as part of the FAT’s leadership body and operates within all of its sectors and zones. Prior to holding office, Mr. Martinez worked for many years as a machine operator at a U.S. based transnational, Sealed Power. While working there, he was elected General Secretary of the Metal Workers Union, STIMAHCS, a national union affiliated with the FAT. He has continued to serve as General Secretary of STIMAHCS, but has been on leave from his plant since 1991 when he became one of the top elected national officers of the FAT. He has also been repeatedly elected Vice-President of the National Union of Workers, the independent Mexican Labor Federation founded in 1997, a recognition of the role the FAT has played in its formation and in defining and developing its program of work and action.

The FAT was founded in 1960 and now represents workers in over half the states of Mexico. It represents workers in industries such as textiles, auto-parts, and transportation in national unions, and represents many others on a local level, including service workers in Mexico City. Their largest area of growth in recent years has been in the public sector, and a FAT affiliate in Chihuahua now represents the vast majority of municipal workers in that Northern Mexican state. The FAT was a founding member of Mexico's, independent labor federation, the National Union of Workers or UNT, which represents a million and a half members. The FAT was also a founder and active participant in RMALC (the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade), the coalition of more than 100 Mexican organizations which opposed NAFTA, and has in recent years worked to analyze the impact of neo-liberal economic policies and create positive proposals for change.