Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 02:44:51 -0400
Subject: AUT: Oct. 2, Mex Labor News
MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS
October 2, 1999
Vol. IV, No. 15
----------------------------------------------------------------
About Mexican Labor News and Analysis
Mexican Labor News and Analysis is produced in collaboration
with the Authentic Labor Front (Frente Autentico del Trabajo -
FAT) of Mexico and with the United Electrical Workers (UE) of the
United States and is published the 2nd and 16th of every month.
MLNA can be viewed at the UE's international web site:
HTTP://www.igc.apc.org/unitedelect/. For information about direct
subscriptions, submission of articles, and all queries contact
editor Dan La Botz at the following e-mail address:
103144.2651-AT-compuserve.com
MLNA articles may be reprinted by other electronic or print
media, but we ask that you credit Mexican Labor News and Analysis
and give the UE home page location and Dan La Botz's compuserve
address.
The UE Home Page which displays Mexican Labor News and
Analysis has an INDEX of back issues and an URGENT ACTION
ALERT section.
Staff: Editor, Dan La Botz; Correspondents in Mexico: Bob
Briggs, Robert Donnelly, Peter Gellert, Elyce Hues, Jess Kincaid,
Jorge Robles, Don Sherman, Jeremy Simer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
IN THIS ISSUE:
*CTM Endorses Labastida, Criticizes PRI Economic Policies
*UNT, SME, FSM Sign Unity Pact
*UNT and AFL-CIO Sign Pact Calling for Revision of NAFTA
*TAESA Flight Attendants Ask for New Representation Election
*Federal District Starts Union Register to End Phoney Unions
*CROC Fights Rival Union, Hundreds Involved, Ten Injured
*Airline Union Officials Beat Dissidents at Public Forum
*Documents in Translation: UNT-SME-FSM Unity Pact
-----------------------------------------------------------------
CTM ENDORSES LABASTIDA
BUT SAYS IT REJECTS PRI ECONOMIC POLICY
The Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the largest and
most important labor federation in Mexico, voted in the second
week of September to endorse Francisco Labastida Ochoa of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) as its candidate for
president. Labastida Ochoa, the former Minister of the Interior,
is the hand-picked successor of president Ernesto Zedillo. At the
same time, expressing its ambivalence, schizophrenia, or
duplicity the CTM repudiated the economic policy of the PRI
leadership of which Labastida has been a part.
Leonardo Rodriguez Alcaine, the head of the CTM, dismissed
the other two major candidates as unacceptable representatives of
the extreme right and the extreme left. He said that the election
of Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) would mean the
end of labor unions in Mexico, and that Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of
the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) wanted power only
for its own sake. Rodriguez Alcaine declared that the PRI had
opened the doors to the democratization of the country.
The CTM also pledged to donate 1,800,000 pesos to the
campaign. The CTM has historically had difficulties collecting
union dues and paying its own expenses, and has been the
recipient of discrete government subsidies for decades, raising
the question of whether the CTM’s donation is really government
financing for the PRI.
The CTM’s endorsement of the PRI’s Labastida comes as no
surprise. For decades the CTM has claimed that is has an
historic alliance with the ruling party and the state. Since its
founding in 1936, the CTM has supported every candidate of the
ruling party, with more or less enthusiasm.
What is different this time is that the CTM has endorsed
president Zedillo’s favorite, Labastida, and will back him going
into the PRI’s first-ever primary on November 7. In recent
elections, the CTM’s endorsement of candidates has been a mixed
blessing, since, though the CTM can bring some voters to the
polls, it has the reputation as the most reactionary and
undemocratic force within the ruling party, and many Mexican
voters find the labor federation vile and repugnant..
CTM Rejects PRI Economic Policy
But while endorsing Labastida, the CTM also issued
statements repudiating the PRI’s economic policy. Admitting that
supporting the PRI uncritically had cost it support, the CTM
leadership called for an evaluation of the economic model
adopted since 1982, and demanded a revision of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and even went so far as to
say that the budgeting of social programs should take precedence
over the paying of the foreign debt and that the government
should give up its low wage policy.
The CTM’s sudden and surprising shift to a critical or at
times even radical rhetoric reflects the needs of the ruling
party to muster support from workers, more than any genuine
change in philosophy or practice. Certainly the CTM can still be
relied upon to support the PRI’s economic programs, no matter
what their impact on workers and the poor.
###
UNT, SME, FSM
SIGN UNITY PACT
The National Union of Workers (UNT), the Mexican Electrical
Workers Union (SME), and the Mexican Union Front (FSM) -all
independent union organizations- signed a pact on November 20
pledging to work together to confront the problems of
globalization and modernization, to build the independent union
movement, to win better labor union contracts, and to construct a
more unified and class conscious working class in Mexico.
Driven largely by the government’s threat to privatize the
electrical industry, the pact between the three independent labor
organizations represents another important step in the
realignment of the Mexican labor movement. [See the translation
of the pact below. - ed.]
During the last few weeks, the UNT has taken a series of
positions on other issues as well. The UNT once again pledged
itself to fight against the privatization of the electrical
industry as proposed by President Ernesto Zedillo. Zedillo's plan
has been supported by Leonardo Rodriguez Alcaine, the head of the
Sole Union of Mexican Electrical Workers (SUTERM), as well as
head of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) and the
Congress of Labor (CT).
The UNT also called upon the government and the employers to
adopt a new wage policy which would end the wage ceilings which
keep Mexican workers’ wages among the lowest in Latin America.
The UNT wants the government and the employers to grant wage
increases based on improvements in productivity.
With Francisco Hernandez Juarez, head of the telephone
workers union as one of its three co-presidents, the UNT has
called for a new telecommunications law and the establishment of
a new union of telecommunications workers as a way of confronting
the rapid fragmentation of the communications industry. Without a
new law to regulate the industry for the benefit of society as a
whole, the UNT warns that it will fall under the domination of
the government, private industry, and foreign investors.
###
UNT AND AFL-CIO SIGN AGREEMENT
TO DEFEND MIGRANT WORKERS AND CALL FOR A REVISION OF NAFTA
The National Union of Workers (UNT), the independent labor
union federation, and the American Federation of Labor - Congress
of Industrial Organizations, (AFL-CIO), the dominant labor
federation of the United States, have signed an agreement to
defend migrant workers and calling for changes in the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The pact also repudiates
so-called "protection contracts," usually providing only the
basic minimums, signed between employers and "ghost unions"
unknown to the workers.
The document was signed by Francisco Hernandez Juarez,
Augustin Rodriguez Fuentes and Fernando Rocha Larrainzar, the
three co-presidents of the UNT and by John Sweeney, president of
the AFL-CIO.
Both federations agreed to the concept of fair trade with
union participation, and the right of workers to free association
and affiliation with the labor union of their own choosing in
both Mexico and the United States.
The UNT and the AFL-CIO called for better protection for
workers of Mexican descent in the United States.
###
TAESA FLIGHT ATTENDANTS
ASK FOR NEW REPRESENTATION ELECTION
Flight attendants at TAESA air lines have asked the Federal
Board of Conciliation and Arbitration (JFCA) to grant a new
representation election. The 100 flight attendants were all
dismissed by TAESA air lines after the March 22 election,
apparently because they voted for the Mexican Union of Flight
Attendants (ASSA) rather than an affiliate of the Confederation
of Mexican Workers (CTM).
The firing of the 100 flight attendants, says Alejandra
Barrales, head of the ASSA, represents a massive, illegal
firing, and a clear violation of freedom of association, because
the workers were fired for opposing the ‘official’ union.
The fight at TAESA represents a microcosm of the struggle
taking place in the Mexican labor movement between the new
independent National Union of Workers (UNT) and the old,
government-party connected Congress of Labor (CT). The Flight
Attendants Union, headed by Alejandra Barrales, forms part of the
UNT, while the CTM is the most important federation in the CT.
The workers’ demand for a new union representation
election -they believe they lost the last one through fraud and
chicanery -is a small part of the larger process of struggle
against CTM-CT-PRI control of the unions.
###
FEDERAL DISTRICT CREATES UNION REGISTER
TO PREVENT PHONEY UNIONS, CONTRACTS
The Federal District’s labor department has created a public
register of labor unions as part of a campaign to end ghost
unions and protection contracts, two of the chronic problems
of the Mexican union movement. This is the first time that a
local government has created such a register.
The register will provide the name of the union, the union
officers, the number of member, the union federation with which
the local union is affiliated, as well as other information. The
list should be available soon at a Mexican government website:
(www.gdf.gob.mx).
There is a mafia which is dedicated to dealing in union
registrations and contracts. The principal protagonists of these
practices have been detected, and when sufficient evidence is
available, the responsible parties will be prosecuted, warned
Saul Escobar, the under-secretary for labor of the Federal
District. In the past, said Escobar, union registrations and
contracts have been treated like state secrets. It has been the
constant demand of workers and democratic and independent unions
that the union registrations and contracts be made public.
The Federal District, with four million workers and one
hundred thousand workplaces, has 95,000 contracts on deposit at
the Local Board of Conciliation and Arbitration (JLCA). While
there are 3,500 registrations, there turn out to be only 1,607
unions, not all of which are active. Some 568 unions appear to be
inactive, since they did not re-register after 1994.
There are 15 labor union federations with 753 unions and
195,186 affiliated workers. The CTM is the largest with 338
unions and 70 percent of all workers, Escobar reported.
###
CROC FIGHTS RIVAL UNION;
HUNDREDS INVOLVED; TEN INJURED
The Revolution Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC),
one of the "official" unions aligned with the Congress of Labor
and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) brought mayhem to
the streets of Tlaxcala on September 10. The occasion for the
violence was a representation election at the Arcomex Tlaxcala
plant where the CROC's position as union representative was being
contested by the National Coordinating Committee of Independent
Unions (CNSI) headed by Rupertino Garcia Reyes.
Some 500 CROC unionists from Puebla and the Federal District
traveled to nearby Tlaxcala where they blocked some 450 workers
opposed to the CROC and prevented them from voting for the rival
union. When the state government called out 600 riot police, the
CROC attacked the police with tear gas, rocks, sticks, Molotov
cocktails, and other weapons. Reporters and photographers were
also injured in the melee. Ten persons were injured in the
violence.
The CROC's assault on the rival union members and on the
police was led by Eduardo Vazquez Martinez, who is both a CROC
leader and a legislator. It was reported that the "Mar Negro," or
Black Sea, the goon squad created and led by the CROC's top
leader, Alberto Juarez Blancas, participated in the attack. The
500 CROC goon-squad members were reportedly paid 200 pesos (about
$20 apiece), or about one weeks wages for a low-paid worker, to
attack the members of the rival unions.
Labor and Political Conflict
The control of the Arcomex workforce forms only one element
of the bitter conflict. The CNSI is linked to the Workers Party
(Partido del Trabajo or PT), which in turn forms part of a left-
of-center opposition bloc with the Party of the Democratic
Revolution (PRD). PRD congressman Cristobal Luna Luna criticized
the police for their luke warm intervention in the battle. He
pointed out that none of the CROC members, who had been the
aggressors, had been arrested. He held CROC leader Vazquez
Martinez responsible for the violence.
After "winning" the union representation election--that is,
by having excluded the competition, Vazquez Martinez said that
the workers who supported the rival union could consider
themselves fired. Within a week, the union did expel and the
employer did fire some 200 workers. The union expelled the
workers for "disloyalty" and "interfering" in negotiations with
the company. The CROC called the dissident workers "agitators"
who were no longer needed at Arcomex.
###
Airline Union Officials
Beat Dissidents at Public Forum
At a public forum on the future of the airline industry in
Mexico held at the luxurious Marriot Hotel at the Mexico City
International Airport, officials of the Independent Union of
Aeromexico attacked and beat two union dissidents, seriously
injuring them. The union is led by Tomas del Toro.
The events took place on September 9 at the forum "The Air
Transport Industry in Mexico: Changes and Perspectives" attended
by both employers and union officials. When two men Eduardo Perez
and Gustavo Luna Sevilla expressed differences with the
Independent Union of Aeromexico, they were attacked by members of
the union executive committee and their body guards.
The injured workers filed criminal charges against their
attackers for assault, battery and robbery.
The dissidents accuse del Toro and the union leadership with
being a creation of the employers and the labor board officials
who register unions. Both the men who were attacked, Perez and
Luna Sevilla, were expelled from the union in 1994. Del Toro
accused the two men of being agitators.
###
DOCUMENTS IN TRANSLATION
[The following is a translation of the "Unity and Union Action
Pact" published in the Mexico City daily newspaper LA JORNADA on
September 21, 1999. - ed.]
UNITY AND UNION ACTION PACT
UNT-SME-FSM
Whereas the globalization of the economy on a world-scale
has been characterized by a continuous concentration of capital,
particularly multinational capital, and by a greater dependence
of the economies of the poor countries on the international
financial organizations and the governments of the rich
countries;
Whereas in our country this process has been translated into
the application of economic politics which lead to the
marginalization, the impoverishment of large social groups;
Whereas the Mexican workers have lost a large part of their
real wages and standard of living, as well as basic aspects of
their contractual benefits;
Whereas the structural changes applied by the state and by
legislation put strategic sectors of the national economy in
private hands, leading to a greater dependency of national
interests on business groups and companies;
Therefor the under-signed labor organizations pledge that
they will--on the basis of mutual respect and non-interference in
each other's affairst-- faithfully fulfill the following:
AGREEMENT
based on the following objectives:
1. To confront the challenge of globalization and modernization
by way of the exercise of national sovereignty, rescuing the
national project stated in the Constitution of 1917, which
defends the strategic character of national resources, which
consolidates an autonomous economic development, guarantees
social development, encourages an equitable distribution of
wealth, and strengthens the political independence of our
country.
2. To vindicate the right of free association, the right to
strike, the freedom of labor unions to elect their leaders
without the involvement of the employers or the state; as well as
to encourage the development of democratic methods in their own
internal life.
3. To fight for respect for and the improvement of collective
bargaining agreement and to demand that the minimum wage be
adjusted to which is stipulated in the Constitution [i.e., the
idea of a living wage].
4. To promote the education of a working class conscious, unified
and capable of carrying out the establishment of a just economic
system that allows all able bodied men and women to live decently
on the basis of the fruit of their own labor.
ACTIONS
a) To organize a broad discussion over the national situation,
the strategic priorities of action which preserve the national
project contained in our Magna Carta [i.e., the Constitution of
1917].
b) To promote the full and independent participation of the
workers in the life of their organizations, and in the national
political processes in their role as citizens.
c) To call for the analysis and the elaboration of a national
program and sectoral programs of economic and social development.
d) To fight against the authoritarian politics that some have
attempted to impose against the national interest.
e) To fight against the reform of Constitutional Articles 27 and
28 which seek to privatize the national electric power firms.
f) To promote a debate over the achievements, the meaning and the
defense of Article 3 and 123 of the same constitution [articles
dealing with education and labor].
g) To fight for the end of the practices which lead to
"protection contracts," above all company unionism, which
involves collusion between the governmental authorities and the
employees.
h) To contribute to the strengthening of international action by
labor unions and social organizations for the construction of
agreements and action programs between workers in the Americas
and the rest of the world in order to confront and contain the
savage tendencies of multinational capital.
i) To carry out meeting of analysis, debate and the search for
consensus with regard to the following issues: social reform and
democracy in government; the definition of a new economic model;
influencing the definition of public policies; an end to
corporativism [i.e., state-controlled labor unions] and union
corruption; labor reform and productivity; new forms and
strategies of labor union action; the struggle for the
elimination of protection contracts; and other points of common
interest.
FOR THE COLLECTIVE PRESIDENCY OF THE NATIONAL UNION OF WORKERS
C.* Fernando Rocha Larrainzar,
General Secretary,
National Union of Social Security Workers
C. Augustin Rodriguez Fuentes
General Secretary
Union of Workers of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
C. Francisco Hernandez Juarez
General Secretary
Telephone Workers Union of Mexico
FOR THE MEXICAN UNION OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS
C. Rosendo Rosendo Flores
General Secretary
Mexican Union of Electrical Workers
FOR THE MEXICAN LABOR UNION FRONT
C. Jorge Ramos Aviles
General Secretary
Independent Union of Workers
of the Metropolitan Autonomous University
C. Samuel Ruiz Mora
General Secretary
National Federation of Labor Union Groups
Lic.** Jose Luis Vega
President
National Council of Workers
C. Heron Rosales Zamorano
General Secretary
Lazaro Cardenas Union Front
C. Margarito Hernandez Gonzalez
General Secretary
Federation of Workers of Labor Union Liberalism
Proer Maurilio Hernandez G.
General Secretary
Federation of Labor Union Organizations of Mexico
C. Raul Reyna Fermin
Adjunct General Secretary
Revolutionary Union Federation
C. Jose Prado Trujillo
General Secretary
Association of United Unions
C. Francisco Jaime Mora
Administrative President
Society of Democratic and Independent Musicians
Francisco J. Casas Hernandez
General Secretary
National Union of Workers of the Mexican Institute of Petroleum
-----
*C.=companero, comrade
**Lic.=college graduate, often attorney
END MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS, Vol. 4, No. 15, 2 Oct. 1999
--- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005