Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 02:18:37 -0400
Subject: AUT: Mex Labor News, 16 Oct. 99


MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS                   
October 16, 1999
Vol. IV, No. 16
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               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.
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IN THIS ISSUE:
Part 1
     *Storms, Floods Expose Reality of Neo-Liberal Policies -
          by Dan La Botz
     *University Union May Strike; Complicated by Student Strike
     *Independent Union at SEMARNAP Demands Zedillo Enforce Law
     *Manifesto: No To Privatization
     *Federal Government's Austerity Budget: 44,000 Worker Layoff
     *Flight Attendants Lose to CTM at TAESA for Second Time
     *Federal Labor Board Validates CROC's Victory at Coca Cola
     *Labor Violence--Eternal Impunity -
          by Arturo Alcalde Justiniani
Part 2
     *Continental Tire Fire 18 Union Members at Euzkadi Plant- 
          by Don Sherman
     *Garment Workers Union Must Vacate: PRD Gov't in Mexico City
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          STORMS, FLOODS, LANDSLIDES EXPOSE REALITY
        OF ZEDILLO'S NEO-LIBERAL DEVELOPMENT POLICIES

                        by Dan La Botz

     Five days of torrential rain storms, followed by floods and
landslides have devastated villages in four states in central
Mexico, killing hundreds and leaving thousands homeless.
President Ernesto Zedillo called the storm the tragedy of the
decade. But in addition to being a natural disaster and a human
tragedy, the storms also represent a damning judgement on Zedillo
and his policies. Just as the September 19, 1985 earthquake
revealed the political priorities of the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) of that era, so the storms and floods
of October 1999 have exposed the reality of the PRI's neo-liberal
economic development.

     The storms in the states of Puebla, Veracruz, Hidalgo and
Tabasco during the first week of October brought floods and
landslides that demolished entire villages and entombed scores of
people in mud. The Mexican government estimates the number of
dead at 360, though the Roman Catholic Church and other non-
governmental organizations put the death total at 500. The toll
will probably prove to be higher as rescuers reach remote
villages.

               Natural Disaster and Political Failure

     During early October rivers overflowed their banks, sweeping
away shacks and shanties. Mud slides buried homes and their
inhabitants. In some areas entire villages perished in the
deluge. In Teziutalan, the town's cemetery slid down a hill and
buried the neighborhood below. Over 100 died there alone. The
victims of the storms have been thousands of working people,
mostly farmers, agricultural day laborers, vendors and shop
keepers as well as other low-income rural people and small town
dwellers. 

     While the PRI-government has built the infrastructure for
scores of industrial parks for the maquiladoras on its northern
border, laid out a system of super-tollways for the military,
trucking companies and the wealthy, and has overseen the
construction of thousands of luxury apartments, homes, and hotels
in the cities, it has turned its back on millions of Mexicans in
small towns in rural areas. The rural poor, living in shanties on
unpaved roads and along the streams died, victims of the neo-
liberal development model. When the floods came, the houses went,
and many lives with them.
 
                    Zedillo: "We Can Handle This"

     When victims in Veracruz asked President Zedillo to seek
help from the United States, he adopted a nationalist posture,
replying, "No, we Mexicans can handle this ourselves." Never
having turned away American bankers, investors or industrialists,
he now proposed to turn away emergency assistance from the U.S. 

     The point was not lost on his political opponents.
Opposition legislators from both the National Action Party and
the Party of the Democratic Revolution strongly criticized him
for that position, leading him to capitulate and say he would
welcome foreign assistance in the form of cash donations to the
Mexican Red Cross. 

     But the bigger issue raised by the flood has to do with
Mexico's developmental priorities. For decades the PRI has put
industrial parks, maquiladoras and multinational corporations
ahead of the construction of housing, the paving of local streets
and highways, the building of sewage systems, and the creation of
safe and comfortable communities. While the storm may have been a
natural disaster, the damage resulted in large measure from the
political-economic priorities of neo-liberalism. 

                    Clinton: Magnanimous Donation?

     President Bill Clinton, said that the United States "as a
people and as a government stand ready to help in any way we
can." The U.S. government offered $100,000 in cash immediately.
The U.S. government which has encouraged Mexico in its neo-
liberal economic policy and its developmental priorities, and
U.S. corporations which have helped draw resources toward the
border industrialization programs, also share much responsibility
for the tragedy in Mexico. That the United States which as a
country has made billions from the exploitation of Mexico should
offer such a miserly handout insults the peoples of both
countries. 

     What will the storm mean for Mexican politics? The
earthquake of September 1985 saw thousands of ordinary citizens
in Mexico City came forth to rescue victims and begin to rebuild
their city. At that time writer Carlos Monsivais pointed to the
birth of a new social movement, a movement based on social
solidarity and the growth of an independent movement of civil
society that began to break the stranglehold of the PRI-
government. Perhaps the storms and floods of October 1999 will
also produce a social movement form below. 

                              ###

     UNIVERSITY UNION DEMANDS 40 PERCENT WAGE INCREASE;
     THREATENS STRIKE; WOULD COMPLICATE STUDENT STRIKE

     The Union of Workers of the National Autonomous University
of Mexico (STUNAM) has demanded a wage increase of 40 percent,
and threatens to strike on October 31 if it does not get it. But
the situation is complicated by a five-month old student strike
at the university (UNAM). Some fear the situation imperils the
university.

     Since the students struck five months ago, effectively
shutting down most teaching and research at the university,
STUNAM members have been showing up for work, and the
administration has been paying them. Some critics say paying them
for doing nothing. 

     But Augustin Rodriguez Fuentes, head of STUNAM, says that 45
percent of his members continue to do cleaning and custodial
work, while the other 55 percent remain at the posts ready to
resume work when the student strike is settled. "It's not our
fault if there's no administrative work to be done," he said.

     If there is a union strike, says Rodriguez Fuentes, the
union would attempt to coordinate its efforts with the student
strikers. At the same time, some STUNAM leaders have suggested
that the first thing the union would do is to remove student
strikers from the buildings they have been occupying for almost
half a year now. If that should occur, it could provide a way for
both students and the administration to end the student strike
while saving face. 

     But a labor strike might instead allow the administration to
simply stop paying wages to the workers, while facing down both
students and union. Strikes in the public sector sometimes serve
employers. With the campus empty of both workers and students,
the university and the federal government would save money, not
lose it.

     Many Mexican citizens fear that the five-month-old student
strike has already brought the university to the edge of the
abyss, and that the labor union's strike might push it over.
Others fear that the government may use the prolonged student and
labor difficulties to propose a drastic reorganization of the
university, one that would make it more difficult for low income
students to gain admission.

     Will the students, workers, and the people of Mexico be able
to propose an alternative that in practice can save the
university for the benefit of all? That question tops the agenda.

                              ###

               INDEPENDENT UNION AT SEMARNAP
                DEMANDS ZEDILLO ENFORCE LAW

     The Democratic Union of Workers of SEMARNAP, the Mexican
environmental agency, have called upon President Ernesto Zedillo
to insist that Julia Carabias, the head of SEMARNAP, stop
interfering with the union and recognize its rights. 

     The Democratic Union of Workers at SEMARNAP (SIDT-SEMARNAP)
has been the leading test case for the rights of independent
unions in the public sector. Four years ago Mexican courts ruled
that SIDT-SEMARNAP could exist as a second labor union in the
environmental agency, along side government-controlled union. But
Carabias and the SEMARNAP management have refused in practice to
deal with the union.

     "The authorities of SEMARNAP, operating outside the law,
refused to recognize the union's collective rights, and falling
into bad practices spelled out in the Law on the Responsibilities
of Public Servants, they have given instructions to all of the
federal delegations, so that they continue denying recognition to
the union," said the text of the letter sent to Zedillo.

     "They have also impeded the giving out of benefitted to the
union's affiliates, which they do for the other union that
operates in SEMARNAP."

     The National Front of Resistance to Privatization of the
electrical Industry, made up of some 70 unions and other
organizations, also sent a letter to Zedillo, to the president of
the Supreme Court, to Minister Genaro Gongora, and to Julia
Carabaias. 

     "We consider what is happening in SEMARNAP to be of the
greatest gravity, and by this letter we therefore respectfully
solicit your intervention, so that the attack against the workers
in that union can be stopped....These practices violate the
rights of the workers, and abuse the workers by handing out
rights and benefits incorrectly," said the Front's letter.

                              ###

Documents of the Labor Movement in Translation

[The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) continues its fight
against the privatization of the electric power production
industry. The following document, "NO TO PRIVATIZATION,"
originally appeared in the Mexico City daily newspaper LA JORNADA
on September 30, 1999.] 

                      NO TO PRIVATIZATION
                     Manifesto from Mexico
                       September of 1999

During the International Seminar on "The Impact of Privatization
on the Electric Industry on the World, National State,
Development and Sovereignty" conducted in Mexico between
September 20 and 27, 1999, the participating organizations from
different countries around the world concluded that electric
energy is and will be a vital public service which has an impact
on all sectors of the economy, and therefore:

                       WE DECLARE THAT:

1. The process of privatization encouraged by the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, the International Development Bank
and similar organizations on other continents on these strategic
state industries have led to a loss of our patrimony, to the
raising of tariffs, to the deterioration of public services, and
the massive layoff of workers and finally to the worsening of the
living conditions of the countries which have applied these
measures, hitting hardest at those social sectors which can least
defend themselves.

2. The international capital directed by these organizations and
helped by local interests, imposes on all nations, without any
distinction, a restructuring which seeks total control of the
electric industry and other strategic sectors, provoking leading
to the hemorrhage of the national economies and the concentration
of wealth, therefore:

                           WE AGREE

1. To energetically condemn and reject the application of these
processes of transnationalization that lead to an increase in
poverty and to the degradation of human rights.

2. To form an INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF RESISTANCE against these
policies that only favor the privileged minorities and which
implicitly encourage an increase in corruption.

3. To assume as our own the powers of resistance in the different
countries of the world and to offer to them all of our financial
and logistical support.

4. To demand that our governments reject and detain the reforms
imposed by the international financial organizations and to
maintain the strategic institutions under the social control of
the national state, with the full participation of the
communities as an expression of true democracy.

5. To demand that the governments fulfill their duty of informing
the country and decisively confronting the evils that consumers
face because of the privatization which has wrongly been carried
out.

We proclaim that this Seminar is only the beginning of a global
struggle, and therefore we call upon social organizations and all
people to join in rejecting these policies and defending our
national patrimony and sovereignty.

[The document is signed by many unions and other social
organizations, mostly from Latin America and Europe, but also
including the AFL-CIO.]

                              ###

               FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S AUSTERITY BUDGET
               CALLS FOR LAY-OFF OF 44,000 WORKERS

     The Mexican government budget for the year 2000 calls for
the elimination of 14,000 union positions and 40,000 management
positions at a savings of 1.9 billion pesos (US$109 million).
This year the government laid off 11,000 workers at a savings of
.7 billion dollars ($US70 million). 

     The budget also calls for workers wage increases to be held
to no more than 10 percent.

     At the same time, the government will begin a new labor
productivity program modeled on those of England and New Zealand,
with the slogan, "Fewer resources, more efficiency and more
services."
                              ###

               FLIGHT ATTENDANTS LOSE AGAIN TO CTM
               IN REPRESENTATION ELECTION AT TAESA

     The Mexican Flight Attendants Union (ASSA) lost a second
representation election at TAESA airlines. Once again the
National Union of Workers and Employees of Air Transport
(SNTETA), affiliated with the Confederation of Mexican Workers
(CTM) won the election.

     After the last election held last March, TAESA fired 100
Flight Attendants Union members. 

     The Flight Attendants are affiliated with the National Union
of Workers (UNT), the independent labor federation.

          MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS - END PART 1
                    BE SURE YOU HAVE PART 2
                    
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