Communist
22nd October 2009, 03:53
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Mexican Electrical Workers Union Fights for It's Life
by Dan La Botz
MRZine
October 19, 2009
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/labotz191009.html
The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), made up of
approximately 43,000 active and 22,000 retired workers
in Mexico City and surrounding states, is fighting for
its life. The union's struggle has rallied allies in
the labor movement and on the left in Mexico and
solidarity from throughout the country and around the
world, but, if it is to survive, the union and its
supporters have to take stronger actions than they have
so far, and time is not on their side.
On the night of October 10, President Calderón ordered
federal police to seize the power plants, while he
simultaneously liquidated the state-owned Light and
Power Company, fired the entire workforce, and thus did
away with the legal existence of the union. The
Mexican president's attack on the Electrical Workers
Union might be compared to Ronald Regan's firing of
more than 11,500 members of the Professional Air
Traffic Controllers (PATCO) in 1981 or to Margaret
Thatcher's smashing of the National Union of
Minerworkers (NUM) in 1984 in which over 11,000 miners
were arrested and the union defeated.
Changing the Balance of Force
Calderón's move to destroy this union represents an
important turning point in modern Mexican labor
history, a decisive step to break the back of the
unions once and for all. Following up on his three-
year war on the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union
(SNTMM), Calderón has now decided to take on the
leading union in Mexico City. But, even more
important, it is, as one Mexican political leader
noted, it is an act intended "to change the balance of
forces," so that they favor the government.
After its electoral defeat and out of fear of
social protest which the [economic] crisis is
provoking, the government wants to give a
demonstration of its power which everybody will
understand: the left, the social movements, the PRI
, the unions,
the Congress, the businessmen and the media. The
logic is the same that was used in the [Salinas
government's] attack on La Quina [head of the
Mexican Petroleum Workers Union] in 1989: if you
can do it the strongest, then you can do it to the
weakest. If the most combative union can be
defeated, then so can any other force.1
Mexico City, where this blow has been delivered, is
heart of the political opposition to Calderón and the
base of support for left-wing leader Andrés Manuel
López Obrador who claims to have won the last election.
Mexico City is also the base of Marcelo Ebrard, the
mayor of the metropolis, who some see as another
possible presidential contender in 2012. So this
attack on the union is also an attack on the left at
its strongest point. And, at least at this moment --
and while we still hope to see the Mexican workers take
the strong measures needed -- it seems as if the
government can and has defeated the strongest, and can
now turn its attention to the weaker.
A Turning Point
This is a turning point because it allows Mexico's
capitalist class to resume the neoliberal project begun
under Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1988 but interrupted
by a series of unforeseen events: the creation of the
Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1989, the
Chiapas Rebellion led by the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation in 1994, president Ernesto Zedillo's
precipitation of the economic crisis of 1994-96, and
finally the end of the old one-party state under the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its
replacement by National Action Party (PAN).
Salinas had succeeded in privatizing the Mexican
Telephone Company (TELMEX), the railroads, and the
Cananea Copper Company, but he failed to finish the
job, with the energy sector, petroleum and electric
power generation, still state owned. Now, after a
twenty-year interruption, Calderón has under taken to
finish the job.
The Origin of an Independent Union
The full significance of these events can only be
appreciated when one sees them in the light of both
their history and the current political context. The
Calderón administration has chosen to attack one of
Mexico's oldest, most militant, and most democratic
union. The Mexican Electrical Workers Union was born
in the great Mexican Revolution of 1910-1940, a
tumultuous upheaval from below by the country's
workers, farmers, and peasants, which swept away the
dictatorship of Porfirio DÃ*az and replaced it with a
new order, if not exactly the order that the underdogs
had been hoping for. In 1911, a group of electrical
workers at the Light and Power Company organized the
League of Electrical Workers. Then in 1914 they
founded the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (Sindicato
Mexicano de Electricistas).
The newly created Electrical Workers participated in
the general strike of 1916 to defend the right of
independent unions to exist. In 1917 the union
negotiated its first contract, laying the basis for
what would become one of the strongest collective
bargaining agreements in the country. Less radical
than some other unions and more independent than many,
the Electrical Workers survived the labor wars of the
1920s that pitted corrupt, government-backed unions
against revolutionary anarchists and Communists.
The Union in the Cárdenas Period
When the popular nationalist and leftist General Lázaro
Cárdenas became president, he brought most of the
Mexican labor unions into his orbit and under his
influence. The Electrical Workers general secretary
Francisco Breña AlvÃ*rez, however, guided the union
along its own independent path. In June of 1936, the
Electrical Workers Union faced a conflict over wages
with the British-Canadian Mexican Light, which then
owned the central electrical companies for which their
members worked.
The Cárdenas government would have liked to avoid a
strike and proposed arbitration, but the union rejected
any form of arbitration and struck. The strike by the
union's 3,000 members shut off power in Mexico City --
except to hospitals and other essential services --
paralyzed the streetcars and brought management to the
table. The union successfully defended the right to
strike, eschewed arbitration, defeated the company, and
maintained its independence form the government.
Between Scylla and Charybdis
During the late 1940s and 1950s, Mexico experienced its
own wave of anti-Communism and its own version of
McCarthyism, as the government deposed independent
union leaders and replaced them with government-backed
gangster leaders, the so-called charros. The Mexican
Electrical Workers succeeded in avoiding the worst of
that era, emerging in the 1960s, and continuing in the
1970s, as an ally of the "worker insurgency" then
taking place and as friend to the new independent
unions that were then arising.
During the 1980s, the Electrical Workers Union once
again found itself in conflict with the government-
employer. In 1987, as students also struck the
university, the union shut off power to Mexico City
once again as it had 50 years before. Throughout the
years of the Carlos Salinas presidency (1988-1994), the
union maneuvered between the Scylla of government
domination and the Charybdis of the president's program
of privatization.
The Electrical Workers veered toward the privatizing
president to protect its own interests, but
simultaneously strove to escape the sirens of
patronage. That period was not its most heroic, yet,
despite its compromises with Salinas, the Electrical
Workers Union did not completely forfeit its
independence and re-emerged in the 1990s and 2000s to
lead coalitions to defend national electric power
companies, Light and Power and the Federal Electric
Commission, and the Mexican Petroleum Company (PEMEX)
from privatization.
Fighting Privatization
The union was outspoken and active in its opposition to
President Vicente Fox, his National Action Party (PAN),
and its right-wing agenda. The Electrical Workers
Union organized around itself a coalition of other
unions, peasant leagues, and urban poor people to
create the National Front Against Privatization. When
Felipe Calderón became president in 2006, the
Electrical Workers continued their struggle against
privatization, joining with the National Union of
Workers (the UNT), Mexico's independent labor
federation, to build a massive national coalition
dedicated to changing the direction of the country.
For almost a decade, the Electrical Workers and its
allies have successfully stopped first Vicente Fox and
then Felipe Calderón from selling off the national
patrimony.
Most recently, the Electrical Workers and its Mexican
Union Front (FSM) have brought together other labor
unions, peasant leagues, and organizations of the urban
poor. The FSM in turn united with the independent UNT
to create the frentote -- a gigantic coalition of
virtually all of Mexico's organized working people.
The SME, thus, stood squarely in the path of President
Felipe Calderón and his National Action Party.
The Union and Its Contract
The Mexican Electrical Workers Union had developed over
the years into a powerful institution. The union's
total members reached 43,000 working members and 22,000
retirees represented by between 700 and 840 full-time,
paid delegates. The union contract, first negotiated
in 1917, had evolved into a complex document describing
2,800 job categories and 92 wage scales for the various
jobs. This contract protected the rights and
privileges of union members, with SME union members
having wages, benefits, and working conditions far
superior to those of workers in many other unions and
especially to unorganized workers.
The contract also gave the union power vis-Ã -vis the
company in matters of financing, development, and new
technology. It required management to inform the union
of the annual budget, building plans, investment and
acquisitions, and current finances. The contract
forbad the company from out-sourcing work even in non-
electrical areas such as auto shops, construction, and
carpentry. The union had virtual control over all
hiring and firing, and the union ran a technical school
with more than 1,200 students preparing to become Light
and Power employees.
The union contract also required the company to provide
the union with 75 million pesos (7.5 million dollars)
for contracting expenses, cultural activities, for
retirees, and in advances for union dues in June so
that union members could buy school supplies. While
critics called this the "dictatorship of the
proletariat," in was in reality a strong union
contract, not so different than those found two decades
ago in every industrial country in the world, providing
its members with job security, economic security, and
in general social well-being. Calderón has swept away
the union and torn its contract to bits.
Union Conflict Precipitates Crisis
Calderón may have been encouraged to make his bold move
to eliminate both company and union by the development
earlier this year of an internal union conflict. The
Mexican Electrical Workers Union is a notoriously
democratic union which has often seen rival factions
struggle for leadership of the union. The June 2009
union elections saw MartÃ*n Esparza, the incumbent
general secretary heading up the Green Slate of the
Unity and Union Democracy caucus, and Alejandro Muñoz,
the union's treasurer, heading up the Orange Slate of
the Union Transparency caucus. Muñoz accused Esparza
of having used his union office to line his own
pockets, and Esparza made similar accusations against
Muñoz.
Esparza also accused Muñoz of colluding with César
Nava, a PAN leader who previously served as Calderón's
closest aide (secretario particular). Muñoz denied the
accusations that he was close to Nava.
Muñoz accused the union of irregularities in the
electoral proceeding, but was convinced to await the
results of the June election, which he lost to Esparza.
A month later, Muñoz filed charges with the Federal
Board of Conciliation and Arbitration. This opened the
door for the government to intervene in the union.
Subsequently, on September 10, Secretary of Labor
Javier Lozano, declared that there had been
irregularities in the election, and on October 5 he
refused to recognize MartÃ*n Esparza as general
secretary, effectively decapitating the union by
declaring that it had no legally recognized leadership.
The Mexican government has broad powers to withhold
recognition (known as toma de nota) from union leaders.
This government interference violates the International
Labor Organization's Convention 87 which says workers
have the right to organize and run unions of their own
choosing. Five days after Lozano refused to recognize
the union leaders, Calderón sent the police and army to
seize the plants.
It is hard to tell exactly how the internal conflict
affected the union and its leaders, but in the crucial
days before the government carried out its coup, the
leadership failed to mobilize the union and its allies
to defend their workplaces and union. Though the union
had told the press a week before that it believed the
government was preparing to seize the company
facilities, it apparently took no steps to advise its
members to resist the police and hold the plants. For
example, on October 10, a group of just 30 police
officers seized the Systems Operation center which
controls the electrical substations of the entire
country -- and amazingly the famously militant union
did nothing to attempt to stop that takeover of that
crucial facility or any others. At the same time the
police also took over the union hall and its radio
station, also without resistance.2
The Political and Labor Union Context Today
Calderón and his National Action Party, controlling the
executive branch of government, have led this attack,
but they have had the support of the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) which dominates the
legislative branch. The government's attack on the
Mexican Electrical Workers Union has been opposed by
the parties of the left: the Party of the Democratic
Revolution (PRD), the Workers Party (PT), and
Convergence. The PAN and the PRI together control more
than two-thirds of the representatives and senators.
The PRI's support has been important not only in the
legislature but also in the organized labor movement.
The PRI, the former ruling party of Mexico, controls
the Congress of Labor, the Confederation of Mexican
Workers, and other confederations and industrial
unions, such as the Petroleum Workers Union. So,
though the Mexican Electrical Workers Union is party of
the Congress of Labor, none of the other union leaders
in that umbrella organization of the official labor
movement has said a word in defense of the electrical
workers, and none of those unions has come to its aid.
While the PRI controls most industrial unions, the head
of the largest public employee unions Elba Esther
Gordillo of the 1.5 million member Mexican Teachers
Union (el SNTE) and Valdemar Gutiérrez Fragoso of the
300,000 member Mexican Social Security Workers Union
(SNTSS) have been allied with the Calderón and the PAN.
Gordillo joined Calderón in creating a new Alliance for
Quality Education (ACE), which many critics see as
opening the door to privatization in that area.
Gutiérrez Fragoso, in addition to his duties as head of
his union, is also a PAN legislator. Neither the
Teachers Union nor the Social Security Workers Union
has spoken out against the government attack or acted
in solidarity with the Electrical Workers Union.
Massive Protest March
Still, the Electrical Workers Union has many allies.
Labor unions and social movements and opposition
political parties organized a huge protest march on
Thursday, October 15, which was estimated at between
150,000 and 300,000 participants. The march began at
4:00 p.m. at the Angel of Independence on Reforma
Avenue and marched to the Zócalo, Mexico national
plaza, the last marchers arriving at 8:00 p.m.
University workers, nuclear workers, miners, the
teachers union opposition, telephone workers, and many
others hiked through Mexico to show their solidarity.
While the march was a strong show of support, it was
not a show of force, never attempting to retake any of
the facilities.
Early last week Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who,
arguing that he won the 2006 election, calls himself
the "Legitimate President of Mexico," convened a mass
meeting of tens of thousands of his supporters and
turned the platform over to MartÃ*n Esparza, general
secretary of the Electrical Workers Union. Both
Esparza and López Obrador called the government's
action unconstitutional and illegal and both called for
resistance. López Obrador called upon the legislature
to create a commission to investigate the situation.
No such investigation is likely to take place, given
that the government party and its allies control a very
large majority of both houses of the congress.
Since the police seized the power plants, there have
been daily rallies and demonstrations by thousands of
Electrical Workers in Mexico City. Neither speaker
proposed a plan of resistance through mass action aimed
at the government bur rather inclined toward legal
strategies.
The mass march pressured the government into holding a
negotiating session with the union, but that session
soon reached an impasse. Secretary of the Interior
Fernando Gómez Mont said that the government's decision
was "irreversible." Secretary of Labor also commented
calling the liquidation of the company a "consummated
fact." The Mexican Electrical Workers also refused to
compromise on its demands that the police be removed
from the workplace, that the liquidation of the company
be revoked, and that the government negotiate the
issues with the union. Further progress in any
negotiations seems unlikely and becomes less likely
with every passing day.
As that incident demonstrates, mass marches will not be
able to force the government to reverse its decision,
though it remains possible that a national response, a
national civic uprising such as the local uprising in
Oaxaca three years ago, might be capable of stopping
the government. Still, if the union is not prepared to
take the necessary action in Mexico City, it cannot
expect others to come to the rescue. The union must
lead or be swept away.
Solidarity from Mexico and Abroad
Throughout Mexico, workers, students, and communities,
labor unions and left parties, rallied and marched to
support the Mexican Electrical Workers Union. In
Cuernavaca, Morelos, some 3,500 marched. In Oaxaca,
the Union of Workers and Employees of the Benito Juárez
Autonomous University shut down the university in
protest and solidarity. In San Luis Potosi, the Potosi
Union Front carried protested the development at the
State Legislature and expressed their solidarity with
the electrical workers. Divers organizations -- the
National Union of General Tire Workers, the Board
Popular Front (FAP), and the Party of the Democratic
Revolution expressed support at the national, state,
and local levels.
Expression of international solidarity arrived from the
United States and Canada, Holland and Germany, and even
from workers in Iraq. Unions from around the world
condemned the Mexican government and gave voice to
their solidarity with the Mexican Electrical Workers
Union. While such expressions of solidarity help to
give heart to the struggling electrical workers of
Mexico, unlike in industries such as shipping where
dockworkers' solidarity can have a direct impact, those
foreign unions can have little leverage on a
nationalized power company in another country -- though
the CFE does import coal, and coal miners, railroad
workers, and marine workers might be able to interrupt
those shipments.
Union's Legal and Legislative Strategy
While marching in the streets, the Electrical Workers
Union is also pursuing a legal strategy, having hired
Néstor de Buen, the country's leading labor lawyer, to
argue that the Calderón government's seizure of the
company was unconstitutional and illegal. The union
also plans to have its members file individual lawsuits
called amparos, something like injunctions, arguing
that their individual rights have been violated. While
other unions have used the individual lawsuits as a
mechanism to delay government actions, they would seem
to be a weak tool in this case.
The union says it will also pursue a legislative
strategy, pressuring the Mexican Legislature to present
a "constitutional controversy,"arguing in effect that
the executive branch of the government overstepped its
constitutional authority. Such a legislative strategy
appears to have little hope of success given the
alliance between President Calderón's National Action
Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) which, as mentioned above, together control the
congress.
The union's legal strategy is premised on the argument
that since Light and Power was created by the
legislative decree it cannot be eradicated by executive
decrees. The union and its supporters have also argued
that the president's action violates both Mexican labor
law and international labor standards.
Police, Army Still Occupy Plants
At this moment, 5,000 federal police, backed up by at
least 10,000 police reserves, and 3,000 military
officers still hold over 100 facilities. The plants
are being operated by management and by 3,000
electrical workers brought in from the other state-
owned power company, CFE, and another 800 engineers and
technicians provided by the military. Workers at the
CFE are members of the Sole Union of Electrical Workers
of Mexico (SUTERM), a union historically controlled by
the PRI whose leaders are eager to collude with the
government in the hopes of sharing in the booty of
jobs, union dues, and political influence.
Since the police took control of the plants, there have
been many localized blackouts that have shut off power
for hours to Mexico City neighborhoods, to other cities
and towns, and to industry, with hundreds of factories
idled in the nearby State of Mexico. The government
has blamed the blackouts on the union, while the union
attributes the blackouts to the incompetence of the
government and the workers brought into run the plants.
Future of the Light and Power
The Calderón government has said that, having
extinguished the Light and Power Company, it will now
turn its facilities over to a new company which it
plans to merge with the Federal Electrical Commission
in the near future. The government says it plans to
hire 10,000 former Light and Power workers to work for
the new company under new terms of employment. The
45,000 union workers have been told that they must
collect their severance pay by mid-November to be
eligible to be hired by the new company. So far about
1,400 workers have collected their severance pay.
There have also been 11,700 payments to the 22,000
retirees. As an added inducement to workers, the
Secretary of Labor has thrown in scholarships to study
English for workers who file for their severance soon.
The government has set aside 20 billion pesos (about
200 million dollars) for the costs of the liquidation
of the company labor force. Each worker is being paid
the severance to which they are entitled under Mexican
law, 300,000 to 400,000 pesos or about 30,000 to 40,000
U.S. dollars each.
The Economic Argument
Felipe Calderón's decision to liquidate the Light and
Power Company did not result out of any contract
negotiation or strike, but rather out of a political
decision to do away with the nationalized company and
the union which stands at the center of the Mexican
left and in the path of the president's privatizing
agenda. The Calderón government, however, argues that
this was a purely economic decision based on the
economic and productive inefficiencies of Light and
Power. There is, however, no clear-cut economic case
to be made; the issues are complex.
The government argues that the Light and Power Company
had an annual deficit of 44 billion pesos (400 million
US dollars). Georgina Kessel MartÃ*nez, Secretary of
Energy, asserts that Light and Powers expenses were
almost always double its sales, requiring enormous
government subsidies. In reality that "deficit" was
largely the result of transferring electric power from
the Federal Electric Commission (CFE) to Light and
Power (LyF), both government-owned companies.
Calderón in his speech to the nation justified
eliminating the company because it was "losing one
third of the electricity it distributed because of
theft, technical failures, corruption, or
inefficiencies." That the CFE was more productive than
LyF seems beyond doubt, but many things explain that:
* Mexico City, the Federal District, and Central
Mexico, which Light and Power served, represent the
most difficult geographic, demographic, and
economic area of the country. While rural areas
present special challenges, the complex and
constantly expanding and evolving megapolis of 20
million people and millions of others in
surrounding central states is even more
challenging.
* The residents and businesses of Mexico City
reputedly "steal" electrical energy from the system
through illegal connections. I put "steal" in
quotes because it is after all a national system
which exists to provide electricity to the Mexican
people at a reasonable cost.
* Government agencies, for example Los Pinos, the
Mexican presidential residence and office, did not
pay for their electricity. For reasons that are
unclear, the government company also failed to
charge some Mexican businesses such as hotels for
their electricity.
The union argues that for the last 20 years the
government declined to invest in the company, allowing
the plant and distribution system to deteriorate, in
order to create an economic crisis.
The Question of Wages, Benefits, Pensions
The Calderón administration has suggested that at the
center of Light and Power's economic problems was the
high cost of workers' wages, benefits, and pensions
which threatened to bankrupt the system. The
government says that 160 billion pesos out of its 240
billion peso wage bill went toward pensions for 20,000
retired workers.
Without a doubt, the Mexican Electrical Workers Union
had succeeded in its 95-year history in winning for its
members a labor union contract which might be the envy
of workers throughout the country. Unlike most Mexican
workers, Light and Power workers earned about 6,000
pesos (600 US dollars) per month, something
approximating a living wage. Retired workers enjoyed
very generous pensions equal to or greater than their
work wages. But the alleged financial crisis of the
company may not have been the real motive behind
Calderón's aggressive action.
The Real Economic Motive?
MartÃ*n Esparza, the union's leader, argues that the
real economic motive for the government's action is the
desire of privatize industry to get its hands on the
100 kilometer network of fiber optic cable which was
the property of Light and Power. The fiber optic cable
system which can be used for telecommunications was
licensed in 1999 to WL Comunicaciones S.A. de C.V., a
Spanish company.
A year later the company, whose majority partners are
two former Secretaries of Energy, Fernando Canales
Clariond and Ernesto Martens, gained the right to
operate the fiber optic network for 30 years, with the
possibility of further extensions. Secretary of Labor
Javier Lozano has also been as a consultant, assisting
WL Comunicaciones in winning its concessions.3
The Impact: Business Thrilled
Mexican and foreign capital is thrilled at Calderón's
action. The Business Coordinating Council (CCE), the
Confederation of Mexican Employers (COPARMEX), the
Federation of Industrial Chambers (CONCAMIN), the
National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry
(CANACINTRA), and the Mexican Council of Businessmen
(CMHN) all praised Calderón and encouraged him to see
the attack on the electrical workers as just a first
step. The Mexican capitalist class has had a taste of
blood, likes it, and wants more.
Investors.com, speaking for and to international
capital, in an article titled "Mexico Knocks a Union's
Lights Out," called it "one of the best things to
happen to Mexico." Business Week, while less euphoric,
speculated that Calderón might now take on the Mexican
Teachers Union and the PEMEX, the state oil company,
and the Petroleum Workers Union, and Carlos Slim's
TELMEX with its high telephone costs.
A More Authoritarian State
Senator Rosario Ibarra, Mexico's first woman candidate
for president in 1982 and longtime human rights
activist, expresses her alarm at a whole series of
recent developments -- including the government's
seizure of Light and Power -- which suggest that the
Mexican government has become more authoritarian. 4
José Narro Robles, the rector of the National
Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), suggests that
the government's seizure of the power plants and
elimination of the company and the union will aggravate
an already difficult situation for the country's
majority of working and poor people. Warning of
possible social unrest, he says, "Our country is living
in a very delicate moment. Nobody can deny it. No one
can deny it when we have such a large number of
millions of Mexicans in inadequate conditions, in
poverty or in extreme poverty."
Narro fears social unrest, and his fear is
understandable, but it seems that, if the Mexican
Electrical Workers Union and the labor movement are to
survive, it will take social unrest of a well-organized
and massive sort to stop the Calderón government. If
such forces began to move, they might even push that
government aside, though so far, there are no signs of
such a development on the scale needed.
1 Manuel Camacho SolÃ*s, "SME: las verdaderas razones,"
El Universal, October 12, 2009. SolÃ*s is a member of
the leadership of the Broad Progressive Front (FAP)
2 Silvia Otero and Alberto Morales, "'Apagan' LyFC;
liquidan empleados," El Universal, October 11, 2009.
3 Rosalia Vergara, "Calderón y el SME: La guerra por
la fibra óptica," Proceso, October 17, 2009.
4 Rosario Ibarra, "Alarma ante la situación de los
derechos humanos," a statement distributed by the
Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), on October 17. Dan
La Botz is a Cincinnati-based teacher, writer and
activist.
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Mexican Electrical Workers Union Fights for It's Life
by Dan La Botz
MRZine
October 19, 2009
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/labotz191009.html
The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), made up of
approximately 43,000 active and 22,000 retired workers
in Mexico City and surrounding states, is fighting for
its life. The union's struggle has rallied allies in
the labor movement and on the left in Mexico and
solidarity from throughout the country and around the
world, but, if it is to survive, the union and its
supporters have to take stronger actions than they have
so far, and time is not on their side.
On the night of October 10, President Calderón ordered
federal police to seize the power plants, while he
simultaneously liquidated the state-owned Light and
Power Company, fired the entire workforce, and thus did
away with the legal existence of the union. The
Mexican president's attack on the Electrical Workers
Union might be compared to Ronald Regan's firing of
more than 11,500 members of the Professional Air
Traffic Controllers (PATCO) in 1981 or to Margaret
Thatcher's smashing of the National Union of
Minerworkers (NUM) in 1984 in which over 11,000 miners
were arrested and the union defeated.
Changing the Balance of Force
Calderón's move to destroy this union represents an
important turning point in modern Mexican labor
history, a decisive step to break the back of the
unions once and for all. Following up on his three-
year war on the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union
(SNTMM), Calderón has now decided to take on the
leading union in Mexico City. But, even more
important, it is, as one Mexican political leader
noted, it is an act intended "to change the balance of
forces," so that they favor the government.
After its electoral defeat and out of fear of
social protest which the [economic] crisis is
provoking, the government wants to give a
demonstration of its power which everybody will
understand: the left, the social movements, the PRI
, the unions,
the Congress, the businessmen and the media. The
logic is the same that was used in the [Salinas
government's] attack on La Quina [head of the
Mexican Petroleum Workers Union] in 1989: if you
can do it the strongest, then you can do it to the
weakest. If the most combative union can be
defeated, then so can any other force.1
Mexico City, where this blow has been delivered, is
heart of the political opposition to Calderón and the
base of support for left-wing leader Andrés Manuel
López Obrador who claims to have won the last election.
Mexico City is also the base of Marcelo Ebrard, the
mayor of the metropolis, who some see as another
possible presidential contender in 2012. So this
attack on the union is also an attack on the left at
its strongest point. And, at least at this moment --
and while we still hope to see the Mexican workers take
the strong measures needed -- it seems as if the
government can and has defeated the strongest, and can
now turn its attention to the weaker.
A Turning Point
This is a turning point because it allows Mexico's
capitalist class to resume the neoliberal project begun
under Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1988 but interrupted
by a series of unforeseen events: the creation of the
Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1989, the
Chiapas Rebellion led by the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation in 1994, president Ernesto Zedillo's
precipitation of the economic crisis of 1994-96, and
finally the end of the old one-party state under the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its
replacement by National Action Party (PAN).
Salinas had succeeded in privatizing the Mexican
Telephone Company (TELMEX), the railroads, and the
Cananea Copper Company, but he failed to finish the
job, with the energy sector, petroleum and electric
power generation, still state owned. Now, after a
twenty-year interruption, Calderón has under taken to
finish the job.
The Origin of an Independent Union
The full significance of these events can only be
appreciated when one sees them in the light of both
their history and the current political context. The
Calderón administration has chosen to attack one of
Mexico's oldest, most militant, and most democratic
union. The Mexican Electrical Workers Union was born
in the great Mexican Revolution of 1910-1940, a
tumultuous upheaval from below by the country's
workers, farmers, and peasants, which swept away the
dictatorship of Porfirio DÃ*az and replaced it with a
new order, if not exactly the order that the underdogs
had been hoping for. In 1911, a group of electrical
workers at the Light and Power Company organized the
League of Electrical Workers. Then in 1914 they
founded the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (Sindicato
Mexicano de Electricistas).
The newly created Electrical Workers participated in
the general strike of 1916 to defend the right of
independent unions to exist. In 1917 the union
negotiated its first contract, laying the basis for
what would become one of the strongest collective
bargaining agreements in the country. Less radical
than some other unions and more independent than many,
the Electrical Workers survived the labor wars of the
1920s that pitted corrupt, government-backed unions
against revolutionary anarchists and Communists.
The Union in the Cárdenas Period
When the popular nationalist and leftist General Lázaro
Cárdenas became president, he brought most of the
Mexican labor unions into his orbit and under his
influence. The Electrical Workers general secretary
Francisco Breña AlvÃ*rez, however, guided the union
along its own independent path. In June of 1936, the
Electrical Workers Union faced a conflict over wages
with the British-Canadian Mexican Light, which then
owned the central electrical companies for which their
members worked.
The Cárdenas government would have liked to avoid a
strike and proposed arbitration, but the union rejected
any form of arbitration and struck. The strike by the
union's 3,000 members shut off power in Mexico City --
except to hospitals and other essential services --
paralyzed the streetcars and brought management to the
table. The union successfully defended the right to
strike, eschewed arbitration, defeated the company, and
maintained its independence form the government.
Between Scylla and Charybdis
During the late 1940s and 1950s, Mexico experienced its
own wave of anti-Communism and its own version of
McCarthyism, as the government deposed independent
union leaders and replaced them with government-backed
gangster leaders, the so-called charros. The Mexican
Electrical Workers succeeded in avoiding the worst of
that era, emerging in the 1960s, and continuing in the
1970s, as an ally of the "worker insurgency" then
taking place and as friend to the new independent
unions that were then arising.
During the 1980s, the Electrical Workers Union once
again found itself in conflict with the government-
employer. In 1987, as students also struck the
university, the union shut off power to Mexico City
once again as it had 50 years before. Throughout the
years of the Carlos Salinas presidency (1988-1994), the
union maneuvered between the Scylla of government
domination and the Charybdis of the president's program
of privatization.
The Electrical Workers veered toward the privatizing
president to protect its own interests, but
simultaneously strove to escape the sirens of
patronage. That period was not its most heroic, yet,
despite its compromises with Salinas, the Electrical
Workers Union did not completely forfeit its
independence and re-emerged in the 1990s and 2000s to
lead coalitions to defend national electric power
companies, Light and Power and the Federal Electric
Commission, and the Mexican Petroleum Company (PEMEX)
from privatization.
Fighting Privatization
The union was outspoken and active in its opposition to
President Vicente Fox, his National Action Party (PAN),
and its right-wing agenda. The Electrical Workers
Union organized around itself a coalition of other
unions, peasant leagues, and urban poor people to
create the National Front Against Privatization. When
Felipe Calderón became president in 2006, the
Electrical Workers continued their struggle against
privatization, joining with the National Union of
Workers (the UNT), Mexico's independent labor
federation, to build a massive national coalition
dedicated to changing the direction of the country.
For almost a decade, the Electrical Workers and its
allies have successfully stopped first Vicente Fox and
then Felipe Calderón from selling off the national
patrimony.
Most recently, the Electrical Workers and its Mexican
Union Front (FSM) have brought together other labor
unions, peasant leagues, and organizations of the urban
poor. The FSM in turn united with the independent UNT
to create the frentote -- a gigantic coalition of
virtually all of Mexico's organized working people.
The SME, thus, stood squarely in the path of President
Felipe Calderón and his National Action Party.
The Union and Its Contract
The Mexican Electrical Workers Union had developed over
the years into a powerful institution. The union's
total members reached 43,000 working members and 22,000
retirees represented by between 700 and 840 full-time,
paid delegates. The union contract, first negotiated
in 1917, had evolved into a complex document describing
2,800 job categories and 92 wage scales for the various
jobs. This contract protected the rights and
privileges of union members, with SME union members
having wages, benefits, and working conditions far
superior to those of workers in many other unions and
especially to unorganized workers.
The contract also gave the union power vis-Ã -vis the
company in matters of financing, development, and new
technology. It required management to inform the union
of the annual budget, building plans, investment and
acquisitions, and current finances. The contract
forbad the company from out-sourcing work even in non-
electrical areas such as auto shops, construction, and
carpentry. The union had virtual control over all
hiring and firing, and the union ran a technical school
with more than 1,200 students preparing to become Light
and Power employees.
The union contract also required the company to provide
the union with 75 million pesos (7.5 million dollars)
for contracting expenses, cultural activities, for
retirees, and in advances for union dues in June so
that union members could buy school supplies. While
critics called this the "dictatorship of the
proletariat," in was in reality a strong union
contract, not so different than those found two decades
ago in every industrial country in the world, providing
its members with job security, economic security, and
in general social well-being. Calderón has swept away
the union and torn its contract to bits.
Union Conflict Precipitates Crisis
Calderón may have been encouraged to make his bold move
to eliminate both company and union by the development
earlier this year of an internal union conflict. The
Mexican Electrical Workers Union is a notoriously
democratic union which has often seen rival factions
struggle for leadership of the union. The June 2009
union elections saw MartÃ*n Esparza, the incumbent
general secretary heading up the Green Slate of the
Unity and Union Democracy caucus, and Alejandro Muñoz,
the union's treasurer, heading up the Orange Slate of
the Union Transparency caucus. Muñoz accused Esparza
of having used his union office to line his own
pockets, and Esparza made similar accusations against
Muñoz.
Esparza also accused Muñoz of colluding with César
Nava, a PAN leader who previously served as Calderón's
closest aide (secretario particular). Muñoz denied the
accusations that he was close to Nava.
Muñoz accused the union of irregularities in the
electoral proceeding, but was convinced to await the
results of the June election, which he lost to Esparza.
A month later, Muñoz filed charges with the Federal
Board of Conciliation and Arbitration. This opened the
door for the government to intervene in the union.
Subsequently, on September 10, Secretary of Labor
Javier Lozano, declared that there had been
irregularities in the election, and on October 5 he
refused to recognize MartÃ*n Esparza as general
secretary, effectively decapitating the union by
declaring that it had no legally recognized leadership.
The Mexican government has broad powers to withhold
recognition (known as toma de nota) from union leaders.
This government interference violates the International
Labor Organization's Convention 87 which says workers
have the right to organize and run unions of their own
choosing. Five days after Lozano refused to recognize
the union leaders, Calderón sent the police and army to
seize the plants.
It is hard to tell exactly how the internal conflict
affected the union and its leaders, but in the crucial
days before the government carried out its coup, the
leadership failed to mobilize the union and its allies
to defend their workplaces and union. Though the union
had told the press a week before that it believed the
government was preparing to seize the company
facilities, it apparently took no steps to advise its
members to resist the police and hold the plants. For
example, on October 10, a group of just 30 police
officers seized the Systems Operation center which
controls the electrical substations of the entire
country -- and amazingly the famously militant union
did nothing to attempt to stop that takeover of that
crucial facility or any others. At the same time the
police also took over the union hall and its radio
station, also without resistance.2
The Political and Labor Union Context Today
Calderón and his National Action Party, controlling the
executive branch of government, have led this attack,
but they have had the support of the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) which dominates the
legislative branch. The government's attack on the
Mexican Electrical Workers Union has been opposed by
the parties of the left: the Party of the Democratic
Revolution (PRD), the Workers Party (PT), and
Convergence. The PAN and the PRI together control more
than two-thirds of the representatives and senators.
The PRI's support has been important not only in the
legislature but also in the organized labor movement.
The PRI, the former ruling party of Mexico, controls
the Congress of Labor, the Confederation of Mexican
Workers, and other confederations and industrial
unions, such as the Petroleum Workers Union. So,
though the Mexican Electrical Workers Union is party of
the Congress of Labor, none of the other union leaders
in that umbrella organization of the official labor
movement has said a word in defense of the electrical
workers, and none of those unions has come to its aid.
While the PRI controls most industrial unions, the head
of the largest public employee unions Elba Esther
Gordillo of the 1.5 million member Mexican Teachers
Union (el SNTE) and Valdemar Gutiérrez Fragoso of the
300,000 member Mexican Social Security Workers Union
(SNTSS) have been allied with the Calderón and the PAN.
Gordillo joined Calderón in creating a new Alliance for
Quality Education (ACE), which many critics see as
opening the door to privatization in that area.
Gutiérrez Fragoso, in addition to his duties as head of
his union, is also a PAN legislator. Neither the
Teachers Union nor the Social Security Workers Union
has spoken out against the government attack or acted
in solidarity with the Electrical Workers Union.
Massive Protest March
Still, the Electrical Workers Union has many allies.
Labor unions and social movements and opposition
political parties organized a huge protest march on
Thursday, October 15, which was estimated at between
150,000 and 300,000 participants. The march began at
4:00 p.m. at the Angel of Independence on Reforma
Avenue and marched to the Zócalo, Mexico national
plaza, the last marchers arriving at 8:00 p.m.
University workers, nuclear workers, miners, the
teachers union opposition, telephone workers, and many
others hiked through Mexico to show their solidarity.
While the march was a strong show of support, it was
not a show of force, never attempting to retake any of
the facilities.
Early last week Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who,
arguing that he won the 2006 election, calls himself
the "Legitimate President of Mexico," convened a mass
meeting of tens of thousands of his supporters and
turned the platform over to MartÃ*n Esparza, general
secretary of the Electrical Workers Union. Both
Esparza and López Obrador called the government's
action unconstitutional and illegal and both called for
resistance. López Obrador called upon the legislature
to create a commission to investigate the situation.
No such investigation is likely to take place, given
that the government party and its allies control a very
large majority of both houses of the congress.
Since the police seized the power plants, there have
been daily rallies and demonstrations by thousands of
Electrical Workers in Mexico City. Neither speaker
proposed a plan of resistance through mass action aimed
at the government bur rather inclined toward legal
strategies.
The mass march pressured the government into holding a
negotiating session with the union, but that session
soon reached an impasse. Secretary of the Interior
Fernando Gómez Mont said that the government's decision
was "irreversible." Secretary of Labor also commented
calling the liquidation of the company a "consummated
fact." The Mexican Electrical Workers also refused to
compromise on its demands that the police be removed
from the workplace, that the liquidation of the company
be revoked, and that the government negotiate the
issues with the union. Further progress in any
negotiations seems unlikely and becomes less likely
with every passing day.
As that incident demonstrates, mass marches will not be
able to force the government to reverse its decision,
though it remains possible that a national response, a
national civic uprising such as the local uprising in
Oaxaca three years ago, might be capable of stopping
the government. Still, if the union is not prepared to
take the necessary action in Mexico City, it cannot
expect others to come to the rescue. The union must
lead or be swept away.
Solidarity from Mexico and Abroad
Throughout Mexico, workers, students, and communities,
labor unions and left parties, rallied and marched to
support the Mexican Electrical Workers Union. In
Cuernavaca, Morelos, some 3,500 marched. In Oaxaca,
the Union of Workers and Employees of the Benito Juárez
Autonomous University shut down the university in
protest and solidarity. In San Luis Potosi, the Potosi
Union Front carried protested the development at the
State Legislature and expressed their solidarity with
the electrical workers. Divers organizations -- the
National Union of General Tire Workers, the Board
Popular Front (FAP), and the Party of the Democratic
Revolution expressed support at the national, state,
and local levels.
Expression of international solidarity arrived from the
United States and Canada, Holland and Germany, and even
from workers in Iraq. Unions from around the world
condemned the Mexican government and gave voice to
their solidarity with the Mexican Electrical Workers
Union. While such expressions of solidarity help to
give heart to the struggling electrical workers of
Mexico, unlike in industries such as shipping where
dockworkers' solidarity can have a direct impact, those
foreign unions can have little leverage on a
nationalized power company in another country -- though
the CFE does import coal, and coal miners, railroad
workers, and marine workers might be able to interrupt
those shipments.
Union's Legal and Legislative Strategy
While marching in the streets, the Electrical Workers
Union is also pursuing a legal strategy, having hired
Néstor de Buen, the country's leading labor lawyer, to
argue that the Calderón government's seizure of the
company was unconstitutional and illegal. The union
also plans to have its members file individual lawsuits
called amparos, something like injunctions, arguing
that their individual rights have been violated. While
other unions have used the individual lawsuits as a
mechanism to delay government actions, they would seem
to be a weak tool in this case.
The union says it will also pursue a legislative
strategy, pressuring the Mexican Legislature to present
a "constitutional controversy,"arguing in effect that
the executive branch of the government overstepped its
constitutional authority. Such a legislative strategy
appears to have little hope of success given the
alliance between President Calderón's National Action
Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) which, as mentioned above, together control the
congress.
The union's legal strategy is premised on the argument
that since Light and Power was created by the
legislative decree it cannot be eradicated by executive
decrees. The union and its supporters have also argued
that the president's action violates both Mexican labor
law and international labor standards.
Police, Army Still Occupy Plants
At this moment, 5,000 federal police, backed up by at
least 10,000 police reserves, and 3,000 military
officers still hold over 100 facilities. The plants
are being operated by management and by 3,000
electrical workers brought in from the other state-
owned power company, CFE, and another 800 engineers and
technicians provided by the military. Workers at the
CFE are members of the Sole Union of Electrical Workers
of Mexico (SUTERM), a union historically controlled by
the PRI whose leaders are eager to collude with the
government in the hopes of sharing in the booty of
jobs, union dues, and political influence.
Since the police took control of the plants, there have
been many localized blackouts that have shut off power
for hours to Mexico City neighborhoods, to other cities
and towns, and to industry, with hundreds of factories
idled in the nearby State of Mexico. The government
has blamed the blackouts on the union, while the union
attributes the blackouts to the incompetence of the
government and the workers brought into run the plants.
Future of the Light and Power
The Calderón government has said that, having
extinguished the Light and Power Company, it will now
turn its facilities over to a new company which it
plans to merge with the Federal Electrical Commission
in the near future. The government says it plans to
hire 10,000 former Light and Power workers to work for
the new company under new terms of employment. The
45,000 union workers have been told that they must
collect their severance pay by mid-November to be
eligible to be hired by the new company. So far about
1,400 workers have collected their severance pay.
There have also been 11,700 payments to the 22,000
retirees. As an added inducement to workers, the
Secretary of Labor has thrown in scholarships to study
English for workers who file for their severance soon.
The government has set aside 20 billion pesos (about
200 million dollars) for the costs of the liquidation
of the company labor force. Each worker is being paid
the severance to which they are entitled under Mexican
law, 300,000 to 400,000 pesos or about 30,000 to 40,000
U.S. dollars each.
The Economic Argument
Felipe Calderón's decision to liquidate the Light and
Power Company did not result out of any contract
negotiation or strike, but rather out of a political
decision to do away with the nationalized company and
the union which stands at the center of the Mexican
left and in the path of the president's privatizing
agenda. The Calderón government, however, argues that
this was a purely economic decision based on the
economic and productive inefficiencies of Light and
Power. There is, however, no clear-cut economic case
to be made; the issues are complex.
The government argues that the Light and Power Company
had an annual deficit of 44 billion pesos (400 million
US dollars). Georgina Kessel MartÃ*nez, Secretary of
Energy, asserts that Light and Powers expenses were
almost always double its sales, requiring enormous
government subsidies. In reality that "deficit" was
largely the result of transferring electric power from
the Federal Electric Commission (CFE) to Light and
Power (LyF), both government-owned companies.
Calderón in his speech to the nation justified
eliminating the company because it was "losing one
third of the electricity it distributed because of
theft, technical failures, corruption, or
inefficiencies." That the CFE was more productive than
LyF seems beyond doubt, but many things explain that:
* Mexico City, the Federal District, and Central
Mexico, which Light and Power served, represent the
most difficult geographic, demographic, and
economic area of the country. While rural areas
present special challenges, the complex and
constantly expanding and evolving megapolis of 20
million people and millions of others in
surrounding central states is even more
challenging.
* The residents and businesses of Mexico City
reputedly "steal" electrical energy from the system
through illegal connections. I put "steal" in
quotes because it is after all a national system
which exists to provide electricity to the Mexican
people at a reasonable cost.
* Government agencies, for example Los Pinos, the
Mexican presidential residence and office, did not
pay for their electricity. For reasons that are
unclear, the government company also failed to
charge some Mexican businesses such as hotels for
their electricity.
The union argues that for the last 20 years the
government declined to invest in the company, allowing
the plant and distribution system to deteriorate, in
order to create an economic crisis.
The Question of Wages, Benefits, Pensions
The Calderón administration has suggested that at the
center of Light and Power's economic problems was the
high cost of workers' wages, benefits, and pensions
which threatened to bankrupt the system. The
government says that 160 billion pesos out of its 240
billion peso wage bill went toward pensions for 20,000
retired workers.
Without a doubt, the Mexican Electrical Workers Union
had succeeded in its 95-year history in winning for its
members a labor union contract which might be the envy
of workers throughout the country. Unlike most Mexican
workers, Light and Power workers earned about 6,000
pesos (600 US dollars) per month, something
approximating a living wage. Retired workers enjoyed
very generous pensions equal to or greater than their
work wages. But the alleged financial crisis of the
company may not have been the real motive behind
Calderón's aggressive action.
The Real Economic Motive?
MartÃ*n Esparza, the union's leader, argues that the
real economic motive for the government's action is the
desire of privatize industry to get its hands on the
100 kilometer network of fiber optic cable which was
the property of Light and Power. The fiber optic cable
system which can be used for telecommunications was
licensed in 1999 to WL Comunicaciones S.A. de C.V., a
Spanish company.
A year later the company, whose majority partners are
two former Secretaries of Energy, Fernando Canales
Clariond and Ernesto Martens, gained the right to
operate the fiber optic network for 30 years, with the
possibility of further extensions. Secretary of Labor
Javier Lozano has also been as a consultant, assisting
WL Comunicaciones in winning its concessions.3
The Impact: Business Thrilled
Mexican and foreign capital is thrilled at Calderón's
action. The Business Coordinating Council (CCE), the
Confederation of Mexican Employers (COPARMEX), the
Federation of Industrial Chambers (CONCAMIN), the
National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry
(CANACINTRA), and the Mexican Council of Businessmen
(CMHN) all praised Calderón and encouraged him to see
the attack on the electrical workers as just a first
step. The Mexican capitalist class has had a taste of
blood, likes it, and wants more.
Investors.com, speaking for and to international
capital, in an article titled "Mexico Knocks a Union's
Lights Out," called it "one of the best things to
happen to Mexico." Business Week, while less euphoric,
speculated that Calderón might now take on the Mexican
Teachers Union and the PEMEX, the state oil company,
and the Petroleum Workers Union, and Carlos Slim's
TELMEX with its high telephone costs.
A More Authoritarian State
Senator Rosario Ibarra, Mexico's first woman candidate
for president in 1982 and longtime human rights
activist, expresses her alarm at a whole series of
recent developments -- including the government's
seizure of Light and Power -- which suggest that the
Mexican government has become more authoritarian. 4
José Narro Robles, the rector of the National
Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), suggests that
the government's seizure of the power plants and
elimination of the company and the union will aggravate
an already difficult situation for the country's
majority of working and poor people. Warning of
possible social unrest, he says, "Our country is living
in a very delicate moment. Nobody can deny it. No one
can deny it when we have such a large number of
millions of Mexicans in inadequate conditions, in
poverty or in extreme poverty."
Narro fears social unrest, and his fear is
understandable, but it seems that, if the Mexican
Electrical Workers Union and the labor movement are to
survive, it will take social unrest of a well-organized
and massive sort to stop the Calderón government. If
such forces began to move, they might even push that
government aside, though so far, there are no signs of
such a development on the scale needed.
1 Manuel Camacho SolÃ*s, "SME: las verdaderas razones,"
El Universal, October 12, 2009. SolÃ*s is a member of
the leadership of the Broad Progressive Front (FAP)
2 Silvia Otero and Alberto Morales, "'Apagan' LyFC;
liquidan empleados," El Universal, October 11, 2009.
3 Rosalia Vergara, "Calderón y el SME: La guerra por
la fibra óptica," Proceso, October 17, 2009.
4 Rosario Ibarra, "Alarma ante la situación de los
derechos humanos," a statement distributed by the
Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), on October 17. Dan
La Botz is a Cincinnati-based teacher, writer and
activist.
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