Vol 7, No. 4
MAY 15, 2002
About Mexican Labor
News and Analysis
Tens of thousands of Mexican workers marched on May 1,
international labor day, in cities throughout the country against the economic
and labor policies of President Vicente Fox and his Secretary of Labor Carlos
Abascal. In particular, unions and workers rejected the proposed reform of the
Federal Labor Law (LFT), opposed the privatization of the public electrical
system, and repudiated cuts in the federal budget for the health and education
systems.
In the largest and most important May Day celebrations in
Mexico City, union commemorations reflected their different political
commitments. The Zócalo, Mexico City’s central plaza, was the site of two
demonstrations, one called by the Congress of Labor (CT), formerly the
Institutional Revolutionary Party-government’s “official” labor
federation, the other called by the independent National Union of Workers (UNT)
and the Mexican Union Front (FSM).
The CT’s ceremony, headed by Leonardo Rodríguez Alcaine,
lasted just 20 minutes. Some 35,000 workers heard Rodríguez Alcaine criticized
the Fox government’s “fictional economy” and “lack of direction.” The
CT had invited Roberto Madrazo, head of the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) and announced that he would attend, but in the end he declined. While Rodríguez
Alcaine attacked Fox, Victor Flores Morales, head of the Mexican Railroad
Workers Union (STFRM) brought a delegation carrying a huge banner that said,
“Fox with the people of Mexico, the Railroad Workers with Fox.” In less than
half an hour the CT crowd had disbanded and gone home.
A couple of hours later, the National Union of Workers (UNT)
and the Mexican Union Front (FSM) were joined by many independent unions,
workers and peasants in a much larger demonstration calling for defense and
fulfillment of the existing Federal Labor Law (LFT). The UNT and other unions
called upon Abascal to resign, arguing that he was completely out of touch with
the reality of working people’s lives.
Among those participating in the common UNT and FSM
demonstration in the Zócalo were the Mexican Electrical Workers (SME), who make
up the core of the FSM, Mexican Telephone workers (STRM), streetcar workers,
pilots, flight attendants (ASSA), social security (SNTSS) and university workers
(STUNAM), auto workers from Volkswagen and DINA, the nuclear workers (SUTIN),
and the Authentic Labor Front (FAT). Workers from the Euzkadi rubber plant near
Guadalajara also participated and protested what they called the “illegal
closing” of their plant.
For his part, in his labor day speech President Fox called
upon unions “to give up the logic of the defeated,” and join in partnership
with the employers and the government to create a more prosperous Mexico.
Roman Catholic Bishops also spoke out on May Day, stating that in the event of changes in the Federal Labor Law, the historic conquests of the labor movement should be maintained.
May Day is celebrated almost everywhere in the world (except the United States) as an expression of workers power and international labor solidarity. But in Mexico such international solidarity apparently is not permitted.
The Mexican government expelled professor Dan Leahy and 17 students from Evergreen College in the state of Washington, for participating in the May Day march, and for their support for the peasants of San Salvador Atenco who are fighting to keep their land from being seized to create a new international airport.. The group was arrested by 35 heavily-armed officers of the Federal Police, and then held in comunicado until they were expelled. The government ordered their expulsion for violating the terms of their tourist visas.
Some peasants of San Salvador Atenco responded to the explusion by blocking the federal highway between Lechería-Texcoco. In addition, several teachers and university unions protested the expulsion of the professor and students.
For many years Leahy has worked to organize international solidarity between teachers’ unions in Canada, Mexico and the United States. He and a group of friends have also regularly supported a small town in Mexico, contributing materials and their own labor to make improvements.
Leaders of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) held a special birthday party for Leonardo Rodríguez Alcaine at the Tlalpan Casino of the Sole Union of Mexican Electrical Workers (SUTERM), the union of which he is general secretary. Rodriguez Alcaine, who turned 83 years old, will reture in February 2004. Rodríguez Alcaine first joined the CTM unions in 1943. He said it was too soon to name a possible successor, but promised that it would be a new generation and a relatively younger person.
The Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), which has long claimed to be Mexico’s largest and strongest federation, has been forced by falling dues contributions to draw upon its savings, according to CTM finance secretary Armando Neyra Chávez.
“For each peso we received in 2001,” he told the press in May, “we have spent 4.03 pesos.” Dues have fallen off from state unions and national industrial unions. CTM union organizations of various sorts owe the national federation millions of pesos.
Francisco Hernández Juárez, one of the three co-presidents of the National Union of Workers (UNT), accused Secretary of Labor Carlos Abascal of attempting to buy UNT leaders by offering them government positions. Speaking to the press at the end of April, Hernández Juárez said that Abascal was offering his federations’ leaders such positions in an attempt to win their support for reforms to the Federal Labor Law (LFT).
Four dissidents within the Mexican Petroleum Workers Union (STPRM)—two of them important leaders in the national movement—were killed on April 28 when their car went over a highway embankment. The workers had been involved in documenting and publicizing corruption in the union, and had just come form a meeting with former union secretary general Joaquin Hernández Galacia, known as La Quina. The two leaders had received many death threats and had sought the protection of the Mexican Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of the Interior (Gobernación). Their supporters believe that they may have been murdered.
The four men, Armando Ruíz Villalón, Genearo Navarro, Mario Martínez Díaz and Miguel Angel Garcés, were all members of the Democratic National Alliance of PetroleumWorkers (ANDTP). (The driver, Francisco Betancourt survived the crash.) Two of the men, Armando Ruíz and Genaro Navarro, were long-time union activists, and leaders of the movement. Ruíz had been a member of the Communist Party and later a founder of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in Salamanca, and a president of the municipal and state PRD. Navarro was a labor lawyer, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and an adopted son (ahijado de bautizo) of La Quina, former head of the union. The two men joined together in the 1990s to create the Union Coalition of Local 24 in Salamanca, and later joined the ANDTP.
The two dissidents within the union had helped to reveal widespread corruption in the union headed by Romero Deschamps, including nepotism and ghost employees. In addition to those scandals, the union is also under investigation for allegedly illegally providing millions of pesos to the presidential campaign of Francisco LaBastida of the PRI. And all of this takes place in a struggle between the Fox government, which wishes to privatize the oil company, and union activists who oppose privatization.
While union dissidents suspect foul play, so far no evidence has been found, and no charges have been brought.
(For a fuller account see, Jesusa Cervantes, Verónica Espinoza, and Jorge Sierra, “Petroleros, disidencia en serio,” in PROCESO, May 5, 2002 and Alberto Rocha, “Silencioso proceso para privatizar PEMEX: Trabajadores,” EXCELSIOR, May 7, 2002.)
Arturo Alcalde Justiniani and Arturo Hernández Calzada,
attorneys for the Mexican Pilots Union (ASPA), were attacked and beaten at the
Labor Board on April 1. The attack took place despite increased police presence
at the Board during a union representation election.
ASPA declared that AVIACSA airlines had hired professional
thugs to beat the two lawyers, as part of a campaign to keep its workers from
affiliating with the pilots’ union. The thugs were apparently directed by two
other lawyers Ramón Gaméz and Marcos Rovira who supported the rival Union of
Workers of the Aeronautical Industry (STIAC).
Alcalde, a noted attorney who has represented not only ASPA
but also other independent and democratic unions, received support from many
quarters. ASPA published a statement attacking AVIACSA for the attack. The
National Association of Democratic Attorneys (ANAD), some of whose members have
also been attacked in the labor board, also issued a statement in his support.
Jeff Hermanson and Ana Elsa Avilés, AFL-CIO representatives in Mexico,
published a letter from John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO condemning the
attack, as well. The UE’s
national General Executive Board submitted a letter to both President Fox and
Secretary of labor Abascal with fifty pages of petitions attached.
(see below).
Alcalde is the husband of Bertha Luján, a long-time leader of the Authentic Labor Front (FAT) who is currently serving as Controller of Mexico City.
The Union of Workers of the National Autonomous University
of Mexico (STUNAM) has been thrown into turmoil because of charges of a
fraudulent election at the end of last month. The union represents about 25,000
workers at the university located on the south side of Mexico City, and forms
part of the National Union of Workers (UNT).
Augustín Rodríguez was re-elected for a third consecutive
term for another three years to the office of secretary general. He won by a
vote of 10,000 to 5,400 votes, in round numbers, representing 45.2 percent of
all union members eligible to vote. Rodríguez serves as one of the three
co-chairs of the UNT.
Several dissident currents within the union—New Culture, Front for Change, and Resurgent Union Current—joined together to launch protests, including taking over the union’s offices. They were demanding new elections for top office, and more seats on the union’s executive board. Pablo Gomez of the Front for Change, took part in a hunger strike lasting several days. Rodríguez said he would not use force to remove union dissidents from the union offices.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision weakening immigrant
workers’ rights in the United States, set off an enormous controversy in
Mexico that has gone on now for two months. On March 27, 2002, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled in the case of Hoffman Plastics v. National Labor Relations Board
that a worker illegally terminated for engaging in legally-protected union
activity was not entitled to back pay because of his immigration status. Many in
the U.S. and Mexico interpreted this decision as a tremendous blow against
immigrant workers that would make it virtually impossible for them to find legal
support for their rights to organize unions, strike, negotiate contracts or
fight over workplace health issues.
In the Mexican legislature, congress members from the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN), and
the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Mexico’s three principal
parties, joined in censuring the U.S. Supreme Court for its decision.
Some called upon Foreign Secretary Jorge Castañeda to fight this with
the same vehemence with which he had attacked Cuba.
Mexican labor unions repudiated the decision. The
Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) appealed to the International Labor
Organization, to the AFL-CIO, and to Foreign Secretary Castañeda and Labor
Secretary Carlos Abascal to fight to overturn the decision. The CTM argued that
the decision violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Congress of
Labor (CT), made up of several labor federations, also attacked the U.S. Supreme
Court decision and vowed to fight it.
Mexican intellectuals also spoke out. Carlos Montemayor,
novelist and historian, wrote that the U.S. court’s decision had created “a
new kind of slavery.”
Human rights activists also criticized the decision. Raúl
Ramírez Baena, ombudsman for human rights in Baja California, said that it had
denied the workers one of the basic conquests of humanity, protection against
employers who violate their rights.
The Conference of Mexican Bishops expressed its distress at
the new law, and called upon President Vicente Fox to defend the rights of
Mexican migrants.
While president Fox was guarded in his criticism, he said
that Mexico would take the decision to the Interamerican Court of Human Rights,
and try to overturn it there.
Mexican Secretary of Labor Carlos Abascal stood virtually alone with his assertion that the Supreme Court decision represented no threat to Mexican workers’ rights in the United States.
U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow accused the Mexican press of creating a false impression of the implications of the decision, which he said would not violate Mexican workers’ rights.
by Robin Alexander, UE Director of
International Labor Affairs
Two representatives from Mexico’s Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT) spoke to
audiences in eleven U.S. cities from April 23rd to May 4th on a tour organized
by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) and
co-sponsored by United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS).
Bringing their stories of Mexican labor rights struggles to U.S. audiences were
Hector González Gómez and Higinio Barrios Hernández. UE’s Director of
International Affairs, Robin Alexander, accompanied them throughout the trip,
and Lenore Palladino, Midwest Regional Organizer with USAS, joined them for
presentations in South Bend, Milwaukee and Chicago.
Hector González Gómez is a local officer of the FAT’s metal workers’ union
at the Sealed Power plant in Aguascalientes. His plant was a runaway from the
original location in Mexico City. In Aguascalientes the company brought in a CTM
local with the objective of paying lower wages and benefits. However, the FAT
followed and successfully organized the plant!
Higinio Barrios Hernández
is an organizer with CETLAC, the workers' center which is operated by the FAT in
Ciudad Juárez, Mexico - across the border from
El Paso, Texas. Born in Oaxaca, he came to Cd. Juárez
nine years ago in search of work. Over the next six years he was employed in
various maquiladora plants, where his work ranged from manufacturing auto parts
for Ford and General Motors to cataloguing coupons. At the same time, he began
to attend classes and participate in CETLAC. Because of his talents and
commitment he was hired three years ago as an organizer.
The tour began in Pittsburgh with plant tours of two UE represented
transnationals - St. Gobain (UE Local 622) and Asea Brown Boveri (UE Local 626)
- followed by an evening presentation at Carnegie Mellon University. The next
morning the two Mexican trade unionists spoke at a breakfast hosted by the
United Steelworkers of America (USWA).
From Pittsburgh, the tour proceeded to Kent, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Ann
Arbor, South Bend, Milwaukee, Madison, Iowa City and Chicago, where they spoke
at numerous universities, a few churches, and were hosted by a variety of unions
including the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, USWA Local 1010, UAW Local 22,
and the Milwaukee County Labor Council.
The FAT representatives were warmly received everywhere and reported major
victories in the Mexico City area in the last year - including three gas
stations averaging 60 workers each and several thousand bus drivers from what
was formerly Ruta 100 - as well as major progress in Cd. Juarez.
Among the highlights of the trip were an unexpected meeting with the Charleston
5 at the Haymarket memorial in Chicago. Arriving at the cemetery to meet some of
the students who had organized the presentation scheduled for that evening, both
groups were delighted to encounter eachother. Following an impromptu speech by
one of the brothers from Charlston, Barrios stood without speaking, and began to
cry. Pulling himself together, he explained that he had learned about the
martyrs of Chicago when in grade school and never imagined he would be standing
by their graves. He then spoke of the marches which had taken place in Mexico
two days earlier to commemorate May Day, and concluded by committing himself to
return to Mexico to fight even harder for the rights of maquila workers.
An occasion that was of special significance to Hector González involved
participation in the local union meeting where the workers at Azteca Foods in
Chicago proudly selected the number for their new UE local, elected members of
their negotiating committee, and discussed their contract demands. González was
impressed with the democratic functioning of the local, commenting repeatedly
that it reminded him of his own union! He was also surprised by the plant tour
of GATX Logistics, where a mostly African American and Latino work force had
left a corrupt union and, with great difficulty and on after two labor board
elections, joined the UE. Again, it really reminded González of his own
experience - he had himself belonged to CTM locals before coming to work at
Sealed Power which was represented by the FAT.
Another high point was the time spent with students at the University of Iowa.
In addition to more informal discussions, graduate students from UE Local 896
and SAS members put together a packed meeting where they announced that over 100
UE Local 896 members have now signed supplemental dues check off cards to
support FAT organizing in Mexico! Both of the workers from Mexico were impressed
by the numerous student activists they encountered throughout the trip, and
amazed that students would be so concerned about conditions faced by workers in
Mexico.
However, the FAT representatives also learned of some of the problems workers
face in the U.S., when they shared a dinner with women and children living in a
homeless shelter in Milwaukee and spoke with immigrant workers who had been
fired for trying to organize a union. González reflected that he had come to
the United States with another vision - thinking that everything here would be
easy.
"This tour brought the real story of globalization to union halls,
churches, universities and other venues from Ohio to Iowa," says Bruce J.
Klipple, General Secretary-Treasurer of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine
Workers of America (UE).
The Pittsburgh-based UE has historically represented industrial workers, and has
increasingly come to represent workers in the public sector, including social
workers, scientists, workers in schools, libraries and universities, day care
workers, and graduate students. USAS is an international student movement of
campuses and individual students fighting for sweatshop-free labor conditions
and workers' rights.
One of the only independent labor
federations in Mexico, the FAT is composed of union, cooperative, and rural
neighborhood sectors, as well as a women’s network. Founded in 1960, the FAT
represents workers in over half the states of Mexico in manufacturing industries
including textiles, garment, and auto parts, as well as in transportation and
services. The FAT has an influence which greatly exceeds its size due to its
principled determination to create independent, democratic unions under
extremely adverse conditions. In 1997, the FAT helped found Mexico’s new,
independent labor federation, the National Union of Workers or UNT. It was also
a key founder of RMALC (the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade), the
coalition of more than 100 Mexican organizations which opposes the FTAA.
May
24, 2002
Vicente Fox
Quesada, President of Mexico
Carlos M. Abascal
C., Secretary of Labor
Dear President Fox
and Secretary Abascal:
We, the national elected leadership of the United Electrical, Radio and
Machine Workers of America (UE) are greatly concerned about the egregious
violations of labor rights in Mexico.
In particular, we would direct your attention to the following matters:
1) Violence against workers and their legal representatives for
exercising their rights under Mexican and international law.
For example, attorney Arturo Alcalde was physically attacked on the 13th
of March in the offices of the Federal Labor and Arbitration Board while
representing the pilots’ union, ASPA, in an election.
2) The absence of public information about unions and contracts and the
failure of the labor boards to hold elections by secret ballot vote.
In May of 2000, as a result of consultations under the labor side
agreement of NAFTA (NAALC) in the Echlin and Han Young cases, the Mexican
government signed a Ministerial Agreement in which it committed to promote both
secret ballot elections and the establishment of public registries of unions and
contracts. Yet Mexican workers are still routinely denied the most fundamental
elements of free association: access to their contracts and secret ballot
elections.
3) The flagrant manner in which the labor boards ignore legal
requirements or invent them to suit corporate interests.
A recent example is the March 22 decision which outlawed the legal strike
by workers at Euzkadi, a subsidiary of Continental Tire, by inventing a basis
which does not exist in the law, despite the fact that the right to strike is a
fundamental principal imbedded in the Mexican Constitution of 1917, as well as
ILO convention 87.
4) The manner in which your government is moving forward with a
so-called “reform” of the labor laws at the urging of the international
financial institutions and corporate interests. You made a clear commitment during your campaign to support
the “Twenty Principles of Freedom of Association,” and subsequently pledged
that a reform of the federal labor law would only move forward if there were a
consensus - which clearly does not exist at present.
We are submitting petitions with signatures of over five hundred people
who belong to labor unions, churches, community and student organizations
throughout the Midwest who are also gravely concerned about these matters.
We respectfully urge you to take immediate steps to correct these
flagrant violations of workers’ rights.
Sincerely,
(The
letter was signed by the UE’s three national elected officers John H. Hovis,
Jr., Bruce J. Klipple, and Robert B. Kingsley and well as eleven members of
the Union’s General Executive Board).
By John Ross
SAN FRANCISCO (May 21st) - Along with a few hundred other Mexican day laborers,
Joaquin Ramos (not his real name) shows up early each morning on Cesar Chávez
street just off a freeway ramp in San Francisco’s Mission District, in the
hopes of earning a day’s wage. Here at this informal labor market, as in many
U.S. cities these days, drive-by contractors recruit the “jornaleros” for
low-end jobs like tearing down an old building or cleaning out a garbage-strewn
lot. Sometimes when the day was done, the “patrón” (boss) would drive his
workers to some remote locale and drop them off without paying them their
earrings – and if they resisted, he might call the dread “Migra”
(immigration authorities) and have them deported. Now such outrages are not so
frequent explains Ramos “since we got the union.” Ramos, you see, is a
fledgling member of a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local that
has established an $8 an hour base pay for the day laborers and goes after the
deadbeats that stiff their members.
“It is good to belong to this union” affirms Ramos who was a school janitor back in his native Guerrero state and belonged to the National Education Workers Union, the largest labor organization in Latin America. “When we come together to organize like this, we are better able to defend ourselves from the patrón.” But Ramos’s right to organize for better pay and working conditions is suddenly seriously challenged by a March 27th 5-4 vote of the United States Supreme Court which appears to limit union protections to U.S. citizens. The case, which has wormed its way through the legal system for the past 13 years, involves a then undocumented Mexican worker, José Castro, who was fired for taking part in a union organizing drive at the Hoffman Plastics Corporation of Paramount California back in 1989. Castro eventually protested his firing to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and was awarded $67,000 in back pay. But the decision was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court by the industry, where, by a single vote, the archly conservative majority ruled that Castro, as an undocumented worker, did not have the same labor protections as a U.S. citizen.
The Hoffman Plastics ruling set off immediate panic buttons on both sides of the border. In Mexico, President Vicente Fox threatened an appeal to international bodies despite assurances by outgoing U.S. ambassador Jeffrey Davidow that Washington would continue to protect the rights of Mexican workers in the U.S. Davidow argued that Castro’s award had been reversed because he obtained his job by utilizing false i.d. Nonetheless, “Hoffman Plastics” has rapidly become the battle-cry for defenders of immigrant rights and those unions who see immigrant workers from the south as being the future of the U.S. labor movement. Out front in the drive to organize undocumented workers in San Francisco are the SEIU and the Hotel & Restaurant Workers Union – one union official estimates that perhaps 10% of the membership is undocumented. “But we’re not the Migra - we don't go around checking green cards” advises the SEIU’s Frank Martín Del Campo. Nationally, the SEIU has made this point with its “Justice for Janitors” campaign that has signed up many undocumented big city office cleaners for Fortune 500 corporations, and in organizing low-paid and often undocumented nursing home workers against the giants of the health care industry. Organizing immigrant workers is hardly a new wrinkle for labor - indeed, the labor movement was built by German, Irish, Italian, and Scandinavian immigrants who worked the most penurious jobs under slave-like conditions.
Hoffman Plastics has had resonance at the top of the labor hierarchy too. AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, who came up through the SEIU ranks, declares that the Supreme Court decision will spur pressures on the Bush administration for the legalization of at least 3.5 million undocumented Mexican workers currently living in the U.S. “If they are going to be barred from joining our unions because they are not documented, we want them legalized” Sweeney insists, “the Hoffman Plastics decision undermines the rights of all Americans to organize for better working conditions.” But the immediate fall-out from Hoffman may be to increase conflict between documented and undocumented, speculates Arturo Rodríguez, director of the United Farm Workers Union. “The patrones are going to be openly recruiting indocumentados now” Rodríguez says - the UFW is currently immersed in multiple organizing drives in the fields of California. Conflicts between legal and undocumented workers tortured the union for years under the leadership of Rodríguez’s late father-in-law, César Chávez.
In Mexico, Hoffman Plastics has escalated into a foreign policy issue with the political opposition charging that President Vicente Fox and his foreign minister Jorge G. Castañeda have been languid in their defense of Mexican workers in the U.S. Fox has responded by announcing he will appeal to the decision to the Organization of American States’ Inter American Human Rights Court in Costa Rica, the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva, and the North American Free Trade Agreement mechanism for resolving NAFTA labor disputes – but Fox is not famous for following through on such initiatives. Since the outset of his administration, Fox and his brainy, prickly foreign minister have been pushing the immigration card with Washington, insisting upon both the legalization of Mexicans living in the U.S. and the establishment of a guest worker program that could provide seasonal employment for as many as a half million of their citizens, the “whole enchilada” as Castañeda has dubbed it. But Fox’ and Castañeda’s ambitions for major immigration accords were torpedoed by the 9/11 terror attack on New York and Washington, and in an atmosphere where undocumented workers are suspected of being potential terrorists, Mexico has never been able to get the talks back on track.
Both U.S. big business and big labor concur that
overhauling the immigration system is vital to reviving the U.S. economy. Thomas
Donahue, president of the United States Chamber of
Commerce, estimates that by 2010 the U.S. will suffer a 10,000,000
workforce short-fall unless non-U.S. workers are invited to the country, and
financial guru Alan Greenspan, kingpin of the Federal Reserve, warns that the
economy cannot grow without them. But
big business – and George W. Bush - look towards a guest-worker program that
bans labor union organizing to fill the gap, and labor is pushing for
legalization, which would provide a fertile field for union recruitment.
Solidarity between U.S. and Mexican workers was on the rise all throughout the
1990s. As tens of thousands of U.S. union jobs went south due to NAFTA
displacement, U.S. unions eagerly welcomed emigrating Mexicans to their rank and
file. Reasoning that transnationals could move to Mexico to exploit cheap labor
in the “maquiladoras” or foreign-owned assembly plants, the U.S. unions
figured they ought to have the same mobility and signed up Mexican proxies to
organize along the border. The United Electrical Workers (UE) went after Mexican
General Electric “maqs” and the Teamsters which organizes Honeywell workers
in El Norte, tried to do the same with Honeywell workers in Chihuahua. The
AFL-CIO became enmeshed in an organizing drive at a Hyundai subsidiary in
Tijuana and U.S. solidarity workers were thrown out of Mexico for taking part.
But as the globalization millennium sets in, such solidarity seems to have soured. Unions who once worked hand in hand on both sides of the border now squabble and backbite. Perhaps the most glaring example of this hostility has been the Teamsters’ 10-year battle to keep Mexican truckers off U.S. roads. As early as January 1994 when NAFTA opened the U.S. to cross-border trucking, the Teamos were massing in San Diego up on the Otay Mesa to turn back their Mexican counterparts.
Since then, the union has resorted to a series of legal ploys to keep the Mexican drivers out on safety and environmental grounds, aligning themselves with Ralph Nadar’s Public Citizen consumer watchdog organization, and forming the CRASH (“Citizens for Safe and Reliable Highways”) to stimulate mass support for excluding the Mexicans. The drive has persisted despite the fact that Mexican trucking is really an adjunct of the U.S. industry with major North American operators like Consolidated and Roadaway dominating 60% of the Mexican fleets. The same Kenworths ply the highways north and south. When the courts have not come to the Teamsters’ rescue, they have thrown their burley political weight around, swapping their support for Bill Clinton for keeping the Mexican truckers from entering the U.S.
Now, in a rapprochement with George W. Bush reminiscent of the deal his still-disappeared father cut with Richard Nixon, Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa Jr. has pushed through a set of regulations that will make the Mexican drivers the most watched foreign workers in the U.S., when and if the border is finally opened to a potential 28,000 Mexican trucks at the end of June - new anti-terrorism measures may delay this already long-delayed NAFTA opening into 2003.
Under the new rules, Mexican drivers will be repeatedly tested for drug and alcohol use and their vehicles will undergo exhaustive inspections. Every 90 days, they must report to U.S. authorities to revise their licenses, they must carry costly insurance, and must speak English – the Mexican trucking association, CANACAR, labels such conditions “discriminatory.”
Should Mexican drivers finally be admitted into the U.S., they run the risk of hostility from Teamster drivers on the highways and at the truck stops of North America. “There must be reconciliation” considers one Teamster rank and filer who advocates signing up the Mexicans. “It would be shameful to miss this opportunity to improve wages and working conditions for our Mexican brothers and sisters.”
On the Mexican side of the line, labor solidarity seems equally shaky. This May 1st, following a massive Mexico City march of independent unions on the day of International Labor Solidarity, 18 U.S. students and their professor who had participated in the event as part of their labor studies curriculum, were expelled from Mexico for allegedly violating the conditions of their tourist visas. Although dozens of non-Mexicans participated in the event as guests of Mexican workers’ organizations, the expulsees who attend progressive Evergreen College in Washington state were apparently singled out because they marched alongside machete-wielding campesinos (farmers) from Mexico state whose land is being expropriated for Vicente Fox’s new $2.5 billion international airport.
Led by Professor Dan Leahy, an Irish-American, the students
were en route to visit the tombs of the members of the San Patricio Brigade,
Irish-Americans who fought alongside the Mexicans against the Yanquis during the
invasion and annexation of 1846-48, when they were captured by armed immigration
agents, jailed, and flown to Los Angeles. The expulsions represent the Mexican
government’s largest tossing of foreign activists since 200 Italians were
thrown out of Chiapas and Mexico “for life” by then-president Ernesto
Zedillo in 1998 after they stood in solidarity with embattled rebel Zapatista
communities in that southern state, and is the first time the Fox administration
has resorted to such draconian repression to block international solidarity.
Hector de la Cueva, who, as a director of Mexico’s labor research institute,
CILAS, often collaborates with U.S. labor activists, was aghast at the
expulsions. “May 1st is the day of international labor solidarity. How can it
be that such solidarity is now a dangerous crime in Mexico?”
*******************************************
John Ross is a Mexico City-based writer and activist. Thousands of undistributed
copies of John Ross’s “The War Against Oblivion” and “The Annexation of
Mexico” were seized last month by a subsidiary of Bank One, apparently because
the distributor for Common Courage Press and other small publishers, was
adjudged a poor risk and had a $2 million loan recalled. The author believes
that only armed and unarmed revolution can end such outrages. Check out
www.commoncouragepress.com for update.
The approximately 350 gas stations in Mexico City employ between 8 and 10 thousand despachadores, or service attendants. Roughly 20% of these workers are women. The majority of these workers are members of official CTM unions, but they haven’t the foggiest idea that a union even exists in their workplace, let alone that they belong to it. That is because 90% of the labor contracts in Mexico are what are known as “employer protection” contracts that firms purchase from the CTM before opening. The arrangement works out divinely for the business owner and the CTM union: essentially the owner purchases an insurance policy to protect his or her investment from the threat of a union. Similar to paying for protection from the mafia, the CTM acts like a crime family and protects its contracts from potential rivals zealously. The official unions serve as the most effective controls that owners can exercise over workers.
That many gas
station workers don’t know they belong to unions is concurrent with the fact
that often they are not even sure for whom they work. Empresas Fantasmas
or ghost businesses are common phenomena in Mexico. In the case of a gas station, a “ghost business” operates
like this – the gas station managers either subcontract out their hiring and
human resources work to an unrelated firm or more often than not, “make up”
a firm that is never licensed or registered and in truth does not exist, to
handle the hiring process. Employment
notices give an address, where prospective workers report for interviews and to
fill out paper work. Once the
hiring is complete, the office is vacated and the “business” disappears into
thin air, leaving the gas station free and clear of obligations to its workers.
When workers try to bring up issues with gas station managers, the
response is that they will “have to take it up with the people who hired
them.” When workers return to the
office where they were hired, only a week or two after having begun the job, all
they find are empty, locked offices that leave no clues to aid in finding the
former occupants.
The working
conditions in Mexico City’s gas stations prompted the attorney for the Defense
and Conciliation of the Labor Protection Agency, Eduardo Dias Reguera, to remark
that gas station workers “are like illegals [Mexican migrant workers who work
with no legal protection in the US] inside of Mexico.”
As a condition of employment, workers are required to sign hojas en
blanca or blank page contracts. The
name is self-explanatory – quite literally, workers are given a blank piece of
paper with an X and a line on the bottom and told to sign.
The conditions to which the worker unwittingly agrees to are then typed
on the page and it becomes considered a legal document, though the worker never
sees the text by which he or she is legally bound.
With these signatures, labor relations become the jurisdiction of
whatever corrupt CTM union happens to have sold the gas station its employer
protection contract.
Despachadores
sign pay check receipts every two weeks for their salaries.
Although gas station owners claim the salaries on their taxes, despachadores
do not actually receive them. It is
a little hard to grasp, but the despachadores do not receive any wages
for the work they do but as a condition of employment they sign paycheck stubs
bi-weekly. All of their wages are
earned in tips from drivers who patronize the gas station.
But their work includes much more than pumping gas – they are also
required to flush out the tanks of diesel fuel under the dispensing islands,
sweep and clean, build brick walls, paint signs, maintain management offices,
clean windows and sometimes even “accompany the boss’s wife to the grocery
store.” Obviously while workers
are cleaning or helping their boss’s wife with groceries they are not earning
tips from customers; neither are they earning wages. Gas stations in Mexico seem
to have mastered the art of reducing labor costs. Indeed, they’ve succeeded in
whittling them down to zero.
But the bane of the
despachadores’ existence is selling products other than gasoline, often
products like motor oil, gasoline additives, and anti-freeze. Workers are
required to sell a minimum quota daily and at some stations, if they do not meet
their quota they are made to pay the difference out of their own pockets. Having to push these products on customers who don’t want
or need them makes it less likely that customers will tip, compounding the
pressure of meeting their quotas. The
engine products are irksome enough, but the quotas are often enacted for all
random matter of things from raffle tickets to food.
At the Rio Tuerto station what became known as “the sandwich
fight,” began when workers got fed up with the owner’s practice of making
them pay 91 pesos a day for the sandwiches they had to sell over the course of
their shifts. If workers refused to pay, they were not allowed to work.
The owners’ refusal to negotiate the ridiculous policy, which served no
purpose other than putting profits directly into his own pocket, prompted the
workers at Rio Tuerto to organize in 2001.
Much like signing
the receipts of pay checks for wages they never received, despachadores
also sign the paperwork to enroll in the Mexican Social Security Insurance
System (IMSS), coverage by which is the legal right of all workers.
However, when workers went to hospitals for medical attention they were
denied because their names had never been entered into the system.
All the while, some gas station owners were claiming tax breaks for
payments on social security - payments deducted from the fictitious salaries. It is an admirable scam and leaves workers without medical
coverage. The real gem is another sort of insurance fraud, one in which workers
can actually go to prison.
Mexico City is not
the safest of urban environments, especially if you happen to be working outside
and alone like many despachadores do at night.
Robberies are not rare. However,
an insured business owner forcing his or her employees to pay the deductible on
theft insurance is. The
money-making end of the scam is in the shameless overstatement of stolen
amounts. And once the owner has
lied to the insurance company, the worker is coerced into doing so, too – if
they ever want to recover their deductible and keep their job.
This is the
background against which despachadores from the Morelos PEMEX station decided
to organize in order to improve their working conditions in 1999.
They filed complaints (which are still pending 3 years later) with labor
protection agencies and business oversight committees and in the process met the
attorney from Labor Protection, Eduardo Diaz. The despachadores at
Morelos also began receiving training and support from FAT staff. When the
workers collectively demanded their salaries in the spring of 2000, the
station’s owner, Jaime Otero Caneiro, fired 25 of them illegally.
The day of the firings, Caneiro paid local police (who were on duty) to
act as thugs and intimidate the workers. Díaz
ordered a surprise inspection of the station.
One of the paid off police officers actually hit a female Labor
Protection Agency inspector with his patrol car, knocking her down and shaking
her up but not injuring her.
When Díaz informed
Caneiro that it was illegal for him to fire the 25 workers for demanding their
salaries, Caneiro equivocated and said that the workers were not fired but
suspended. He then back peddled and
re-hired all of the workers. Simultaneously,
a Morelos station manager called more city police patrols and upon their arrival
closed the station – forcing the workers and the Labor Protection inspectors
out into the street and creating a face off of police and station management on
one side and workers and officials on the other.
Caneiro then beckoned Díaz aside and offered him 10 million pesos (about
10 thousand dollars) to call off the inspection and “make friends.”
Díaz turned the bribe down.
But just then the
justice of the Mexican bureaucracy was delivered – through a personal contact
in the PRI, Cateiro had phoned Díaz’s superior, the Procurator of the Labor
Protection Agency. Cateiro handed
Diaz his cellular telephone with the grin of a chess player recognizing an
adversary in mate. The Procurator
told Diaz to call off the surprise inspection immediately.
In the following months, she forced his resignation from the Labor
Protection Agency.
Both Díaz and the
lead rank and file organizer, Salvador Arellano, who had been fired from the
Morelos station were welcomed with open arms to the FAT’s staff and have
busily been organizing other PEMEX and privately owned gas stations throughout
Mexico City ever since.
With the workers at
5 stations having voted for FAT representation, their hands are full.
The real difficulties have not been so much in convincing workers about
the value of FAT representation as they have been jurisdictional challenges that
have come from CTM unions and “ghost unions” (filed under the name of the
station owner’s lawyer and with no members).
The fall of 2001 was largely spent filing writs and injunctions with the
various governmental departments that handle labor proceedings, dealing with
elections, and meeting with workers to keep them informed on what was happening
on the legal end and to keep them strategizing so as not to lose their faith.
The despachadores
campaign highlights a weakness in labor unions generally – the service
industry. Traditional union
strongholds are in the manufacturing sector, and unions have been slow in
digesting the realities of the global economy and have not channeled sufficient
resources toward organizing service workers, who compose the fastest growing
numbers of the work force. As the
number of people working in the service industry continues to swell, it may
prove to be the Achilles heel that delivers labor its final blow. Yet, campaigns like the despachadores’ are
hope-inspiring because they seem to indicate a growing awareness of the crucial
need to organize within the service sector and because they reach out to the
lowest wage workers who have traditionally not been targeted by unions, a
development beginning to be reflected in the United States, as well.
[Based on
interviews with Eduardo Díaz and workers at the Morelos PEMEX station.]
Note: the FAT has won contracts covering workers at three gas stations in
Mexico City –Eds.
The Euzkadi workers' union sent a delegation to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and to the European Parliament to make a complaint against the Continental Tire Company for closing the Euzkadi tire plant near Guadalajara. The Revolutionary National Union of Workers (SNRTE) argues that the closing of the plant was illegal under Mexican law. The SNRTE has made similar complaints to the Mexican and German governments.
The union argues that the closing of the plant also violates the "democratic clause" of the Free Trade Agreement between Mexico and the European Union.
Continental Tire company closed the Euzkadi plant after workers in the independent labor union refused to accept company demands for changes in their labor union agreement.
The National Coordinating Committee of the Teachers Union
(la CNTE) and local unions of the Teachers Union (el SNTE) mobilized throughout
Mexico to protest cuts in the Federal education budget and to demand higher
wages, although in the end they were forced to accept a pay increase of only
7.2% overall.
While hundreds of teachers camped out in the national plaza
(el Zócalo), 40,000 demonstrated in Guerrero 45,000 demonstrated in the State
of Mexico, and 55,000 struck in Oaxaca.
Under protest, 800,000 education
workers accepted raises of 5.75% and increases in fringe benefits of 1.5%, as
reported in the Mexico Solidarity Network (MSN) Weekly News Summary for May
13-19. The MSN report continues: President Fox, who ran in part on an
education platform, sent the Secretary of Public Education to make the
announcement on national teachers’ day. The increases do not keep pace with
inflation. In the last 20 years, the real salaries of primary school teachers
have declined by 79.7%, while secondary teachers saw salary levels decrease by
49.4%, according to a study by the Center for Multi-Disciplinary Analysis of
the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The study reported on the
salaries of over one million education workers in Mexico City.
Primary school teachers in the capital average about US$13 per day,
while teachers in the southern state of Chiapas
average about US$100 per month.
While other countries have outlawed child labor, and have created enforceable minimum wages so that a parents’ wages can support a family, Mexico is apparently not prepared to take such a step.
The Mexican government “is not in favor of child labor,” but feels that it is “a touchy question,” and that it is necessary to carry out a profound analysis of its economic basis before prohibiting it, according to Lourdes Sánchez Muñohierro, general coordinator of the National Program for Agricultural Day Laborers (Pronjag) of the Secretary of Social Development (SEDESO). “The family cannot live from the wages earned by the parents,” she said, suggesting that therefore children must be permitted to work.
Mexico has 5.7 million people in the agricultural sector, of whom 3.4 million are agricultural day laborers. Almost 20 percent of all day laborers are children between 6 and 14 years of age. Depending on their crop they can earn between 60 and 80 pesos per day (about $6 - $8 U.S. dollars). Many, however, earn as little as $3.00 per day.
About 55 percent of day laborers’ children ages 6-14 do
not attend school, and 29 percent of the children are illiterate at age 15.
Urban child labor is also a problem. Mexico City has 14,000 children and youth
working in the street, in informal commerce and as packers in plants and
markets, according to a recent study by the Mexico City Department of Family
Services (DIF).
- -from the Mexico Solidarity Network Weekly (MSN)
News Summary for May 13 – 19, 2002
Industrial production suffered a 7.6% decline in March, the worst since the
economic crisis of 1995, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INEGI).
Experts had been expecting a fall of 2.6%. The maquila sector led the way with a
whopping 21.4% decline compared to the same month last year, calling into
question the Fox administration?s commitment to exports as the engine for
economic growth. The first quarter of the year registered a cumulative decline
of 4.4% compared to the same
quarter last year, with an accompanying decline in the Gross Domestic Product of
2%.
During the first 17 months of the Fox administration, the
economy lost 629,300 jobs, representing a 5% decrease in jobs overall,
according to the Secretary of Labor(STPS). The construction industry was hardest
hit, losing 42.8% of its posts.
Meanwhile, in the past five weeks the peso declined by 5.6% against the dollar.
This was welcome news to exporters whose businesses declined under a relatively
strong peso, however, it was bad news for the rest of Mexico as the country’s
foreign debt payments, which are mostly denominated in dollars, will increase.
The peso reached a low of 9.60 to the dollar before recovering some ground later
in the week.
In April, the Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD) proposed, and the Vicente Fox government
supported, a plan to democratize Mexican labor unions. The plan has not yet
come to a vote.
The proposal by Marti Batres would amend the Federal Code of Electoral
Institutions and Procedures (COFIPE) so that the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE)
would oversee union elections, as it now oversees Mexico's Federal elections
for president, senate and congress.
This proposal does not form part of the proposals to amend the Federal Labor
Law (LFT) now being discussed under the aegis of the Secretary of Labor.
Mexican labor unions, social movements and political parties have come out in support of the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israeli occupation and aggression, and against U.S. support for Israel.
El Barzón, the Mexican debtors’ movement, and the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), organized a protest at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City in early April in support of the Palestinian people. The two groups called for the United Nations to defend the Palestinian territory, and condemned George Bush for his support for Ariel Sharon and the Israel government in its recent aggressions against Palestine. El Barzón supporters carried poster with photos of Bush and the words, “the real Bin Laden.”
In addition, more than a dozen Mexican university unions
and hundreds of professors and students took out display advertisements in
Mexico City newspapers in April calling for an end to the massacre of the
Palestinian people. It called upon the world’s peoples to rise up against the
Israeli army of occupation. “Peace in the Middle East will only be the result
of the recognition of the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to have
their own sovereign and independent territory, so that it may live peacefully
with the state of Israel.”