AUT: Part 1, Mex Labor News, 16 Sept 99

[Dan La Botz <103144.2651@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS
September 16, 1999
Vol. IV, No. 14
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               About Mexican Labor News and Analysis

     Mexican Labor News and Analysis is produced in collaboration
with the Authentic Labor Front (Frente Autentico del Trabajo -
FAT) of Mexico and with the United Electrical Workers (UE) of the
United States and is published the 2nd and 16th of every month.

     MLNA can be viewed at the UE's international web site:
HTTP://www.igc.apc.org/unitedelect/. For information about direct
subscriptions, submission of articles, and all queries contact
editor Dan La Botz at the following e-mail address:
103144.2651@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx or call in the U.S. (513) 961-8722.
The U.S. mailing address is: Dan La Botz, Mexican Labor News and
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     The UE Home Page which displays Mexican Labor News and
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     Staff: Editor, Dan La Botz; Correspondents in Mexico: Bob
Briggs, Robert Donnelly, Peter Gellert, Elyce Hues, Jess Kincaid,
Jorge Robles, Don Sherman, Jeremy Simer.
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Dear Readers,

     As several readers noted, I made a mistake in the last issue
and referred to Roberto Madrazo Pintado as the governor of
Veracruz, when of course he is the governor of Tabasco. I
apologize for this error, and thank you for calling it to my
attention.

     We call your attention to the story we just received from
the FAT workers at the Congeladora del Rio who seek your help.

     In solidarity,
     Dan La Botz
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IN THIS ISSUE
Part 1
     *National Union of Workers for Alternative Economic Policy
     *Hernandez Juarez Will Not be Candidate in Telephone Union
     *CTM Leader Rodriguez Alcaine Invests in Tijuana Company
     *New Unions Proliferate in Public Sector after Court Ruling
     *FAT Workers Picket Plant; Seek International Labor Help
     *Cardenas Steps Down as Mexico City Mayor; PRI Unions Role
     *SUTERM Head Reverses Position on Privatization, He Says
Part 2
     *New Unions Proliferate in Public Sector
     *Flight Attendants Union Wins 21% Wage Increase
     *Peasant Organizations in Conflicts in Various States
     *Zedillo Speaks Against Child Field Labor; Did Not Stop It
     *Maquiladoras Up by Almost 10% in First Half
     *Miners & Metal Workers Union Settles with Cananea at 16%
     *Retired Railroad Workers Accuse Union Leader of Fraud
     *Prison Workers Sit-Down Strike for Back Pay
     *Social Statistics
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               NATIONAL UNION OF WORKERS (UNT)
            CALLS FOR ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIC AGENDA

     Faced with a fast-approaching national election in which no
parties or candidates represent a working class political
program, the National Union of Workers (UNT), the independent
labor federation, will work with other unions and social
movements to elaborate an alternative economic and social agenda
for the year 2000 and after, it was announced in September.
Whatever parties and candidates the UNT?s members and other
Mexican citizens may vote for, the UNT will participate in a
broad people?s power movement for a new economic program.

     The UNT, together with its allied political movement, the
Social Movement of the Workers (MST), will join with six other
civil society organizations, among them Alianza Civica (AC), the
Citizens Movement for Democracy (MCD), and the Mexican Action
Network on Free Trade (RMALC), to participate in what is called
the  Power is the People project.  As part of that process the
UNT has convened the Forum: National Project of the Workers, and
its Second National Congress.

          UNT Leader Says Leaders and Parties,
               Only Interested in Power

     The UNT takes the position that the national presidential
and legislative elections represent only a jockeying for power
and privileges by parties and political bosses. UNT leader
Agustin Rodriguez Fuentes, one of the three co-presidents of the
federation, asserts that,  As Mexican workers we do not feel
identified with the proposals of the electoral parties and we
don?t? see the people?s demands being taken into account in this
coming political contest.

      It is really the last straw,  said Rodriguez Fuentes, when
we have returned to the beginning of the century when party
bosses (caudillos) succeeded in dominating parties and turning
them into mere campaign organizations.

             UNT Criticizes Zedillo Presidency

     At the same time, the UNT released a report evaluating and
strongly criticizing Ernesto Zedillo?s six-year term as
president. The independent labor federation argued that under
Zedillo, leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI),
Mexico?s economic development had faltered, that the country had
become increasingly dependent upon and vulnerable to external
economic forces, and that the unequal distribution of wealth
between rich and poor had become even more exaggerated.

     The UNT argued that the Zedillo?s administrations extreme
reliance on the multinational corporations and the manufacture-
for-export economy meant that Mexico could suffer disastrous
consequences in the event of a fall in the stock market or a
decline in the growth rate in the United States. Mexico, the
UNT?s report argued, also relied too much on international
financial institutions such as the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF).

     The report stated that while encouraging foreign investment
through low wages, and cutting the Federal budget Mexico had
failed to deal with it social problems which have reached serious
proportions, and will have to be dealt with by the next
administration. The UNT report noted that out that out of an
economically active population (PEA) of 38 million, only 16
million work in the formal sector, with 12 million in the formal
sector and the rest in  various activities,  which suggests that
they have no job or only casual employment. Ten percent of the
Mexican population controls 53 percent of the wealth, the UNT
reported. The number of poor people grew from 36 to 43 percent of
the population during the Zedillo years, a 20 percent increase in
a six year period.

     The UNT focuses its critique on the Mexican government?s
wage policy which aims to attract foreign capital by keeping
wages low. The government?s announcement that it foresees
inflation of only 10 percent, simply means that it hopes to keep
wage gains as low as 12 percent, said UNT leaders.

          Hernandez Juarez Critical of the System

     Francisco Hernandez Juarez, another of the UNT?s three co-
presidents, begins all discussions of the political situation by
reaffirming his membership in the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI), but with every passing week he seems
to move to a more distant and critical posture. His most recent
interviews make him seem as if he is calling for the defeat of
his party.

      Only if the PRI loses the next election will there be a
real change within the Mexican labor movement,  Hernandez Juarez
told EL UNIVERSAL newspaper in late August. He went on to say
that the union structure which the PRI supports particularly the
Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) and the Congress of Labor
(CT) constituted an obstacle to the democratization of that
party. A defeat of the PRI, he said, would mean an end to the
benefits which the party has handed down to those union leaders.
Those who hoped the old unionism would end with the death of CTM
leader Fidel Velazquez proved mistaken, said Hernandez Juarez,
the old system had been reenforced.

      Only if in the next elections these union leaders lose
their principal support from the government could there possibly
be a radical change in the labor union structure. Those leaders
are betting on preventing it at all costs, because everything
they have, all of their interests, stand to be lost.  If the PRI
should win, Hernandez Juarez hopes other leaders not committed to
the old labor union structure will come to power.

                         ###

       FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ JUAREZ SAY HE WILL NOT
     SEEK RE-ELECTION AS HEAD OF TELEPHONE WORKERS

     Francisco Hernandez Juarez, head of the Union of Telephone
Workers of the Mexican Republic (STRM), has announced that after
almost 24 years in office he will not seek re-election to a
seventh term. Hernandez Juarez also serves as one of the three
co-presidents of the National Union of Workers (UNT), the
independent labor federation which he helped to found, and if not
re-elected head of the Telephone Workers Union would presumably
have to resign the UNT position as well.

          Dissidents Challenge Hernandez Juarez

     The telephone union leader?s announcement came in the wake
of the founding of the Democratic National Front of Telephone
Workers (FNDT) involving hundreds of members of the STRM from
different offices and departments throughout the country. The
STRM has a total of 42,000 members.

     The leaders of the opposition group Julio Ortega, Jorge
Salinas Jardon, Victor Manuel De Stefani, Carlos Villarreal and
Miguel Angel Lara, among others criticize Hernandez Juarez for
having failed to defend union jobs and working conditions. For
example, the FNDT claims that the number of confidential jobs has
risen from 5 to 20 percent, while many othe jobs have been
contracted out. Hernandez Juarez?s critics claim that during his
tenure entire departments such as shop and telephone equipment,
automotive, dispensaries, and much of installation and
maintenance disappeared.

     Hernandez Juarez said that the existence of the FNDT proved
the democratic character of his union.

                    Major Figure In Labor

     First elected in 1976 as the leader of a militant movement
within the union, Hernandez Juarez then ran on a platform of no
re-election. However, he soon dropped that principle, and was re-
elected five times since; he has served more than 23 years as one
of the most important union leaders in Mexico. During the
presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994), Hernandez
Juarez supported the sale of the state telephone company, TELMEX,
to private owners including foreign investors. In that period
Hernandez Juarez became Salinas?s pet labor leader, used by the
president to promote his neo-liberal agenda for the Mexican
economy. Hernandez Juarez also assumed a position of influence in
the national political council of the Institutional Revolutionary
Party.

     Later in the mid-1990s during the presidency of Ernesto
Zedillo, the telephone leader moved into opposition first
creating the Foro group of unions with Elba Esther Gordillo,
former head of he Mexican teachers? union, and later was a moving
force in the founding of the National Union of Workers (UNT). The
establishment of the UNT, Mexico?s first independent labor
federation in decades, reprsented a watershed in the history of
the Mexican labor movement. He also helped to organize the Social
Movement of the Workers (MST), a political expression of the new
independent union movement.

     At the same time Hernandez Juarez became an increasingly
bitter critic of the Congress of Labor and the Institutional
Revolutionary Party which controls it. The PRI recently punished
him for his criticism of the ruling party by dropping him from
the party?s national political council. Hernandez Juarez
continues to be a member of the PRI, though now only a rank-and-
filer.

     Presumably if he does not continue as general secretary of
the Telephone Workers Union of Mexico, Hernandez Juarez would
also have to give up his role as co-president of the UNT. He
would, however, be eligible to lead the new MST, and could move
from the labor union into its quasi-political party. Unless there
is some political scandal in his closet or some serious health
problem, it hardly seems likely that Hernandez Juarez would drop
out of the Mexican labor movement and politics.

                              ###

          RODRIGUEZ ALCAINE, CTM LEADER, BECOMES BOSS;
           JOINS PARTNERSHIP IN TIJUANA BUSINESS

     Mexico?s top labor leader has become a boss. Not just a
labor boss, a real boss, an employer.

     Leonardo Rodriguez Alcaine, leader of the Sole Union of
Mexican Electrical Workers, head of the Confederation of Mexican
Workers (CTM), and president of the Congress of Labor (CT), has
become one of the principal investors in a new business in the
border city of Tijuana, Baja California.

     Together with another CTM leader and legislator,
Nezahualcoyotl de la Vega, head of the Union of Workers of the
Radio and Television Industry (STIRT), Rodriguez Alcaine invested
some 3,200,000 pesos (about a third of a million U.S. dollars) in
a company called Servicios Universales de Tecnologia (Universal
Services of Technology), according to information published in
the newspaper Frontera which cites the Public Register of
Property and Commerce records. A third partner is German
Francisco Moreno Perez.

     According to the registration, the company appears to be
dedicated to the import-export business.

     Investing in this company, Rodriguez Alcaine has joined the
ranks of employers in the fastest growing sector of the Mexican
economy, the maquiladora plants involved in manufacture for
export in cities like Tijuana, Juarez, and Reynosa.

     Perhaps Rodriguez Alcaine, like so many others, was
attracted by the high profits to be made in the non-union, low
wage environment of the border city factories. Moreover, what few
unions exist tend to be controlled by the  official  federations
affiliated with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI), where so-called  ghost unions  or  low-profile  unions
negotiate  protection contracts  for the employers. That is by
unions much like those he leads.

     Perhaps Rodriguez Alcaine has finally found his calling.

                              ###

     CARDENAS STEPS DOWN AS MAYOR TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT;
    PRI-CONROLLED UNIONS HELPED TO FRUSTRATE HIS EFFORTS

     Amid criticism from his opponents and disappointment from
his supporters, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas stepped down as mayor of
Mexico City this month, hoping to be the candidate for president
on the ticket of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
Cardenas left office, widely criticized for the city?s increasing
crime, continuing pollution, and declining habitability.

     But if Cardenas failed, and many among his enemies and his
friends judge that he did, then the Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) and its labor unions played no small part in
frustrating his attempts to reform one of the world?s biggest
cities and contributing to that failure.

     In the last 20 months, the government of Mexico City
experienced 15 union strikes or other interruptions of services ,
caused by  artificial pressures,  according to the general
director of the office of Labor and Social Welfare of the City of
Mexico, Manuel Fuentes. The Sole Union of workers of the
Government of the Federal District (SUTGDF), which for decades
had made virtually no demands on previous government, suddenly
and suspiciously became a militant union with the election of
Cardenas, Fuentes says.

     Dominated by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI),
during Cardenas?s term of office the SUTGDF made demands for
large wage increase, the doubling of the Christmas bonus, better
uniforms and many other improvements. While any or all of their
demands might have merit, the real motive for the job actions and
strikes which sometimes paralyzed the Cardenas government, was to
damage the PRD leader?s reputation and to make his term as mayor
a failure in the eyes of the city?s citizens, the city?s chief of
labor affairs averred.

     The SUTGDF union leaders were not really representative of
the membership, said Fuentes. In many cases he suggested they
held their positions through previous political connections. Many
believe they were also involved in wide-spread corruption under
previous governments, and that the PRI?s union leaders resented
the Cardenas administration?s efforts to curtail graft.

     Cardenas?s opponents engaged in sometimes flamboyant and
possibly dangerous tactics. Recently SUTGDF Local 2 members
seized the city water works, including the laboratories, in
demand of a 100 percent increase in the Christmas bonus, a 20
percent increase in benefits, and laundry services for uniforms.
Such tactics could have endangered public health and safety, and
certainly contributed to an atmosphere of anxiety.

     Within the SUTGDF a new opposition movement exists, the
Mexico United for Human Rights Association, which strongly
criticizes the old PRI leadership.

     From a political point of view, Cardenas and Fuentes failed
to find a way to mobilize rank and file workers to defeat the PRI
machine within the union. While Cardenas has enjoyed significant
support from teachers, he never succeeded in making his
administration the expression of labor renewal in Mexico. His
attempts during the last 10 years to make himself more attractive
to big business and more acceptable to the international
financial institutions and the U.S. government may have militated
against encouraging labor radicalism and reform.

                         ###

          UNDER PRESSURE FROM RANKS OF UNION
          RODRIGUEZ ALCAINE CHANGES POSITION

     Over the last several months, Leonardo Rodriguez Alcaine,
head of the Sole Union of Electrical Workers of the Mexican
(SUTERM) has faced a growing rank and file rebellion in his union
over his support for president Ernesto Zedillo?s proposed
privatization of Mexico?s electrical industry. Rodriguez Alcaine,
who also heads the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) and the
Congress of Labor (CT), found that that spreading opposition also
threatened his leadership of the  official  or government
controlled labor movement.

     While Rodriguez Alcaine supported Zedillo and privatizaton,
the rival Mexican Union of Electrical Workers (SME) opposed it,
and soon many SUTERM members and local unions did as well. Then
on August 28, thousands of SUTERM members marched with members of
SME and with the National Union of Workers in opposition to
privatization. The growing opposition movement in his own union,
and its alliance with the rival electrical workers union, and
then with the UNT, the rival labor federation, began to shake the
throne.

     Suddenly, Rodriguez Alcaine, who had been an outspoken
advocate of privatization and more generally the neo-liberal
polices of the government, reversed course, and issued several
statements indicating that he opposed privatization in general,
though he still defended injections of some private capital into
the system.  We will always be opposed to the privatization of
the industry,  said the SUTERM, CTM and CT leader,  Because we
understand that it is a strategic property of the nation.

     This almost total reversal of his previous position,
represents a significant defeat for Rodriguez Alcaine and the
SUTERM leadership for the CTM, the CT, and for the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) which controls them, as well as for
president Zedillo. Rank and file opposition forced the union
leaders to back down, a virtually unthinkable thought in the
 official  Mexican labor organizatios. At the same time no one
believes that Rodriguez Alciane can be trusted to adhere to that
position under the pressures and blandishments of private
enterprise and the PRI-government with which he is allied.

               Dissidents Vow to Resist

     Meanwhile, with the SUTERM, Rodriguez Alcaine has carried on
a campaign of harassment of the dissidents who dared to march
with the SME and the UNT. SUTERM officials have threatened to
expel dissident members fromm the union and to work with the
employers to have them fired. But the rank and file opponents of
the SUTERM leader defend their actions as a legitimate form of
participation in the national debate over the future of the
electrical industry. The opposition activists say that if they
suffer repression, they will defend themselves in the courts and
before the public. Several sections of SUTERM have joined the
National Coordinating committee of Electrical Workers Against
Privatization.
                         ###

     END PART 1 MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS, SEPT 16, 1999
               BE SURE YOU HAVE PART 2



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