A-Infos (en) Mexican Labor News - May 2

[Mark Connolly <mark_c@geocities.com>]

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      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
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Extracts from MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS
May  2, 1998 Vol. III, No. 9
Full text at
HTTP://www.igc.apc.org/unitedelect/

Extracts

MAY DAY IN MEXICO CITY
NEED A GOON SQUAD? GO TO THE LABOR BOARD BUILDING
MAY DAY in MEXICO, KOREA AND THE UNITED STATES

------

         THREE SEPARATE DEMONSTRATIONS
           MARK MAY DAY IN MEXICO CITY

               by Peter Gellert,
     [With assistance from Linda Stevenson and
Jess Kincaid.]



May Day, International Workers Day, was marked in
Mexico with three separate mass demonstrations,
reflecting both divisions and new trends in the
country's labor movement. In the shifting balance
of forces in the Mexican workers' movement, it
appears that as many or more people participated
in the independent demonstrations as were
mobilized by the "official," or pro-government
labor organizations.

The official, pro-government labor movement,
organized in the Congress of Labor (CT), held a
mass rally in the Zocalo, the national plaza in
downtown Mexico City. Between 100,000 and 250,000
workers attended. While the official labor
leadership raised general slogans such as
"salaries that contribute to the productive
effort," "government economic policies based on
social justice," and "defense of the country's
sovereignty, resources, and integrity," the rally
reflected the CT's slavishly pro-government
orientation.

Indeed President Ernesto Zedillo, on the
reviewing stand for his first May Day rally, made
the customary speech telling the assembled
workers that the Mexican government was their
government and backed their interests. Focussing
on democracy with stability, Zedillo emphasized
continued economic growth and smooth transitions
from one presidential term to the next. "This is
the moment of national unity," Zedillo exclaimed.
"The unity that respects plurality and
differences. The unity that all Mexicans deserve,
and that makes us all stronger and more able to
overcome our challenges as a nation." The
speeches of Zedillo and the new CT leader Joel
Lopez Mayren were received with a minimum of
applause or enthusiasm by a an audience nearly
devoid of spirit.

The official labor movement's rally was
noteworthy because it followed major desertions
from the CT's ranks in the past year. In
addition, for the past four years the CT--at the
time under Fidel Velasquez's six-decade
domination of labor--had cancelled the
traditional May Day parade, with the argument
that rank and file discontent could lead to
incidents. However the umbrella organization of
the official unions, thrown into an even greater
crisis following Velasquez's death last June, is
clearly under great pressure to play a more
visible role.

Before 1994 the CT's May Day parade was closely
watched by observers for any signs of dissident
that were usually displayed for a few minutes--
before being violently repressed by CT goons or
the police--while contingents passed under the
reviewing stand (and thus under the watchful gaze
of the president). This year there were no such
incidents, except for some calls from teachers
for a salary increase when their collective
bargaining agreement expires on May 15. The
traditional parade was replaced by a rally and
much of the potential dissident was siphoned off
by the other two, more militant demonstrations.
The CT rally, in fact, only lasted 35 minutes.

Massive attendance at CT rallies is not
considered noteworthy, since most participants
are forced to attend, and are threatened with
loss of a day's pay--or worse--if they fail to do
so.

          National Workers Union: A First

The second demonstration, called by the National
Workers Union (UNT), was held immediately
following the CT rally. The UNT, which is less
than six months old, unites both unions that have
broken with the CT as well as independent unions.
The UNT's militant call "For a Combative and
Democratic May 1st" stressed the "priority to
construct a labor movement different from what
has existed in Mexico for several decades because
its structures, practices, and relations with the
government, business and society no longer
represent the Mexican workers and have led to
setbacks and a loss of its historical vanguard
role."

The UNT march and rally, attended by between
100,000 and 150,000 workers in well-organized
contingents, including some from independent
peasant confederations, featured slogans
rejecting neo-liberalism and calling for a new
economic policy; salary increases; an end to
corporativist labor practices and trade union
democratization and autonomy; and opposition to
privatization of the Mexican Social Security
Institute (IMSS), the national health system.

Participating in the UNT march were the telephone
workers, workers from IMSS, airline and trolley
workers, and university unions, among others, as
well as dissidents from the Revolutionary Workers
Confederation (COR) and strikers from the
Nacional Monte de Piedad pawnshop.

Since this was the UNT's first May Day, its
ability to mobilize its 150 member unions in the
streets was an important test. In addition, for
many of its affiliated unions--such as the
telephone and social security workers unions--the
May Day call includes political and social
demands not usually raised. Given that the UNT's
main organizational strength is outside Mexico
City, Bertha Lujan, a leader of the Authentic
Labor Front (FAT), one of the most militant of
the labor organizations comprising the UNT,
characterized the march as "a qualified success."

               Intersindical

Finally, for the fourth year running, the radical
left May 1st Inter-union Coordinating Committee
held the day's third march and rally, which also
concluded in the Zocalo. The Intersindical, as
its called, unites both independent unions,
dissident tendencies within other unions, social
organizations such as the El Barzon debtors
movement, the National Indigenous Congress, the
far-left (some might say ultra-left) Independent
Proletarian Movement (MCI) and the Francisco
Villa Popular Front (FPFV), dozens of
neighborhood groups, as well as political
currents such as the Zapatista National
Liberation Front and smaller left parties.

The Intersindical's march and rally--between
75,000 and 100,000--featured many of the same
demands as the UNT, but also raised more
political slogans such as cancellation of
Mexico's foreign debt; for a new constituent
assembly and constitution; freedom for political
prisoners; and against government policy in
Chiapas.

While the CT and UNT May Day demonstrations were
strictly limited to the organized labor movement,
the Intersindical's march and rally were weaker
in terms of trade union participation, although
it did feature striking workers from Sosa
Texcoco, a plant which processes lake kelp; CASA,
an autoparts plant; fired workers from GM and the
Secretary of Agrarian Reform; and democratic
currents from unions representing the Metro or
subway workers and federal government employees.

The Intersindical's march and rally took on the
characteristic of a mobilization of the
independent social movements and radical left.
Unlike the UNT's demonstration, in which
contingents dispersed as they reached the Zocalo,
the Intersindical's march was more like a
traditional left affair, with participants
treated to several hours of speeches.

Despite the efforts of some forces, particularly
the FAT, to promote a united May Day
demonstration between the UNT and the
Intersindical, given the similarity in many of
their demands, the obstacles were too formidable.
On the one hand, the UNT is reticent about
marching with social organizations outside the
labor movement, and would undoubtedly be
uncomfortable over the presence of dissident
currents from their own member unions in the
march.

The major stumbling block, however, was the
ingrained sectarianism of many sectors of the
Intersindical--particularly the MCI and FPFV--
with respect to working with the UNT, who they
continually and publicly denounce as "neo-
charros," a reference to the classic Mexican
trade union bureaucrat. While UNT leaders such as
Francisco Hernandez Juarez of the Telephone
Workers Union and Antonio Rosado from the Social
Security Workers Union remain members of the
ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and have
a history of bureaucratic practices within their
respective unions, the formation of the UNT is
nonetheless an important break from Mexico's
traditional corrupt and ineffectual business
unionism.

To promote the unity of the Mexican workers
movement, the UNT, for its part, called for an
open dialogue with the Intersindical and the CT,
although indicating it would have nothing to do
with recently selected CT President Joel Lopez
Mayren, who it characterized as an opportunist
and pseudo-leader. [See Article below.]

The Mexican labor movement appears rather deeply
divided into reactionary, reformist and radical
contingents which offer quite different political
alternatives to Mexico's working class. The UNT
reformist labor federation and the
Intersindical's radical social movement have
grown in weight relative to the increasingly
reactionary CT. Overall the May Day 1998 labor
demonstrations marked another stage in the
continuing decline of the Congress of Labor and
the gradual development of the UNT as a credible
reformist alternative.

--------------------

NEED A GOON SQUAD? GO TO THE LABOR BOARD BUILDING

Say you're an employer in Mexico and needs a goon
to knock some sense into disgruntled workers who
want higher pay or dissident union members who
want to choose their own union or elect their
union officers, where would you go to find some
reliable thugs?

No problem. Just go down to the Federal Board of
Conciliation and Arbitration, the labor board in
Mexico City. Police recently found at least 100
goons offering their services to attorneys, union
officials, politicians and employers.

The thugs are reportedly recruited in the
Nezahualcoyotl and Santa Ursula Coapa
neighborhoods and receive goon training on
Guerrero street. Then they report to the labor
board to look for work in the field of thuggery.

While the professional arm-twisters and leg-
breakers usually engage in threats, intimidation,
beating and the occasional political kidnapping,
they can also be hired to perform murders,
reportedly for about 30,000 pesos (a little less
than 4,000 dollars). No doubt some work cheaper.

In the recent past women attorneys representing
democratic and independent unions have been
beaten by some of the goons right in the labor
board building. Over the years these goon squads
have been used to beat, kidnap and murder union
dissidents, such as those from the Ford
Cuautitlan plan, for example. As their regular
presence at the labor board indicates, these
hooligans and assassins form an integral part of
the Mexican labor relations system.

--------------------


               MAY DAY AROUND THE WORLD:

          MEXICO, KOREA AND THE UNITED STATES

                  by Young-Il Lim*,

          Linda Stevenson, and Jess Kincaid

May Day--the international workers' day--has over
a one-hundred year history, invoking the struggle
of workers to improve their conditions and a
symbol of the international solidarity that
exists between working people's. Parallel to this
history has been an effort to cut working people
off from their heritage and erase the memory of
labor's fights and accomplishments, most
successfully perhaps in the United States.

The cases of Korea and Mexico provide insight
into the significance May Day plays as a symbol
of the fight for democratic and independent
unionism. In recent years attempts by both
governments, with the cooperation of state
unions, to subvert the celebration of May Day
have met with militant opposition.

               May Day in Mexico

For decades, May Day in Mexico was an official
state holiday in which the unions paraded before
the national palace, and the president stood on
balcony and reiterated the "historic pact"
between the state-party and the unions. Rather
than a celebration of workers' power, it was a
symbolic representation of the state- party's
control over the unions and the workers.

After the Chiapas Rebellion and the economic
crisis of 1994, the late Fidel Velazquez, then
leader of the Confederation of Mexican Workers
(CTM), decided to suspend the CTM's participation
in the 1995 May Celebration, and led all official
state unions to do likewise, thus threatening to
stop the May Day celebration altogether. But
independent unions, democratic caucuses within
the official unions, community groups and radical
activists decided to hold a march anyway, the
first independent May Day in Mexico in decades.

The impetus provided by the 1995 May Day march
gave birth to the May First Inter-Union
Coordinating Committee (CIPM; also referred to as
the Intersindical). The CIPM subsequently became
one of the most important labor groups in today's
Mexico, and for three years independent workers'
organizations held successful demonstrations and
kept the spirit of May Day alive in Mexico.

This year the Intersindical marched, as did the
new National Union of Workers (UNT), and together
their demonstrations were as large or large than
those of the "official" Congress of Labor. May
Day has been revived in Mexico as a symbol of the
workers' movement, rather than a testament to the
power of the state.

                    Korea

In Korea this year, some violence occurred
between May Day marchers and the police. This
violence is indicative of the combative
relationship between the independent labor
unions, organized in the Korean Confederation of
Trade Unions (KCTU), which have played a vanguard
role in defending the rights of workers since
1987, and a government increasingly espousing
neoliberal [conservative] policies and
controlling the official unions the Federation of
Korean Trade Unions (FKTU).

Up until the mid-1950s, in Korea, International
Workers' Day was celebrated with the rest of the
workers around the world on May 1. However, given
the historical context of those years, post-World
War II, post-Korean war, and the throes of the
anti-Communist propaganda promoted by McCarthyism
in the U.S., it is no coincidence that South
Korea heeded the example of the U.S., and changed
the date of Worker's Day to something different
from that of all other countries. This maneuver
isolated workers both from their national history
of struggle and from any progressive
international solidarity.

In Korea the date was changed to March 10, while
in the U.S. the date is the first Monday of
September. But unlike in the U.S., in Korea
independent workers demanded the right to their
history and international solidarity, represented
in this date of labor struggle commemoration and
celebration. Since 1987, when the "great workers'
struggle" broke out, Korean democratic and
independent unions (KCTU) demanded that the
government change the date back to May 1.

As their numbers and strategic capacities
increased the KCTU not only gained considerable
strength (now representing approximately one-
third of all unionized workers), but was able to
persuade its counterparts in the official unions
to take up their demand. The KCTU's demands from
below were bolstered by the government-controlled
FKTU federation, as many middle-level leaders and
rank and file of the FKTU were convinced that it
was shameful to celebrate labor day as the
government mandated, in negation of their
history. Thus, after much debate and struggle, in
1995 the official commemoration of Workers' Day
in Korea was changed back to May 1.

Although the tensions between the independent and
official unions and the government still run high
in Korea, the restoration of the celebration of
labor day to May 1 signifies that the Korean
labor movement has been and continues to seek the
support and connections of international
solidarity after many long years of struggle. The
restoration of the marches and rallies in the
Zocalo in Mexico City represent similar changes.

          United States--May Day Forgotten

Ironically, May Day as the international labor
day began in the United States at the end of the
nineteenth century, and arose out of the struggle
for the eight-hour day led by the Knights of
Labor. The Knights of Labor and its eight-hour
day movement was defeated after the Haymarket
affair in Chicago. May Day commemorates that
struggle. In Latin America people sometimes refer
to May Day as "el dia de los martires de
Chicago," or the Day of the Chicago Haymarket
martyrs.

The experiences in Mexico and Korea illustrate
the importance of the May Day as symbols of
independent labor struggles. Perhaps in the
United States, as a democratic, independent and
militant labor movement is reconstructed, May Day
may once again be celebrated where it began, as
it is around the world.  ---------------- [Dr.
Young-Il Lim is a visiting professor at the
University of California at Los Angeles,
Assistant Director at the Research Center for
Youngnam Labor Movements, Seoul Korea and a guest
writer this issue.]

MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS
May 2, 1998 Vol. III, No. 9
---------------------------------

          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@compuserve.com

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http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico.html

Pictures & cartoons about Mexico/Chiapas
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3102/



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