"NO MATTER WHAT THE RESULT, WE WILL CONTINUE TO RESIST"
By David Bacon
TruthOut, 6/2/12
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9534-no-matter-what-the-result-we-will-continue-to-resist-says-mexican-electrical-workers-union-leader
Humberto Montes de Oca is the international
secretary for the Mexican Electrical Workers
union. Two years ago, its 44,000 members were
all fired, when the Mexican government took over
generating stations by force to set the stage for
privatizing electricity. Montes de Oca describes
the role the union has played on the left in
Mexico, its resistance to privatization, and the
way fired workers are now forced to migrate to
survive. With Mexico's presidenetial election
just weeks away, he explains why his union, like
the miners and other independent unions, are
supporting Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the
candidate of the Party of the Democratic
Revolution. He was interviewed by David Bacon.
Our organization is the oldest democratic
union in Mexico. The Mexican Electrical Workers
Union [SME] was founded in 1914 when the armies
of Emiliano Zapata took Mexico City. Our
founders saw that the peasant insurrection would
finally create the conditions for their efforts
to organize could succeed. They'd already made
many attempts to set up the union in underground
conditions, and endured repression because of it.
In 1916 we organized Mexico's first
general strike. Our leaders were imprisoned and
condemned to death, but their lives were saved by
huge demonstrations. In 1936 we went on strike
against the Mexican Power and Light Company,
which at that time had U.S., British and Canadian
owners. Mexico City went without electricity for
ninety days, except for emergency medical
services. The strike was successful, and led to
the negotiation of one of the most important
labor contracts in Latin America. That strike
helped set the stage for the nationalization of
oil, and created the political conditions that
made the expropriation possible.
Humberto Montes de Oca
Then in 1960 we were one of the
organizations that pushed for the nationalization
of electrical power. President Adolfo Lopez
Mateos modified Article 27 of the Mexican
Constitution, and added a paragraph that says
that the Mexican government has the exclusive
right to provide electricity to the country.
Since then, under the Constitution public
electrical service can be provided only by the
state.
In 1992 President Carlos Salinas de
Gortari changed the regulations to take some
kinds of electrical generation out of the public
sphere, and since then a lot has been in private
hands. This started a process of privatizing
electricity through secondary laws. In 1994 the
company Power and Light was decentralized, and it
was closed in 2009, putting its 44,000 workers
out in the streets.
For the previous ten years these workers,
members of the SME, had resisted the
privatization of electricity. In 1999 then
President Ernesto Zedillo launched an effort to
privatize it through Constitutional reform, by
eliminating the 6th paragraph of Article 27,
which made the industry the exclusive property of
our nation. Zedillo tried to dismantle it. He
proposed allowing the creation of private
companies for the generating, transmission,
distribution and sale of power.
The union reacted quickly to stop it. We
formed a front of resistance, and we succeeded
because we were able to bring together many
social movements that were opposed to
privatization. Zedillo's proposal was defeated.
Leobardo Benitez Alvarez lived in a tent in front
of the office of the Federal Electircity
Commission on the Reforma in downtown Mexico City
for months, protesting the actions of the Mexican
government in firing 44,000 electrical workers
and smashing their union.
Later President Vicente Fox made another
attempt at privatization. This time he didn't
try to change the Constitution. He tried to
change the Public Law for Providing Electricity,
a secondary law. He wanted the public
enterprises to supply electricity only to homes.
Private enterprises would provide it to
large-scale consumers, like commercial and
industrial users. This initiative was also
defeated. In the same way, the union organized a
front of organizations against it.
The experience of the past
privatizations, including even those in the U.S.,
is that private owners invest their money to make
a profit, not to provide a service. That affects
the users of services, because the rates they pay
go up while the quality of the services provided
goes down. Investors only care about their
profits. They don't invest in maintenance or in
the means by which the service is provided. High
rates and deficient service, in other words.
For workers, it means losing what we've
achieved over decades of struggle. Things start
going backwards. What we have now isn't some
kind of privilege, but rights that cost a lot to
win. They are the minimum, which allow us to
work with dignity, and support our families and
ourselves.
One important aspect of our contract is
called the agreement among different parties.
This requires the company management to consult
with the union about changes they want to make
that affect our work. In other words, they can't
make unilateral changes. Few other unions have
this, and we've used it to protect users and
ratepayers.
One of the many mass demonstrations in the Zocalo
in Mexico City, protesting the firing of SME
members.
The contract covers benefits as well. We
have strong protections for health and safety
that force the company to maintain a safe
workplace, as well as changing rooms and showers.
We have vacations and sick leave, and we can take
leaves of absence. We have a fund that helps
workers find adequate housing. If you've worked
there a long time, the company will help you
build or buy a home. We have the aguinaldo [an
extra month's salary distributed at the end of
the year] and a savings fund in which the company
matches what workers contribute. Basically, our
contract means that we have the minimum
conditions you need for a decent life
Really, the only effort to privatize
electricity that succeeded was that of 1992.
Eventually 50% of the power in Mexico was
produced by private generators in a process that
was known as "hidden generation." After the
subsequent privatization efforts were defeated,
the rightwing governments, with their neoliberal
policies, decided to use force, to privatize
through action, rather than legislation. We say
they tried to take the fish out of the fishbowl,
and when that didn't work, to break the bowl.
Before taking action, the government
mounted a campaign for months to discredit the
company, the workers and our union. It
intervened directly in the life of our union, in
violation of the law, seeking to divide workers
and buy off some of the union's leaders. The
government refused to recognize our elected
leadership, as a way of denying our union its
legal right to exist and function.
The government sought to turn public
opinion against us. To ratepayers, it said the
company wasn't productive, that it was
inefficient and had become a public charge. The
workers were privileged and their contract was
expensive and a burden on the Mexican people.
The union was inflexible and corrupt, they said,
and the workers were lazy. All this was on
radio, on TV and in the movies - everywhere,
creating the preconditions for action.
Members of the SME protesting in Mexico City's Zocalo.
Then on October 9, 2009 President Felipe
Calderon issued a decree to end the existence of
Power and Light and brought in 27,000 soldiers
and Federal police to expel our members from
their workplaces. This was a military assault on
workers. Many of us were injured in the
violence. Since then the Federal Preventive
Police have continued an occupation of our
worksites. They've stolen tools and equipment.
They're looting the company.
There was no judicial order, and the
action violated the Constitution and Mexican law.
Immediately after, the government published a
decree against the union and launched a campaign
to defend its use of the military against
workers. The closing of the company was
portrayed as justified and in the best interest
of the Mexican people. Calderon went on TV, and
said that with the closing of the company the
electrical rates would go down and the quality of
service would improve. There would be more
generation and we'd have thousands of new jobs.
That justified his authoritarian and illegal
action.
But the president has no authority to
close a national public enterprise that has a
strategic value to the nation. Only Congress can
take such an action, and end the existence of a
company. The government violated the labor and
human rights of the workers, without even a
hearing about these issues. There was no warning
about the firings, which violates the labor law.
There was no notice to the labor board that a
conflict existed -- without it the workers have a
right to stay in their jobs. The decree
dissolving the company was clearly illegal. It
had no right to cancel our labor contract or
dissolve our union either.
The government had a secret document that
was recently declassified. In it, they analyze
the possible effects of destroying our union, and
predict that we wouldn't last more than three
months. It predicted we'd be violent, and that
we'd try to reenter our workplaces by force.
That's why the brought in thousands of police and
soldiers. One high military officer revealed that
it wasn't the police that took control of our
workplace, but the army. They were prepared to
repel any action by workers, and stop any
sabotage of our workplaces. But we never would
do that. We have a historical memory, and we've
resisted the government before. In July 2012
Calderon will be gone and we'll still be here.
A fired worker holding the shield of his union, the SME.
The government tried to bribe the
workers, promising them twice the normal
severance pay if they resigned their jobs. They
took out full-page ads in the papers, and said
the first 10,000 who resigned would get jobs in
the Federal Electricity Commission. They
promised loans to help people start businesses.
They promised training for jobs out of the
industry, even classes to learn English in case
they wanted to come to the U.S.
So 28,000 workers gave up their jobs.
The government said they weren't fired - they'd
quit. And those who quit couldn't find jobs
anywhere. But 16,000 people refused to quit, and
for two years we have been resisting. There's
been no legal solution for us.
We've been organizing support among users
and ratepayers. In their effort to keep the
system going, the government has brought in
workers with no experience. They have no
training in providing uninterrupted service. As
a result, in central Mexico, especially in Mexico
City, there have been constant blackouts. The
lights go out, leaving people sitting in the
dark. These workers have not been able to
reestablish the service as we provided it before.
We've proposed a legislative solution to
create a new employer, to take the place of Power
and Light, which would employ the workers and
keep the union contract. We also tried to
negotiate a solution with the Secretary of Labor.
In 2011 we occupied the Zocalo, the main plaza,
for six months. We were the first Occupy. On
the 13th of September, before our national
anniversary, we negotiated an agreement with the
government. They said they'd reemploy our
members and free the twelve leaders who are still
in jail. We said we'd leave the plaza. But
right after we made the agreement with Interior
Minister Francisco Blade Mora his plane crashed
-- the second interior minister to die in a plane
crash in the last six years.
Workers live in tents in the planton, or
Occupy-style encampment they set up in the
Zocalo. The banner says "We've had it up to here
with the killings!" -- referring to political
repression in Mexico.
The new interior minister refused to
recognize the agreement. So the route of
negotiations was closed. Now we're pursuing a
fourth road. We won legally, in the legislature
and through negotiations, but nothing changed.
The next route is political and electoral. At
present there is no political party that
represents our interests. In 2010 and 2011 we
launched a political organization for people and
workers. We're working especially with SNTE
Section 18, the teachers union in Michoacan.
At the same time, we are supporting
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, as candidate for
President, because he's promised that if he's
elected he will revive the Power and Light
company, and reinstate the 16,000 workers with
their SME union contract. This is not a
corporatist effort. We made the decision in a
general meeting, but no one is obligated to
support Andres Manuel. No matter what the
result, we will continue to resist until we win.
Certain rights are written into the
Mexican Constitution. Every person has the right
to work, to Social Security, to public free
education, to culture, to health. These are
social rights that the free trade regime is
pulling apart. This is the effect that free
trade agreements have had throughout the world.
There's a ferocious competition for markets, in
terms of money, for labor markets, for energy,
even now markets in terms of environmental
protections or the lack of them.
The expansion of free trade comes with a
wave of violence against society and against
social and democratic rights. This generates the
expulsion of citizens from one country to
another, and produces the phenomenon of
migration, as people seek opportunity and access
to the minimum they need to survive.
An electrical worker protests his firing.
This is what's happened in Mexico.
Mexico is exporting its labor force -- people who
are expelled from their land and communities and
jobs. So they leave for another country, in our
case, for the United States.
The government uses the remittances that
come back to Mexico, like the income from the
oil, to compensate somewhat for the fact that the
social budget in this country keeps shrinking.
The money has helped to soften some of the sharp
contradictions. But the amount of money
available for this purpose keeps shrinking all
the time, because the economic crisis is hitting
so hard. It's not a sustainable model for
economic development. It keeps economic activity
going to some degree in the communities where
people are sending back money, but in the long
run, this can't be sustained.
The labor law reform will push this
process further along, because it exacerbates the
flexibility of labor, and jobs become unstable
and wages go down. It generates a greater and
greater desperation among people being pushed
out. These are people who can't find a place in
the labor market any longer.
In the case of the SME, which suffered
the termination of 44,000 workers, we're now
finding that we have coworkers who were fired,
who never accepted the severance bribe, living in
the United States. These are workers who belong
to the resistance, and who went there to survive.
We also have compañeros who've gone to Canada to
survive.
We've tried to maintain contact with many
of them. On certain important events, such as
the anniversary of the founding of the union this
past 14th of December, some fly back from Tucson
and San Antonio to Mexico City to participate.
So our fight in Mexico is making a contribution
to the labor movement in the U.S. too. We're
exporting the struggle and the workers who
experienced it. The expulsion of militant
activists to other places means that we're also
exporting the experience of resistance and class
consciousness.
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
See also Illegal People -- How Globalization
Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
(Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the
U.S./Mexico Border (University of California,
2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
Two lectures on the political economy of migration by David Bacon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgDWf9eefE&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4OLdaoxvg&feature=related
--
__________________________________
David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org
__________________________________
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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