[Mayworks-org] Continental Workers' Campaign for Living Wages

[The Bullet]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 49... May 11, 2007

_______________________________________________________

 Mexican Workers Call for a Continental Workers' Campaign

 For Living Wages and Social Justice

 Richard Roman and Edur Velasco

Capital and the state of all three countries of the North American
Free Trade Agreement have worked together to push down wages and
working conditions, undermine the social safety net, and privatize
anything that could be turned into a source of profit. The aim of both
NAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership - the project of
"Deep Integration") is to constitutionalize the rights of capital and
undermine the rights of workers and the public. By incorporating
Mexico into the geography of continentally integrated production,
capital has been able to lower its wage bill and increase its power
over labour. Relocation and the threat of relocation has been a
powerful tool in forcing concessions on flexibility, wages, and
working conditions.

Workers and unions have not effectively developed strategies of
continental-wide solidarity and or fight-back. There have been some
efforts in that direction in terms of solidarity with specific
struggles, worker to worker exchanges, increased union contacts. A
coalition of Mexican unions has now proposed a strategy of struggle
that could open up the door to a more class-wide and continental
approach to union and workers' struggles. While the initial proposal
focused on the minimum wage, it could be broadened to include the
needs of the unwaged poor as well as other rights of workers - the
right to a job, the right to safe conditions of work, the right to
housing. A continental fight-back around class-wide demands could
reinvigorate the labour movements in all three countries. The article
below focuses on the Mexican proposal and labour movement. In addition
to describing the proposal, we put forth a description and analysis of
Mexican unions and their role in Mexico's deep and ongoing crisis.
Mexican workers are faced not only with a neoliberal assault on their
rights and standards of living but also with an increasingly brutal
and repressive state veiled in a corrupt and thin electoral process.

The Mexican Coalition

A coalition of progressive Mexican unions, democratic currents in
other unions and popular movements, such as the Asamblea Popular de
los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO),have made a bold proposal for a
continental workers' struggle to raise the minimum wage in all three
countries, limit the work day to eight hours, and enforce a ban on
child labour. In Mexico, it is a response to the dramatic fall of real
wages and the beginning of a fightback against the deepening
neoliberal assault promised by the new, fraudulently elected President
Calderon. The coalition campaign as the Jornada Nacional y
Internacional Por la Restitución del Salario y Empleo (National and
International Campaign for the Restoration of Wages and Jobs). It
believes that the battle can only be won and consolidated on a
continental scale. If the minimum salary and wages are raised in one
country, those companies that can simply relocate to those areas where
wages remain lower will do so. The floor has to be raised in all three
countries

The coalition is aware that a minimum wage increase in the U.S.,
without an increase in Mexico, will simply increase the incentive for
companies to move to Mexico. They want jobs in Mexico but not at the
expense of job loss in other countries and starvation wages in Mexico.
They feel that these three minimum demands create the basis for a
common struggle in all three countries. And while they feel the
struggle should start in the three NAFTA countries, they want to
spread it later to include all of Latin America and become a global
campaign.

Beyond Borders: A Call for Solidarity

This proposal is a call from workers in the South to workers in the
North to engage in a joint struggle against the corporations and
governments that seek to play them off against each other in order to
continue the downward slide of wages and living and working standards
everywhere. NAFTA is part of the neoliberal assault on workers in
Canada, Mexico and the United States. This assault on workers is the
major part of the reason that over ten million Mexicans have been
forced to leave their homes and families to work in the U.S. as the
only means to survive. The proposal seeks to unite workers - Mexican,
US, Canadian, Quebecois; white, Latino, and Black; those with stable
and those with precarious employment, those with unions and those
without, those with legal rights and those without - in a common
struggle that will unite workers in all three countries. Success will
bring real and desperately needed gains in the short run while
building the bases for an international workers movement in the longer
run. The campaign entailed by such a proposal seeks to move beyond
solidarity as support for other peoples' struggles and toward
solidarity as a common struggle.

The minimum wage in Mexico has fallen in real purchasing power by 75%
in the last thirty years. During the presidency of Vicente Fox alone
from 2000-2006, it fell by 22%. Ten million workers, 24% of the
economically active population, make the minimum wage or less. Fifty
million Mexicans live below the poverty line. Of these, 30 million
live on 30 pesos per day ($3 US), 10 million live on 22 pesos daily,
another 10 million on less than 10 pesos daily. In order to buy what
is officially defined as a basic household basket, a worker would have
to work 48 hours daily! As well, the minimum wage affects vast layers
of workers receiving more than the minimum wage as many collective
agreements and labour contracts are formally or informally tied to
changes in the official minimum wage.

But not all is bleak. In the same period, Mexico rose to the 4th top
position in the world in the number of millionaires. And it boasts the
third richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, who did very well indeed
through privatizations. The top 20% in Mexico control 52.7% of
Mexico's wealth while 30% of Mexicans subsist on less than one minimum
salary per family per day. At the same time that the countryside has
lost great numbers of people to the urban labour markets, Mexico's 40
million workers have become increasingly exploited receiving a
declining portion of national income

The New Presidential Regime

The face of the new Presidency of Felipe Calderón is that of the IMF
underwritten by fierce repression. The former Governor of the state of
Jalisco, Francisco Ramírez Acuña, has been appointed Secretary of
the Interior (Secretario de Gobernación). He took great pride in his
tough handling of the anti-corporate globalization protests in
Guadalajara on May 28, 2004, a 'handling' it should be noted which was
widely condemned by human rights groups for their brutality, arbitrary
detentions and the use of torture. His appointment has been praised by
business leaders who have said that disorder and protests in Mexico
need to be handled with a "firm hand." Certainly, it was Ramírez
Acuña and President, Calderón that decided (a few days before the
official swearing in) to use extreme force, arbitrary arrests and
torture in their attempt to smash the Oaxacan popular movement.

The economic ministries went to extreme neoliberals. Agustín
Carstens, (a "Chicago boy") resigned a top position at the IMF to
become Secretary of the Treasury. Luis Téllez, former Secretary of
Energy (1997-2000) and a directing manager of the Carlyle group since
December 2003 (whose job was to "co-lead Carlyle's first ever buyout
investment activities in Mexico", Carlyle News, December 15, 2003),
has been appointed Secretary of Telecommunications. And Georgina
Kessel, the technocrat who has been one of the key people in carrying
out privatizations in previous administrations and was one of the key
designers of Plan Puebla Panama, a neoliberal plan to integrate
southern Mexico and Central America into North American capitalism,
has been appointed Secretary of Energy. The members of the cabinet in
charge of social issues come from the far Catholic right. This is a
regime that has announced by words, cabinet appointments and actions
its intention to deepen neoliberal reforms, which would include
changing labour law and privatizing oil and power.

The new government, however, faces three major obstacles: (1) its
lack of legitimacy to a major part of the population who view its
victory as a result of massive fraud; (2) the anger of much of the
population at the decades of neoliberal attack on living standards,
decent jobs and social rights now intensified with runaway price
increases in basic foods in the brief period of the new Presidency;
and (3) the lack of solid control of the President over the new
Congress, whose party does not control either house.

Mexican Unions in the Crisis

The role of unions in Mexico's political crisis has been as
heterogeneous as the character of unions in Mexico is at present. And
the character of these unions has become more heterogeneous than in
the past. Mexico's transition from a strongly state-dominated form of
capitalist development to a neoliberal, "open" economy as well as the
change from a one-party to a multi-party regime has undermined some of
the mechanisms of control the old statist union oligarchy could rely
upon. This union oligarchy, derisively called "charros" in Mexico, has
been scrambling to protect its considerable power and wealth in this
period of change. These changes in political regime and economic
strategy have led the charros to try to adapt in various ways. The
vast majority of unions remain thoroughly authoritarian but the
already existing plurality of unions and union federations has widened
as the charros maneuver to adapt to a more fluid and complex
political-economic situation with weakened mechanisms of control.

Both the government and big business have been pushing to revise
labour law to weaken unions and legislated workers' rights. And some
aspects of Mexican labour law, although not always enforced, are very
progressive. Workers' rights and union power are viewed as impediments
to "progress". 

While unions have been severely weakened by privatization and
relocation within Mexico, the attempts at labour law reform have so
far been stalemated by popular resistance and legislative stalemate.
The new government is determined to break this stalemate.

The existence of any union is viewed as a potential obstacle to the
power of capital. Even the authoritarian, corrupt and
government-linked unions often made significant gains for their
members, sometimes in wages or benefits (health care and housing
especially), or jobs in unionized workplaces for family members. While
the margins for these gains have been sharply reduced by neoliberal
restructuring, they are still important in many cases. It is these
real gains for important sectors of unionized workers that have helped
sustain the power of the authoritarian and corrupt union officialdom.
But when these mechanisms of control fail, union officials have
resorted to killings, beatings, or exclusion from union membership and
consequent loss not only of jobs but of the various benefits (health,
housing, jobs for family members) to maintain their power and
privilege.

This weakness of democratic unionism in Mexico has been a key factor
in constraining working class resistance to state authoritarianism and
neoliberalism. While workers have been the mass base of the
Obradorista movement against electoral fraud, working class
organizations have not played a leading role in popular struggles,
with the important exception of Oaxaca. The absence of a strong
independent union movement or a workers' party has led to a situation
in which workers have, in the main, been the base of other movements
rather than having their own movement.

The weakness of working class resistance is strongly connected to the
scarcity of real unions. The old system of labour control had been
based on five key, inter-related pillars: (1) labour law that gave the
state control over union recognition and the right to strike; (2)
integration of the officially recognized unions into the ruling party
and state apparatus; (3) authoritarian control over the unions by the
union officialdom on the basis of state laws and links as well as the
usual control mechanisms of an organizational oligarchy; (4)
repression by the state and by thugs commanded by the charro
officials; and, for some periods, (5) a social pact that allowed gains
for limited sectors of the working class, especially in the realm of
the social wage (most notably in the postwar expansion). Official
unions have been part of the ruling party and union officials have
either held union, party and government positions simultaneously or
sequentially. Official unions have been state instruments in the
working class and their leaders' power brokers within the existing
regime. Mobilization by these unions - or more often than not, the
threat of mobilization - has had little to do with union or class
struggle. Rather it has been either a card to play in intra-regime
struggles or a way of cooling out rank and file pressure for real
actions.

Mexican unions combine features of a state institution, a party
machine, and an employment service with those of a union. In general,
they historically have been run in a thoroughly corrupt and
authoritarian manner. They controlled labour market access,
disciplined the work force, extorted money from workers and capital,
and used their labour-managing role (both workplace and political) as
part of their base for negotiating their interests with management,
for their influence within the power bloc/PRI (Partido Revolucionario
Institucional), which governed Mexico for 70 years until its defeat in
2000. Mexican union officials could and did become capitalists either
through setting up companies themselves (or in the name of family
members) or by extracting surplus from control of union institutions
that could then be used for investments. But the role of the "labour"
elite as political actors and capitalist entrepreneurs required their
ongoing control of unions and their related institutions. Union
leaders moved back and forth between political party, governmental,
and managerial positions in the public sector. They were not simply
union bureaucrats but members of a hybrid elite sitting on top of
hybrid institutions in which "unions" were encased.

The New Terrain of Mexican Trade Unions

Pluralism among Mexican unions and labour federations is not new. The
old one-party PRI government, at times, fostered pluralism and
competition among unions and federations within the limits of loyalty
to the PRI and its project of capitalist development. The government
applied its divide and rule strategy to labour officialdom as well as
to the rank and file of the working class. Union strategies have
ranged from total submission to the neoliberal project to various
degrees of resistance. There are also different perspectives, programs
and strategies for what a new industrial relations regime should look
like. But, with few exceptions, this has not led to significant change
in the authoritarian internal character of most unions. Only a small
number of unions have sought to confront the neoliberal project as a
whole, though many do so rhetorically.

There are presently four significant union blocs: (1) La Unión
Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT), (2) El Frente Sindical Mexicano (FSM),
(3) Congreso del Trabajo (CT), and (4) the Federación Democrática de
Sindicatos de Servidores Públicos, FEDESSP (the nucleus and main
contingent of the FEDESSP, is the teachers union SNTE of Elba Esther
Gordillo). It is very hard to estimate the real number of union
members as there are so many protection contracts and company unions.
However, it's clear that the real rate of unionization is the lowest
of the three NAFTA countries. The most militant of the union blocs are
the least numerous. The FSM has about 5% of the total union
membership, the UNT 10% whereas the CT and FEDESSP control about 85%
of organized workers.

The national teachers union, the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores
de Educación (SNTE), has been a key element in the PRI, the PRI-PAN
alliance, and recently in executing an important part of the electoral
fraud for Calderón. As a reward, they have been given great control
over the federal department of education. Section 22 of the SNTE, the
section of the state of Oaxaca, which carved out great autonomy in
decades of struggle against the national leadership, has played the
leading role in the Oaxaca revolt. 

The most gangsterist of the old guard charro unions continue to
support the PRI and the PAN (Partido Accion Nacional - conservative
Catholic party), whichever of them governs that particular
jurisdiction. And they are rewarded, as was the national leadership of
the teachers union, with state back-up for maintaining their
authoritarian control over their members.

The moderate and authoritarian dissident unions (telephone and social
security/public health) continue to play an ambiguous role, fighting
to "modernize" labour relations, which in the case of the telefonistas
means allying with their boss, Carlos Slim, in exchange for protection
of their jobs and the social security union has collaborated with
massive cut-backs of employment and public services, though, at times,
being forced by their rank and file to mobilize protests. These
unions, along with STUNAM, dominate the UNT, the new dissident
federation, founded in 1997. They supported López Obrador in the
election campaign but have now "critically accepted" the election of
Felipe Calderón. They have made a pact with the congressional
alliance that supports López Obrador but have distanced themselves
from any extra-institutional challenges to the government. They do not
participate in the Convención Nacional Democrática (CND) - the
movement against the electoral fraud and in support of the "defeated"
presidential candidate, López Obrador. Nor have they issued any
statement about the popular movement in Oaxaca, APPO. They seek to be
a loyal opposition to the illegitimate President and to try to
negotiate a new, modernizing social contract with themselves as the
intermediaries.

There were many who hoped that the UNT, in spite of its authoritarian
and cautious leadership (its leader, Francisco Hernández Juárez,
after all, was a favourite unionist of the neoliberal President
Salinas, 1988-1994), would set in motion a democratizing dynamic and
start to organize workers. 

But they have failed to make any serious efforts in that direction.
Their strategy has been moderate mobilization to pressure for
negotiations with the government. They are completely averse to any
challenges to the regime that would threaten them either by state
repression or rank and file revolt.

The more militant and left unions and democratic currents of other
unions tend to be part of the FSM (Frente Sindical Mexicano). Two of
the key unions there are the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME)
and the Sindicato Independiente de Trabajadores de la Universidad
Autónoma Metropolitana (SITUAM).

While the working class continues to be the mass base of the major
revolts (Obradorista and Oaxaqueno), only a small number of unions
play an important role in these revolts. But those that are involved
in popular struggles do so alongside other forms of working class
organizations, such as neighbourhood associations and democratic
currents in non-democratic unions. The working class as a class has
not yet found its own voice and organizational forms of struggle in
Mexico's national crisis with the exception of the APPO. This is the
key missing ingredient in the possibility of a successful national
struggle to defeat the authoritarian, neoliberal government.

México 2007: The Labyrinth of Counter-revolution

The new presidency started with two big bangs. The first was the
massive repression of the popular movement of Oaxaca. Though its' most
brutal and decisive act took place a week before Calderón took office
officially, it can be seen as the first major act of the new
presidency. The second was the combination of a miserly increase in
the official minimum wage with runaway inflation in the costs of basic
food commodities (especially tortillas). And most recently there has
been an assault on the pensions of public sector workers (raising the
age of retirement, reduction in average pensions, individualization of
pensions and privatization of their management)

Calderón is determined to overcome the roadblocks to deepening
neoliberal restructuring and continental integration that stymied the
previous Fox presidency. The roadblocks were based on the pressure of
popular resistance on the divided and vacillating members of the old
ruling party, the PRI, leading them at times to oppose key structural
reforms. As the Right did not have a majority by itself in the old
Congress -- and doesn't in the new - the opposition of the PRD
combined with the vacillation of the PRI was able to block the passage
of key legislation around labour law reform and privatization. The
Calderón government is determined to overcome these obstacles by
brutal repression of popular protest on the one hand and the squeezing
the PRI where it hurts-their lucrative links with the drug lords. They
can pass legislation and harass movements through these measures but
they can't gain legitimacy. The more they rule by force, the less
legitimacy they will have. The government of the Right is determined,
violent and mean-spirited but their rule is fragile.

While the events of the last year show the fragility of the project
of the Right, they also show the limitations of the popular
resistance, a resistance that is wide and deep but also fragmented and
without strategic unity. Calderón has attempted to appear as the hero
on horseback in the midst of a society with close to all-out war among
the drug lords for control of the main drug routes. The violence of
the drug wars reached unprecedented levels in the first months of the
new presidency, with weekly tolls of dozens dead in cities such as
Monterrey, Acapulco, Veracruz, Guadalajara and Morelia. Calderón's
use of the armed forces to regulate and attenuate the drug wars allows
him to appear as the guarantor of law and order to the general public
while he uses and normalizes the use of the armed forces to control
social disorder, and movements of social protest. But, more
immediately, it gives him great leverage for negotiating with the PRI
in those states and cities in which they remain strong and have
significant congressional representation. As many local media sources
have asserted, if Calderón can determine who will survive and
participate in the huge drug market, the PRIistas will play ball in
other areas, so as not to be displaced from the lucrative subterranean
activities in which their local and regional leaders appear to be
involved.

The use of the armed forces in the various states has given Calderón
the leverage he needs in Congress to have a majority for his reforms:
the elimination of what's left of the welfare state in Mexico, a
fiscal reform aimed at a new cycle of redistribution of wealth away
from the poor and working people, and the private appropriation of
what's left of the public sector, most importantly the oil and power
industries. He can now destroy those PRIistas that resist his
neoliberal reforms. The arrival of Calderón to the presidency has
made the International Monetary Fund much more optimistic about
reforms in Mexico, as they stated on April 13. The hour for a Mexican
fast-track has arrived: the definitive dismantling of the ruins of the
old Estado Nacional Popular and an open road to the complete
neoliberalization of Mexico.

The overwhelming majority of the population, however, opposes this
reactionary assault. The mass popular resistance is a diffuse
conglomerate of forces linked more by nostalgia than by a common
national project. The popular forces continue to have a tremendous
capacity of mobilization and a powerful public presence. This has
begun to split the country into two realities: the one, the
institutional; the other, that of the street. For the moment, the
conservative "majority" that controls the major institutions seems
unstoppable.

The Mexican Resistance and a Continental Campaign for Living Wages

The popular forces of resistance are in an orderly retreat without
being demoralized or discouraged. There is still a combative spirit
but there is not (yet) a dominant view of the tactics and strategy of
the fight-back. The popular resistance is debating, taking stock,
exploring different paths and will likely emerge again more strongly
in the coming period. They know that Calderón lacks a popular mandate
and that his power is ephemeral, resting only on the extortion of the
PRI politicians, but that as a whole, his proposals are thoroughly
unpopular.

The simmering popular discontent and the relentless offensive of the
Right - as well as state elections in Oaxaca and elsewhere - makes it
likely that the next months will be ones of intense struggle. The
labour and political left, grouped in its diverse variants, is
preparing for a counter-offensive. The SME was able to once again
bring together the major national currents of popular resistance in
the Cuarto Dialogo Nacional (4th National Dialogue) in early February
2007: the communal farmers of Atenco, APPO (the popular movement of
Oaxaca), the Frente Sindical Mexicano, the CNTE as well as about 600
other organizations (unions, social movements, indigenous
organizations, left currents) who agreed on a common plan of action
for the next months whose first actions occurred in the first weeks of
May.

The big mobilizations of this past March are a good indicator of the
possibilities. The Convención Nacional Democrática (CND) brought
tens of thousands into the streets on March 25, filling the Zócalo,
in a great act of opposition to the program of Calderón. Only two
days later, a new mass mobilization took place, of which only a small
portion had been involved in that of the CND, now composed of the
labour opposition to the reactionary government, that brought tens of
thousands of workers onto the streets of Mexico City in opposition to
the counter-reforms of the pension system pushed through by Calderón.
And the EZLN (still absent from the great coalitions of resistance of
the last few years) has initiated a second national tour of the Other
Campaign, preparing sections of the population who have lost hope in
the institutional political spaces, for playing an important role in
the rapid movement of the country towards increasingly sharp
confrontations. Mexico is in a situation of catastrophic equilibrium
in which the counter-revolution has not been able to consolidate power
with legitimacy but in which the forces of resistance have not been
able to do more than slow down the assault. The new government is
seeking to break the equilibrium through a blitzkrieg of deeper
neoliberal reforms and heavy-handed repression. The popular forces are
groping for ways to move beyond resistance to a majoritarian rebellion
for a different Mexico.

Progressive unions and other segments of the working class have
played important roles in mobilizing resistance to neoliberalism and
fighting for democracy and justice. But for a long time, growing
working class anger has been contained by the gangsterist unions as
well as union structures that have only mobilized to protect the
interests of their own oligarchic leaders or, less frequently, their
own members. As most of the working class lacks unions, they have been
with limited organized expression in defence of their own interests.
For that reason working class discontent has expressed itself more in
the form of support for other movements (Obradorism) or as local
movements without national articulation. The very limited existence of
genuine unions has been a major obstacle to the working class playing
a significant mobilizing role in this extremely proletarianized and
increasingly pauperized nation. The goal of the la Jornada Nacional e
Internacioal Por la Restitución del Salario y Empleo is to put
working class demands at the center of the struggle in Mexico and to
do so in a manner that is national and international at the same time.
If Canadian and US workers can join with Mexican workers in a common
campaign of struggling for decent wages, workers' rights, and an end
to poverty, the contours of a new North America would begin to emerge.

Edur Velasco Arregui is a trade union activist and Economics
Professor at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City.

Richard Roman is a member of Canadian Union of Public Employees local
3903, and a professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto from
1974-2003.

**********************************************************************

**********************************************************************

Jornada Nacional y Internacional Por la Restitucion del Salario y
Empleo National and International Campaign for the Restoration of
Wages and Jobs

 November 8, 2006

The most important social pact is the Constitution. However, for
three decades, successive federal governments have flagrantly violated
the terms of Article 123 of the Constitution: they have not promoted
job creation, they have discouraged and boycotted community or
cooperative efforts to create employment, tolerated and even
encouraged exhausting and inhumane workdays, ignored the use of child
labour, and above all, have made the constitutional definition of
general minimum wages a dead letter: a wage "sufficient to satisfy the
normal needs of a head of family; in material, social, and cultural
areas; and to provide the obligatory education to their children."

Therefore, by systematically betraying their oath to "observe and
uphold the Mexican Constitution", those who have governed during the
neoliberal cycle have condemned the majority of the country's workers
to a harsh choice: hunger or superexploitation.

Today, in order to pay for the  basic "family
basket" (canasta básica) - composed of food, personal hygiene and
household cleaning products, transportation, electricity and domestic
gas - workers earning the minimum wage would have to work 48 hours a
day, and many more than that in order to also cover rent, education,
health care, clothing, recreation and cultural activities.

Over 10 million workers - 24 percent of the workforce - receive less
than the minimum wage, or no wage at all [e.g. when heads of families
are contracted to fulfill a specific task with the understanding that
other members of the family will also work, though without pay] Some
manage to obtain an income higher than the minimum wage by holding two
or more jobs. Millions of households have found themselves obliged to
send their elderly or their children to work in order to raise the
household income to the absolute minimum needed for survival.

Between 1977 and 2006 the Mexican minimum wage lost 75 percent of its
purchasing power, one of the most brutal drops in average people's
incomes that has taken place on the planet.

This phenomenon has not occurred by coincidence or by accident; it is
the consequence of a sustained plan by the various federal
governments, on several different pretexts: to control inflation,
attract foreign investment or generate jobs.

All of these justifications have been proven false. Inflation has
shot up several times, due to stock market and currency speculation as
happened in 1987, due to catastrophic governmental errors as in
1994-95, or due to the global policy of price liberalization. This
data demonstrates that the only commodity whose price is being
controlled is the work force, through a minimum wage that keeps them
in abject poverty.

Foreign investment plummeted in the current six-year presidential
term, during which the country has also lost 5 percent of the formal
jobs registered by the Mexican Social Security Institute. The real
motives of those in power for pulverizing minimum wages are different
than the pretexts mentioned above: to dismantle workers'
organizations, eliminate their historic conquests and create
conditions favouring the increase of profits on national and foreign
capital.

The strategies for wage containment constitute a deliberate policy of
plundering from millions of Mexicans for the benefit of a handful of
millionaires. They represent, as well, the most brutal offensive by
capital and its allies in the governmental sphere - the President, the
Secretaries of Finance, Work and Social Security, Economy, and even
the legislature and the judiciary - perpetrated by those occupying the
highest offices in the governmental structures, in order to
systematically and flagrantly violate the Constitution.

Of course, keeping wages down has not translated into lower
inflation, nor into economic reactivation or job creation. On the
contrary, its consequences have been the infuriating and alarming
intensification of misery and poverty, the concentration of wealth in
only a few hands, the weakening of the internal market, and the
enormous growth of the informal economy.

These disastrous economic results have alarming parallels at a
societal level: the deepening of inequalities, an abysmal drop in the
standard of living of the general population, a pronounced
deterioration in health, education and housing, massive emigration,
the rending of the social fabric and unquantifiable suffering for the
majority of the population.

The national economy has been brought to a point in which work has
ceased being a right and become instead a privilege. However, if the
majority of the "privileged" who have a formal job are being obliged
to accept starvation wages, the perspectives for the unemployed are
much worse.

With or without jobs, fifty million Mexicans are below the poverty
line: 

some 30 million live on 30 pesos per day, that is to say, two thirds
of the current minimum wage; 10 million live on 22 pesos a day, and a
similar number subsist on 12 pesos and 21 centavos a day. Whether they
have a job or not, these millions of Mexicans are not being offered
any future other than to become beggars or criminals or to try their
luck venturing toward a northern border that has become ever more
hostile and deadly.

The implications of the offensive against salaries on the political,
institutional and legal spheres has been no less pernicious. The
country is confronted with a federal authority that openly violates
constitutional precepts, a government that has opted to ignore its
legal obligations, a political authority that promotes the
dispossession of the many for the benefit of the few, provokes the
deterioration of institutions, promotes the discrediting of public
authorities, and subverts the possibilities of Mexicans being able to
live peacefully and harmoniously together.

The government policy of depreciation of the minimum wage and, in
general, the lack of observance by governments of what is stipulated
in Article 123 of the Constitution, are not merely infractions of the
law, but rather have resulted in a country that is morally
unsustainable, politically ungovernable, socially uninhabitable and
economically unviable.

Society as a whole, and in particular workers' organisations, are
facing the duty to rescue the primordial agreement on which the
ability to live together peacefully rests in Mexico, which is the
Constitution. It is necessary, therefore, to call a national
mobilization to defend Article 123, for the following purposes:

***To demand the fulfillment of the constitutional definition of the
minimum wage, which "must be sufficient to satisfy the normal needs of
a head of family; in material, social, and cultural areas; and to
provide the obligatory education to their children."

***To ensure that the right to dignified and socially useful work is
respected.

This call is to:

***organise ourselves, nationally and internationally, to ensure that
the Constitutional mandates are fulfilled.

***undertake political and juridical actions aimed at restoring the
spirit and letter of the Constitution.

***hold regional, national and international forums to ensure that
Article 123 is respected.

***hold a "March for Wages and Work", on December 7, in Mexico City.

For the above reasons, we call together workers, women, peasants,
national and international unions, the unemployed, informal workers,
non-governmental organisations in Mexico and overseas, students,
migrant workers, human rights organisations, people excluded by
neoliberalism and by the political powers that have turned their backs
on our Constitution.

"We want a fair minimum wage, work and opportunities within our
Mexico, now! Mexico City, November 8, 2006

Signators:

Frente Sindical Mexicano (FSM) Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas
(SME), Alianza de Tranviarios de México (ATM), Sindicato Nacional de
Trabajadores Mineros, Metalúrgicos y Similares (SNTMM),
Confederación de Trabajadores y Campesinos (CTC), Sindicato de
Trabajadores de la UNAM (STUNAM), Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT),
Sindicato Independiente de Trabajadores de la UAM (SITUAM),
Federación Nacional de Agrupaciones Sindicales (FNAS), Consejo
Nacional de los Trabajadores (CNT), Coordinadora Nacional Politécnica
(CNP-IPN), Centro de Investigación Laboral y Asesoría Sindical
(CILAS), Cooperativa Pascual, Coalición Nacional de Trabajadores del
INEGI, Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de la Industria Nuclear SUTIN,
Sindicato de Trabajadores al Servicio de los Poderes del Estado
(STSPE) Querétaro, Assemblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO),
Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE ), Lic.
Arturo Alcalde Justiniano, Diputado Federal Ramón Pacheco Llanes y
Diputado Federal José Antonio Almazán González, Centro de Análisis
Multidisciplinario de la Facultad de Economía (CAM-UNAM), Sindicato
de Trabajadores de Transporte del D.F. (STTPDF), Frente Nacional de
Resistencia contra la Privatización de la Industria Eléctrica
(FNRCPIE), Asociación Nacional de Abogados Democráticos (ANAD).

In charge of publication: Fernando Amezcua Castillo Secretary for
External Relations of the SME.

********************************************************************

********************************************************************

Call for a Continental Campaign for a Living Wage and End to Poverty

The processes of continental integration and the relentless offensive
of neoliberalism against working people has created the potential of
beginning to builda continent-wide struggle for decent wages. There
already are a variety of struggles in each of our countries but they
are presently isolated one from another. Our hope is to take advantage
of the potential to link up and build something broader and deeper
while respecting the autonomy of each movement.

The initiative for a continent wide movement for decent wages was
first taken by a coalition of progressive Mexican unions, democratic
currents in other unions and popular movements who made a bold
proposal for a continental workers struggle to raise the minimum wage
in all three countries this past November. We are trying to continue
the momentum and extend it to include addressing the needs of all
those in or near poverty by forming a Toronto committee that could
then reach out to make links with the rest of Canada and Quebec as
well as Mexico and the US.

This campaign could therefore link working people of all three
countries

-- Mexican, US, Canadian, Quebecois; white, Latino, and Black;
workers with stable jobs, precarious jobs or no jobs at all, those
with unions and those without, those with legal rights and those
without -- in common struggle against poverty in all of North America.
We hope you will join us to build this movement and develop these
links.

We urge you to form a local or regional committee in your areas.
Please let us know of your activities and we will begin to develop a
network of committees in each country and across the continent.

Please endorse the following call for a continental campaign for
higher minimum wages and circulate to interested people or
organizations:

We, the undersigned organisations, hereby endorse the call by Mexican
organisations for a joint campaign to increase the minimum wage in
Mexico, the US and Canada to levels that allow working people to
provide a dignified standard of living for themselves and their
families in whichever country they live in. We agree to work together
with other like-minded organisations in all three countries on
concrete activities to promote this goal.

Signed: ________________________________

On behalf of: ___________________________

For more information, contact info at socialistproject.ca

****************************************************************

****************************************************************

Key organizations in the Mexican Minimum Wages Coalition

The following section will provide some background on the main
organizations involved in la Jornada Nacional e Internacional Por la
Restitución del Salario y Empleo The statement and list of the
sponsoring organizations follows, in Spanish. The committee is broader
than the Frente Sindical Mexicana (FSM) which includes some of the
organizations below but also others not affiliated with the FSM, which
is not a federation but an alliance. There is a fluidity and overlap
in various coalitions, some being more ad hoc and temporary, some more
long-term. Some unions belong to several alliances and also to a
federation. Some unions do not belong to any federation.

The SME (Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas -- power workers). SME
has about 60,000 members, employed by Mexican Light and Power. The
union celebrated its 92nd anniversary this past December and is well
known for its long history of internal democracy with competitive
elections and changes of leadership. It is also a very nationalist
union and has often been the key organization in forming broad
alliances and struggles over workers' rights and the protection of
national patrimony. It has been the main driving force in the FSM and
is held in high esteem by democratic unionists in Mexico.

SNTMM (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores Mineros, Metalúrgicos y
Similares de la República Mexicana -- miners and steelworkers union).


SNTMM has around 70,000 members. The previous government of President
Vicente Fox deposed its leader who is now in informal exile in
Vancouver, supported by the USWA (United Steelworkers of America). The
government deposed him and installed a stooge after the union sharply
criticized the government and the company involved for a big, deadly
mining disaster in Pasta de Canchos, Coahuila on February 19, 2006 in
which 65 miners were killed. It is not a very democratic union and has
a very top-down and centralized leadership but has shown growing
militancy in recent years. 

The base is very combative and the vast majority of members and
locals support the deposed leadership. There have been big strikes and
battles with the police over union autonomy and workers' demands. It
is a member of three groupings: CT (the official federation of
unions), the UNT and the FSM. The battle of the SNTMM with the
government over union autonomy continues.

STUNAM (Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México). STUNAM is a union of about 30,000 members at
the largest university in Latin America (300,000 students), and
developed out of the student struggles of the early 1970s. It is a
union that works closely and collaboratively with the administration
of the university. It is affiliated both to the FSM and UNT.

SITUAM (Sindicato Independiente de Trabajadores de la Universidad
Autónoma Metropolitan). It is the union of UAM, with about 5000
members (blue-collar, white-collar, and academic), and is an extremely
democratic and combative union. As with the SME, there are tight
restrictions on re-election. A member can only serve in a particular
office for one term and can only serve as a union official for a total
of two terms in a lifetime for a total of four years, It is a key
actor in the FSM. Its political role is much more important than its
size would indicate. It recently hosted the founding convention of the
APPM (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Mexico, an attempt to make
national and transnational the model of struggle and organization of
APPO-see below for APPO). It also was the moving force in starting the
Coordinadora Intersindical Primero de Mayo (Inter-union Coordinating
Committee May First) in 1995 which grouped militant unions, dissident
union currents and popular movements in a common front. Inter-Sindical
May 1 had a brief role in linking left unions and popular forces but
later died a quiet death.

APPO (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca). This coalition of
teachers and a variety of popular organizations carried out a
generally peaceful but militant urban insurrection against repression,
authoritarianism and neoliberalism. They controlled and ran Oaxaca
City for over 5 months until the massive state repression on November
25, 2006. The core of the movement, initially, was the Oaxaca state
section of the teachers union, Section 22, which is part of a national
dissident organization within the teachers union, the Coordinadora
Nacional de Trabajadores de Educación (CNTE). The APPO was a popular
assembly, a coalition of Section 22 and a great variety of popular
forces. It exemplifies a model of popular, democratic insurrection and
governance. Though brutally suppressed, it survives and there are
ongoing attempts to form a national APPO.

CNTE (National Coordinator of Workers in Education -- teachers). The
CNTE is an organized national alliance of dissident teachers currents
in the SNTE (the national teachers union). The CNTE has existed for
over 30 years within the SNTE despite assassinations, disappearances
and firings carried out by the SNTE. The SNTE is a gangster-charro
union with over a million members. The CNTE is anti dual unionist but
does carry out its own campaigns. It consists of a few state sections,
some locals and dissidents in other sections. The CNTE is very
militant and often has deep community roots and engagement in broad,
popular struggles, as in the case of Oaxaca.

FAT (Frente Autentico de Trabajo). The FAT was founded in 1960 as a
Catholic reformist organization with the intent of developing
independent unionism and cooperatives. It became secular over the
years and has played a central role in promoting democratic and
autonomous unionism and promoting labour law reform. It is composed of
unions, cooperatives, and both producers and neighbourhood
associations and, in total, is estimated to have between 30,000 and
40,000 members.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The Bullet is produced by the Socialist Project. Readers are
encouraged 

to distribute widely. Comments, criticisms and suggestions are
welcome. 

Write to info at socialistproject.ca

If you wish to subscribe:
http://socialistproject.ca/lists/?p=subscribe

The Bullet archive is available at
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet

For more analysis of contemporary politics check out 

'Relay: A Socialist Project Review' at 

http://www.socialistproject.ca/relay

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you do not want to receive any more newsletters:
http://socialistproject.ca/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=495e1382f8c5437edbd9ed4ef8d54f70

If you wish to subscribe: http://socialistproject.ca/lists/?p=subscribe

To update your preferences:
http://socialistproject.ca/lists/?p=preferences&uid=495e1382f8c5437edbd9ed4ef8d54f70



--
Powered by PHPlist, www.phplist.com --


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/mayworks-org/attachments/20070514/294c94f1/attachment.html>