This is exactly what has been done to education.....underfunded for years...then a case is made for failure, and privatization!!! Lisa
Studies have revealed that the Central Light Company
hasn't been funded for years, in preparation to make the
case that it's nonfunctional. A 2005 report showed that
the company had not installed new generating capacity
since 1974.
Privatization of the parastate company lurks behind the
liquidation on October 10. Marchers carried signs that
warned "Today it's us - tomorrow PEMEX [the national oil
company] and SEP [the education system]," and "No to
privatization."
Subject: Mexico's Union Bust Reveals Flaws in NAFTA
Mexico's Union Bust Reveals Flaws in NAFTA
Laura Carlsen
Foreign Policy In Focus
October 22, 2009
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6519
Fernando Lopez woke up on a Sunday morning out of a job.
For the electrical worker, the feeling was terrifying.
"From one day to the next, they left us with no job -
nothing," Lopez said, as he marched alongside some
200,000 fellow workers and their supporters in downtown
Mexico City on October 15.
On the night of Saturday, October 10, thousands of
soldiers and federal police moved into position in the
darkness. After cutting fences and forcing out the
workers, they occupied over 50 installations of the
state-owned utility company, Central Light and Power
(Luz y Fuerza), awaiting the administrative blow that
would follow. At midnight, President Felipe Calderon
issued an executive decree to liquidate the company and
its union, the Mexican Electrical Workers Union
(Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas - SME), one of the
strongest and most vocal independent unions in the
nation.
The move had been carefully prepared by the government.
Troop movements throughout the central part of the
country serviced by Central Light went unnoticed under
cover of the massive mobilization of security forces
fighting the militarized drug war.
The decree follows a union conflict that the government
fueled and then took advantage of to eliminate the
company and its union. Union elections last June were
contested amid rumors that the federal government was
actively fomenting division. In a warning sign, on
October 5 the Secretary of Labor, Javier Lozano,
rejected registration of the new union leadership
without waiting for a decision from the labor tribunal.
The "Sabadazo," or Saturday Offensive, took place when
the union and the government were still in talks.
NAFTA and the Battle Over Who Will Pay For the Crisis
I talked to Lopez because of the simple poignancy of the
bright green sign he carried: "President Calderon - Your
children eat well. Mine don't."
Similar signs read, "And now what do I do? What will my
family eat?" Marchers revealed that the political issues
of privatization and opposition to the Calderon
government are prominent in the movement but above all,
workers feel that their very survival is under attack.
The ravenous right has set out to prove that it's not
the rich who will pay for the crisis. One of the
arguments for eliminating Central Light and its union
was that it employed too many people, making it
"inefficient." For the Calderon government, offering
decent employment to more than 40,000 families is a
crime in a year when unemployment has doubled and nearly
800,000 Mexican workers have lost jobs due to the
crisis.
The Mexican economy is at a crossroads as it faces a
multi-billion dollar deficit this year. Due to its heavy
dependency on the U.S. economy under NAFTA, it is the
hardest hit country in Latin America and predicts a 7.5%
drop in GDP for 2009. The number of poor has increased
above pre-NAFTA levels, leaving millions more families
in poverty, while the unemployment rate has doubled.
The congressional leader of Calderon's National Action
Party, Mario Alberto Becerra, estimated that even after
doling out severance pay, the government will save money
through the reduced costs of operating Central Light.
The government plans to use some of that money for hand-
out programs for the poor, a model it considers
preferable to maintaining unionized workers in jobs.
Treasury Secretary Agustin Carstens announced that the
42,000 SME workers will be replaced with 10,000 new
hires. He didn't say any would be hired back; the
message was clear - union members need not apply.
Obama promised a renegotiation of NAFTA to incorporate
the toothless labor side agreement into the text and
integrate core International Labor Organization
principles in defense of workers' rights. At the recent
Summit of North American Leaders he said that the
promise has been placed on the back burner. But that
burner seems to be turned off. At an October 19 meeting
between trade representatives of the three NAFTA
nations, they reaffirmed their commitment to the trade
agreement with no mention of renegotiation.
Unionized workers are not the only ones who suffer.
NAFTA has displaced some two million Mexican small
farmers in the countryside due to competition with U.S.
agricultural imports. A recent ruling of a NAFTA
tribunal delivered a record ruling of $77.3 million to
Cargill Incorporated to compensate the company for a
government program that blocked the use of corn syrup to
save Mexico's sugar industry - an industry heavily
protected in the United States. NAFTA's investment
provisions (known as "Chapter 11") allow corporations to
sue governments under special tribunals as one of the
many privileges offered transnational corporations under
the agreement. This obscene ruling to one of the world's
wealthiest agrobusinesses illustrates the priorities of
NAFTA and the constant erosion of worker's rights and
livelihoods.
When NAFTA was being negotiated in the early 90s, many
U.S. unions still considered Mexican workers the enemy
of their members as unfair competition in an
increasingly globalized workforce. That attitude has now
changed.
An October 15 declaration of the AFL-CIO states:
On behalf of over 11 million working women and men of
the United States, the AFL-CIO condemns this unilateral
action by the Mexican authorities, which effectively
destroys the SME and the trade union rights of the Luz y
Fuerza workers. Regrettably, the Mexican Government has
employed similar acts of intervention and repression
against the Mexican Miners and Metalworkers Union.
The AFL-CIO supports the following demands of the SME
and of the Luz y Fuerza workers to reverse this
egregious act of union-busting and violation of
internationally recognized standards of freedom of
association and collective bargaining: 1) a revocation
of the government decree unilaterally liquidating the
company; 2) an end to the occupation of the power plants
by the Federal Police; 3) the implementation of good-
faith negotiations between the Mexican Government and
the Union on the relevant financial and administrative
issues."
The Road to Privatization
Studies have revealed that the Central Light Company
hasn't been funded for years, in preparation to make the
case that it's nonfunctional. A 2005 report showed that
the company had not installed new generating capacity
since 1974.
Privatization of the parastate company lurks behind the
liquidation on October 10. Marchers carried signs that
warned "Today it's us - tomorrow PEMEX [the national oil
company] and SEP [the education system]," and "No to
privatization."
The Central Light Company leases over a thousand
kilometers of fiber optic cable in its electrical
network that it planned to offer to consumers in a
"triple play" package. This combined service of
electricity, telephone, internet and cable threatened
existing economic interests and lucrative future
contracts in the private sector.
Although the Calderon administration has said it isn't
privatizing the state-owned enterprise, SME leader
Martin Esparza revealed that two former secretaries of
energy, Fernando Canales Clarion and Ernesto Martens,
have formed a private company to use the publicly funded
LFC fiber-optic network for internet and voice services,
called WL Communications. Esparza reports that the
businessmen have already negotiated government discounts
and subsidies for the lucrative enterprise.
For now, Central Light has been fused with the Federal
Electricity Commission that manages services in the rest
of the country. The suspicion is that the consolidated
state-owned utility, stripped of a feisty union that
rejected both privatization and the erosion of worker
rights, will eventually be privatized. Pressures to
privatize state-owned enterprises, including the oil
company PEMEX and aspects of the education system, have
characterized the Calderon administration and those of
his predecessors from the PAN political party. The
pattern is familiar - the majority of Mexico's
billionaires made their initial fortunes off state
privatizations under scandalous terms during the Salinas
administration and since then they have formed a
powerful lobby for further privatizations, along with
international finance institutions like the World Bank.
SME member Juan Carlos Saucedo notes that the struggle
to regain the company and the union "is just beginning."
But it will be an uphill battle. The union has demanded
a legal review of the measure and insisted that it
violates the Mexican Constitution. It is currently
working with other unions to possibly call a general
strike. Following the mega-march, the federal government
agreed to open up dialogue with the union, but the talks
were broken off on October 19. The government discarded
any future possibility for negotiations on reversing the
presidential decree and the union declared the dialogue
a "farce," since for them preserving their jobs is the
top priority.
As SME member Apolinar Romero stated at the march, the
issue at hand goes beyond income for workers and rests
on "what kind of future we will leave our children." A
unilateral move to eliminate a union and a state-owned
company sets a terrible precedent for union-busting in
the nation.
Interviews in the Mexican press with government
officials reveal that the obliteration of the union was
carefully planned for over six months. The Calderon
government was just looking for the chance. Ironically,
it was the profound economic crisis in Mexico that
provided the Calderon administration with its
opportunity. 76,000 businesses have closed their doors
over the past months. The Mexican daily La Jornada
reports that 2.8 million workers have lost their jobs in
the Calderon administration. For families living on the
edge, the blow against the union places them between a
rock and a hard place.
Members of the National Association of Democratic
Lawyers and the Latin American Association of Labor
Lawyers stated in a press conference on October 18 that
the decree violates 25 clauses of the Mexican
Constitution and urged workers to file injunctions
against the measure instead of accepting severance pay.
But each day that passes with no wages sees more workers
accepting the government's severance offer.
The administration has launched a campaign to malign the
union, implying that the union members had manipulated
cushy jobs at the expense of consumers. Consumers know
the administrative problems of Central Light, with
unexplained charges in light bills and impossible
bureaucracies. These administrative problems could
easily have been solved long ago, but by analyzing
administrative faults and revamping systems - not
liquidating the company and its union. Official
statistics show that union members made an average of
around $500 dollars a month, and 20,000 members earn
below this level, hardly a princely wage. What the union
did manage to achieve for its members in democratic
processes and benefits was an example for Mexican
unions.
The real question is who will pay for the crisis. The
Calderon administration tried to force through a tax on
basic foods and medicines in the federal budget -
another move to make the poor pay for the inordinate
wealth and privilege of the elite in a vastly unequal
nation. It was blocked at the last minute.
The U.S. government, instead of helping to provide jobs
and labor protections as Mexico sinks into the deepest
crisis in recent history, has concentrated aid in the
Merida Initiative to corrupt Mexican armed forces and
police through the war on drugs. It also continues to
support NAFTA's skewed terms.
It's time to develop a more integral and humane
binational relationship and renegotiate NAFTA. The long-
term effects of allowing this crisis to erode labor
rights and further impoverish an already stricken nation
will only lead to instability throughout the region.
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