Conciliation: The Path to Follow

The national miners’ union has taken the first step – through conciliation based on dialogue and respect – in the process of repairing the profound differences that prevail in labour relations between employers and workers in Mexico. This took place on 8 November 2012, when the union invited companies from the mining, metalwork and steelwork sector to an exchange of ideas in Vancouver, Canada, to revise the state of these relations. Over 40 businessmen and women attended this meeting, and together with union leaders and advisers they took an active part in the analysis of the issues that were raised. It is worth mentioning that the number of companies represented make up the biggest possible nucleus of the companies in this sector that is crucial for Mexico’s economy.

The results of this exchange were very positive and supported the common perception that the path to follow both for companies in the sector and workers can be no other than the path of rational, civilised and constructive understanding between both production factors, with full mutual respect for the interests of both parties. It was made clear that the wrong path, which would lead to disaster, is that of rigid confrontation between workers and employers.

Now, at the beginning of 2013, the constructive example set by mining, metalwork and steelwork employers and workers stands out in the social and economic panorama of Mexico. We must remember that the aim of this meeting was to reach a compromise that would allow stability and certainty in labour negotiations within the sector, and thus contribute to Mexico’s sustained economic development, based on justice and fairness. The businessmen and women in attendance responded positively to this meeting convened by the union, and with their contributions they ratified their will to move in the same direction now that new political perspectives are opening up in this country.

Mexico needs something similar, but with much larger scope, covering the whole country. The experience from Vancouver shows that this path is the correct one not only for this specific sector, but also for labour relations across the entire country. There is no other path that will make plans such as the Pact for Mexico bear fruit, and to ensure that their suggestions do not get pushed to the margins in big decisions about the change that is needed. This is the way to abandon once and for all the irresponsible improvisation of the National Action Party governments, who for 12 years corrupted Mexico’s true economic, social, political and legal development, as well as the previous exclusive policies that bent electoral preferences towards conservatism.

At the Vancouver meeting it was confirmed that consultation with and agreement of all social groups in Mexico must be the fundamental tool of all new government policies. The decision to move along this path should be put before all other considerations. This country is in desperate need of a real politics that corrects our existing serious imbalances and inequalities, based on ongoing, responsible, serious and in-depth consultation. This is the wind of change that should blow through Mexico.

We miners, and workers in general, are waiting for this inclusive politics to materialise. We want absolutely all social or employment conflicts to move towards solutions through a new governmental conduct a clear change in the judicial system. Workers, the middle classes, campesinos, indigenous people, students, women, and young people must not be excluded. The interests of a wealthy few should no longer be have the privilege of government protection, and a fair, equitable politics of wealth distribution must really, truly be set in motion. In Mexico we are hungry and thirsty for justice.

If this does not happen, the country can only expect prospects like those in certain European countries at the moment, where social equilibrium and fairness between all sectors of society have been forgotten. These are the notable cases of Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, with unemployment rates at around 26 percent, and around 56 percent among young people without opportunities for education or employment. In those countries, the crisis needs only a nudge to become a social uprising. But there are also examples from other continents, where underdevelopment and need have continued to prey on their populations and institutions. And where the major world financial organisations only concentrate on cutting budgets and reducing consumption, tightening the belt of the most needy. They fail to see that very close to them there are real models of stability and growth, like the Scandinavian countries – Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark – where a fairer social balance enables government efficiency linked to the common benefit of the population, as well as high standards of education, unionism and justice, which translates into social peace through ongoing dialogue for the resolution of difficulties and conflicts.

Mexico has already voted for the path it will follow in this six-year presidential term. Our elected representatives must now assume their roles with a sense of true political responsibility towards the population, and enable Mexico to rise from the ashes to which it was reduced by previous governments. Conciliation is of utmost importance in the first steps that the government must take. The alternative path is that of social, political and  personal confrontation, which would lead to continuing crises.

Prospects For 2013

2013 starts in just a few days. And this is not just a the start of a new calendar year, it is an important reference in terms of circumstances and experiences. 2012 closes with a series of injustices, crimes, errors, deviations and impunities that the PAN (National Action Party) government have committed from their position of political power. A lot of water will have to flow under the bridge before Mexico can shed the awful image that the National Action leaders have given to an entire nation which in no way deserved it, much less the disgrace of having to carry it.

Mexico has treated these political figures with the utmost benevolence, much more than was proper. It seems that the nation was too tolerant with them, and there were no serious consequences, until now, for any of the people responsible. The political history of modern Mexico is that of progress and the fight to move forwards, as well as the engagement of the people. PAN leaders and their allies totally lacked these qualities, and instead they had deformed views of reality with which they unfortunately managed to infect some politicians from other parties.

Calderón’s useless war on organised criminal gangs and drugs trafficking; the spilling of a huge amount of Mexican blood; the failure of the economy for the great majority of people; the using manipulated media propaganda campaigns to cover up the terrible conditions in which the PAN left our society; increasing poverty, with a further 15 million people in six years falling into in poverty (a jump from 45 to 60 million between 2006 and 2012); the lack of opportunities and the corruption and impunity of the chosen few – among them businesspeople devoid of all sense of social conscience and solidarity towards the country – and the cynical, shameless failure to keep electoral promises, particularly Calderón’s promise that he would be the ‘jobs president’, all cast a shadow over Mexico for 12 long years, which today are rightfully called the tragic dozen.

It is worthwhile remembering these terrible experiences and their tragic results so that we can design a completely different strategy. Faced with such disgraceful acts it is impossible to simply draw a line under things and move on, because the nation was seriously offended and we must now fully recognise that in order to move forward in the immediate future, which started in December 2012. This situation should motivate the effort to not repeat previous mistakes in the application of the government’s new plans and programmes. The necessary remedy must arise from an awareness of reality, so that present and future changes are closely linked to our needs as a nation and as a society.

Of course, we need new strategies to undo the harm done to Mexicans in each area of the national agenda, and so that we do not fall back into improvisations. We must implement social policies in education and national security, as well as in work, tax, environment and agriculture, in urban development and in all the country’s other spheres of activity.

Prospects for 2013 could be positive as this new six-year term begins, but only if realistic and concrete policies are drawn up for each of Mexico’s sectors and problems. We do need individual objectives but we also need an overview that allows us to channel the work of different sectors so that they converge in a single direction. In short, we urgently need a change that will enable us to transform the economic and social model that under neoliberal dogma has dominated life in Mexico for the last thirty years, and has only brought further economic and social disorder and greater exploitation of the workforce and of natural resources. The State must regain its effective authority in all sectors and must operate sensitively and skilfully in the medium and long term.

Such prospects for 2013 will be promising, positive and encouraging for Mexico, provided that a fundamental government tool is to listen to the voices of those who have been neglected: workers in industry and services, the middle classes, campesino and indigenous communities, young people and students, women and marginalised groups. Their real demands should be met by government policies. The prospects could be dreadful, however, if we do not proceed to this permanent consultation of the people, if there is no desire to listen to them, and if the lesson of the last 12 years of incompetence, ineptitude and corruption in government is not learnt. The PAN never consulted Mexican society about anything they intended to do, as illustrated by the improvised war against the organised criminal gangs that they could never control.

The nation must change the economic and social model that has prevailed and must restore growth rates fairly and reasonably, based on an economic and social policy that transcends short-term interests and steers our country towards a future of increased wellbeing, security and new opportunities for all Mexicans.

Calderón’s Legacy: Corruption and Impunity

The end a government’s term in office must surely be traumatic, daunting and uncertain for the person who has led that government. Even more so if he is aware of the grave mistakes and social debts that he is leaving behind. In no time at all he will realise just how superficial and ephemeral his actions were and how short-lived his enjoyment of power. This must be what is happening or about to happen to Felipe Calderón, because from the beginning of his administration he was seriously criticised for the illegal means and possible fraud that installed him as the manager of private interests, and his actions once in government confirmed this suspicion.

The most conservative and reactionary corporate groups let him pretend to call the shots, despite all his limitations and incapacities, improvising wars with the military strategies they dictated to him. However, thanks to growing impunity and corruption, he ended up alone and rejected like few in history, even by the very people he thought were his friends, whom he served unconditionally and immeasurably. I am aware of the scornful, rude and sarcastic comments, some direct and others indirect, made by mining businessmen to whom Calderón handed over 25 percent of the national territory in concessions, for example Germán Feliciano Larrea, of Grupo México, Alberto Bailleres González of Peñoles, Alonso Ancira Elizondo of Grupo Acerero del Norte, and Julio Villarreal Guajardo of Grupo Villacero. In his best years at the beginning of his six-year term they said he was resentful, hung-up about his indigenous appearance, incompetent, short-tempered, and alcoholic. Who knows what they will say now, in the wake of a government that failed to find solutions for the nation’s problems and left even its own allies unsatisfied.

Calderón worked obediently to do their bidding right up until the last moment with a labour reform project, drafted by members of his administration and corporate lawyers, which drove the working class and their families to the brink. He didn’t care about the consequences of this reform initiative for Mexico in terms of greater unemployment, exploitation and uncontrolled ambition, which in time will translate into instability and threats to Mexico’s social peace. Surely he never thought or even noticed because be was blinded by ignorance, or because his insensibility, the same that he showed in government, stopped him from seeing beyond the short term. Neither he nor his collaborators see the deep wounds and crises that similar measures have left in certain European countries like Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and Ireland, all due to vested interests, whatever it were that went on, as he famously said after he came to power. Poor Felipe Calderón, alone, betrayed and abandoned to his fate, Lord help him!

Even the briefest of glances shows the impunity that bred complacency and allowed the criminal acts of many of the people who supported him to flourish, both inside and outside government. Dishonesty went beyond all previous levels. If you probe into Calderón’s government, its decomposition is patently obvious. Impunity and disloyalty were the two central characteristics of his government and his politics. A total blunder, which his media strategy, costing millions and millions of pesos each year of his six-year term, could not overcome, in fact it made it more visible. A media strategy that bulldozed the freedom of the press and freedom of expression, using the shady mechanisms of budget management with the aim of silencing or muffling the free voices of journalism, and rewarding the most submissive.

His irresponsible strategy was that whoever is in opposition or does not obey must be eliminated, and precisely for this reason he unleashed political persecution and public attacks, products of his frustration and impotence in the face of the country’s free and democratic unions and their leaders.

Betrayal and disloyalty were the other two constant factors in his government, and particularly notable is Calderón’s personal weakness of believing in those people who insulted him behind his back, and continuing to believe in them until the end of his presidency. There is a lot of evidence to show that those interest groups are the ones who really governed Mexico, not him, as he presumed. Otherwise there is no way to explain the perversity and impunity of those disloyal allies and their constant attacks on social organisations. Calderón criminalised social protest as much as possible, along with all leaders who did not bow to his accomplices’ interests, and this explains the villainous political and judicial persecution of those of us who opposed that political practice and acted accordingly, with dignity and consistency.

The dustbin of history is where that politics will end up; it must not be allowed to continue to damage the country. It is crucial at this point in Mexico’s history that society’s healthiest powers and minds ensure that corruption and impunity cannot be used again to lead our country, because with those patterns of behaviour the nation will not advance: a new strategy based on a new social pact must be established instead. It seems that this might already be moving up the agenda, and it will include the Mexican people, responsible businesspeople, unionists, women, young people, politicians, parties, students, intellectuals, academics and all sectors of society.

We must be confident that Enrique Peña Nieto’s government will learn from previous experiences and see that corporate hypocrisy, which is exempt from loyalties and a sense of social responsibility, can lead to serious errors in the management of the nation’s politics. They must necessarily, urgently listen to the majority of the Mexican population and not just a few isolated voices.

Message From Vancouver

The relationship between Mexican unions and the companies that operate in our country, be they funded by Mexican or foreign capital, has been long and complicated.  Ever since the dawn of Mexican industrialism in the 19^th century there has been a relationship between workers and businesspeople which, like everywhere around the world, has always been difficult and even conflictive. Whether the role of employer has been played by men from private companies or by the State itself, this relationship is a natural reflection of the universal class struggle, which has always been implacable.

Over the course of the 20^th century, however, in this historic conflict between social classes the country had a philosophy of labour which, despite its many insufficiencies, ensured that this relationship worked within constructive boundaries so that through it economic and social development in Mexico could grow and benefit the great majority of workers as well as companies. The key was in the generous and modern vision of the Constituent Congress of 1917, which sprang from a desire to revise and rebel against the horrors and repressions of Porfirio Díaz’s dictatorial regime.

In the midst of the inevitable clash of interests during the last century, employers and workers achieved a coexistence which went through various stages, some of understanding and others of confrontation. The pinnacle of this relationship came in 1945 with the now-distant Pacto Obrero-Industrial, an agreement between workers and industry which proposed to make the most of the advantages that the Second World War offered to Mexican economic activity. The country used this to deliberately evade irreconcilable conflict between factors involved in production and to facilitate their mutual understanding so as to move forwards towards the great objective of national progress.

At the same time, workers had built a powerful system of unions, inspired by the 1917 Constitution itself, which checked the irrational exploitation of the workforce and established the foundations of constructive coexistence. However, as the years went by private interests gained ground on social interests. The expansion of industrial activity did not generate a spirit of respect on the part of employers for their workers and for the people, and many companies were dedicated to ensuring that their own interests prevailed. The results were already visible in the 1960s: ours was a process of development with poverty.

In subsequent years this unjust situation got worse. The interests of the business sector wormed their way into government ranks until we arrived at the current situation, in which it is impossible to tell if the people governing the country bear any resemblance to the representatives we elect every six years, or if certain powerful businesspeople simply control public authorities using pressure or economic blackmail. Many unions, as well as many politicians, have softened under this pressure and lost their way or betrayed their roots, becoming structures that are empty of all workerism. Others of us maintained our dignified presence and our autonomy in the face of private and state power. That is why I have invariably shown in articles, speeches, press releases and different forums that it is necessary to establish a new model of development in Mexico, one that rewrites the current terms of scandalous partiality in favour of the business sector.

We have recently had an experience which shows that, even in the greatest adversity, there are ways to advance and to open up new opportunities for workers. The great majority of companies which make up the mining, metalwork and steelwork sector in Mexico came to Vancouver, Canada, in November 2012 to revise their relationships with the National Miners’ Union, at the suggestion of this organisation. At this meeting we saw the promising perspective that even today, with the forces of the so-called free market running rampant the world over, crushing social justice, it is possible to develop bonds of respect and true constructive collaboration between workers and employers in Mexico, to create jobs and to boost productivity and efficiency in the sector. And this happens despite the fact that for more than six years the Miners’ Union has been subjected to one of the most perverse political, judicial and occupational persecutions that has ever been seen by inept conservative governments of the National Action Party, which fortunately has not been re-elected, aided by a few businessmen who are determined to make unionism disappear.

In Vancouver we defined a more positive direction and destination for worker-employer relations in Mexico today. In the inevitable conjunction of workers and companies, neither side can get rid of the other because they are mutually dependent, and as such the realistic approach is to understand one another with complete mutual respect. This respect must above all be extended towards workers, who have suffered most in the period under the so-called neoliberal model which manifests as an irrational exploitation of the workforce and the extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands.

The spirit of Vancouver is transcendental and was expressed in a document published in La Jornada on Tuesday 13 November 2012, which should be applied to all worker-employer relations in Mexico. This document stated, in short, that through rational delimitation of spheres of action and respectful mutual collaboration, it is possible to develop a bond for the progress that the country needs. The businesspeople, the men and women who attended, with their presence and their analysis and critical participation in this meeting, expressed their decision to take that path. This is the only way that we can overcome the economic crisis that currently afflicts the world.

The Truth About Union Transparency

Obama’s victory spurs democracy on

The National Miners’ Union is a long-standing organisation in the Mexican workers’ movement, and since its founding 78 years ago it has developed a politics characterised by its genuine devotion to union autonomy. Faced with the changing circumstances of life in Mexico, the miners’ union, founded in the city of Pachuca in 1934, maintained and developed the different values and principles of independent and democratic unionism.

Autonomy is not a simple abstract concept, it is an active reality. It means freedom of association for unions, the defence of collective labour contracts, the right to strike, autonomous management of union internal elections for the selection of leaders and those people who represent the union in the various branches of its influence, the responsible and autonomous use of the  economic resources that affiliated workers give to the union organisation to support its fight and for administrative, legal and political functions, as well as complete transparency in the management of those resources. This transparency is demonstrated every day but the organisation demonstrates particular accountability every two years when workers meet at the biannual general meeting.

Felipe Calderón’s labour reform proposal, with its obvious intention to benefit employers, will be a political mistake for the immediate future, one that contains a special chapter about transparency and accountability for all Mexican unions. On this topic, Calderón and the PAN (Nation Action Party)’s proposal is a trap into which all ministers and senators have fallen because they fail to understand that with it this government is set on showing itself as a defender of democracy and union transparency. Nothing could be more false.

A significant piece of information for the Miners’ Union is that, although since its beginning the union has always practiced accountability and transparency, Calderón has pursued it to an extent never seen before. This reveals that his declared support of union democracy is underpinned by a total lack of consistency and plenty of doublespeak. The union statutes clearly establish that the only people whose responsibility it is to understand these issues are the member workers themselves, and it is by no means the business of third parties, be they civil servants, politicians, government or companies, because mine workers are neither naïve nor are they new to political or social life. Calderón and the PAN specifically mean to break the principle of union autonomy in this part of their proposal. And it is precisely this principle that certain Leftist and PAN legislators support, although they fail to appreciate that PAN as well as PRI members of congress have, with 80 percent support in the chambers, approved one of the most harmful reforms ever to affect Mexican workers.

If we definitively accept Calderón’s labour reform proposals, together with the attack on union autonomy, Calderón and the PAN would gain a victory that is underserved and unethical. They are asking unions to be obediently accountable to them and to what they call society, but at no point have they asked companies or government to be similarly accountable or practice this transparency in everything they do, so that the country also is kept informed about their business.

Their hypocrisy hides the deceptive nature of this proposed reform. According to its authors, only workers’ organisations, between which no distinctions are drawn,  operate outside the law. On the other hand, the unions’ accusers and pursuers from antisocial companies and the conservative government show off how morally perfect they are and how their actions are always inscribed in absolute legality. They claim that they consequently have no need to expose themselves to external public scrutiny because the practices of corruption and impunity that they employ are simply to be applauded rather than punished. We should not presume that there are laws and budgetary authorities that govern this kind of accountability, because it has always been evident that the most powerful companies are the ones who evade their legal and budgetary responsibilities to the greatest degree, on top of their paying reduced rates of tax to the treasury. Even governments let them off their multimillion dollar debts and give them tax rebates every year. Where in Calderón’s proposal is there even the slightest attempt to level the playing field between company bosses and unions?

Right-wing governments, unscrupulous politicians and some company bosses have been acting for decades like the defenders of big capital and the ruthless pursuers of all those of us who have been upstanding in our opposition of this unfair politics, in both union and social spheres. Now that Calderón is fortunately on his way out of presidential office, the time has come to intensify his attack. They want labour reform accompanied by a union counter-reform that puts legitimate workers’ organisations, and the people who work on behalf of them and their families, into the same category as organisations whose corruption meant they ceased to be authentic unions defending the rights of their members decades ago.

Legislators are not even aware of this, and they are joining the employers’ attempt to nullify all unions. But the Right knows what it is doing: establishing a huge concentration camp to irrationally exploit Mexican workers, without a trace of any organisation that might defend them.