Labor

The history of Mexican trade unionism has oscillated between two extremes: the submission of trade unions to the state and the repression of the independent movements which have tried to extricate themselves from that situation.

Raul Trejo Delarbre, 1976145

After the Cardenas administration, policymakers felt control over labor was necessary for capital accumulation, which is a prerequisite of industrialization. The government adroitly combined legal, financial, and political controls in its effort to provide a cheap, docile labor force to industrialists.146

In 1931, the Mexican private sector, the U. S. government, and U. S. business interests in Mexico vigorously opposed passage of the Federal Labor Law. Henry Ford threatened to remove his auto plant from Mexico if the proposed legislation became law.147

The fears of businessmen were ill founded, and it soon became apparent that the law could be used to control, not uplift, labor. Minimum wage regulations often harmed labor. In many cases, those who were receiving more than the minimum had their wages reduced to the minimum, and those who received less than the legally established minimum found that there was no effective means to force compliance with minimum wage legislation.148

Government control over labor made it attractive for entrepreneurs to invest in industry. This control also enabled the PRI to mobilize labor at election time, to receive its support in times of crisis, and to control inflation by keeping wage demands in check during periods of economic instability.149

A key element to government control over labor was Fidel Velazquez. In 1941, President Avila Camacho supported Velazquez, a former milkman, to head the main labor federation, the CTM. The new CTM head slavishly allied himself with incumbent presidents to suppress rival leaders and labor organizations. He remained in this position until his death in 1997.150

The government had a wide variety of tools at its disposal to maintain its control over labor:

¦  The Labor Department had the legal power to deny registration to any labor union. If unions were not registered, they could not call legal strikes, enter into arbitration proceedings on behalf of their members, negotiate labor contracts, or appoint members to positions on government wage commissions. In addition to rejecting an application outright, the government could indicate its attitude toward a union by either expediting or delaying its registration. Political scientist Kevin Middlebrook found that the time that elapsed between the application for union registration and its acceptance ranged from one day to 24.9 years.151

¦  Legal strikes could only be called by legally registered unions. In addition, the legality of each strike had to be recognized on a case-by-case basis. If a strike was not declared legal, workers were subject to firing and replacement by strikebreakers.152

¦  Union elections were as undemocratic as those for political office. Through his power to recognize union elections as legitimate, the secretary of labor could deny membership in union executive committees to those who challenged government labor policy. Once in power, union officials would rely on the lack of effective trade union democracy to retain their jobs, often for decades. During their tenure in office, trade union officials used their positions to amass considerable personal wealth. Investigative journalist Manuel Buendia estimated that leaders of the oil workers union netted $750 million annually from their legal and illegal activities. Sometimes employers would bribe labor leaders to suppress their employees’ wage demands, since that cost less than increasing wages.153

¦  So long as labor leaders followed the PRI party line and kept their rank-and-file in line, the official party would ensure their tenure in office. Such leaders could aspire to PRI posts and elective office at the local, state, and federal level. Dozens of seats were reserved for labor in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. As they became a moneyed elite in their own right, labor leaders came to share interests not with the workers they nominally represented but with management.154

¦  Labor leaders could eliminate dissidents who were merely minor irritants by resorting to the exclusion clause, a provision of the labor code that enabled union officials to legally expel from the union anyone they deemed a troublemaker. Since Mexico’s “progressive” labor legislation provided the closed shop, dissidents who lost union membership via the exclusion clause automatically lost their jobs. More serious labor dissidents would be charged with the same offense—social dissolution—used to silence political dissidents. The already broad definition of that offense was extended to include obstructing “the path of legitimate government aims.”155

¦  Union federations such as the CTM received massive government subsidies, thus permitting them to hire staff at salaries well above a laborer’s pay. This led workers to kowtow to the CTM in hopes of gaining employment in the labor bureaucracy. To limit labor’s power, the more conservative Regional Federation of Mexican Workers (CROM) was played off against the CTM. In 1950, to further fragment labor’s power, the Aleman administration facilitated the formation of the Revolutionary Federation of Workers and Peasants (CROC), a new group that was loyal to the PRI and hostile to the CTM. Individual unions within these federations had limited power due to their small size. In 1960, the average membership was 134 per union.156

¦  During the Cold War era, labor insurgency was frequently labeled “Communist,” thus delegitimizing workers’ demands and making repression more politically acceptable.157

¦  Unions were heavily subsidized by government. In 1950, 62 percent of the CTM’s monthly receipts came from the government.158

¦  Relatively few workers were unionized at all. In 1970, only 14.8 percent of the labor force belonged to a union. In the most unionized sector, industry, 37.2 percent belonged to unions, while only 12.9 percent of service workers were unionized. Union members received higher wages than non-union workers. In addition, they had written contracts and benefited from social security (which included health care) and subsided commodities and housing. Non-unionized workers often received below the legally mandated minimum wage and lacked such benefits as social security health care.159

¦  The PRI’s protectionist polices shielded Mexican manufacturers from foreign competition. This allowed manufacturers to pay relatively high wages and pass the cost on to consumers. Since the PRI was strongly identified with industrial protectionism, labor had good reason to support that party. Auto workers, for example, received wages five times the average, generous welfare benefits, and scholarships for their children. Similarly, public-sector workers received aboveaverage wages and benefits, so they backed the official party.160

In his 1946 inaugural address, President Aleman set the tone for post-war labor relations by declaring, “There must be no illegal work stoppages.” When oil workers attempted a twenty-four-hour work stoppage a few weeks later, the army occupied refineries, oil wells, gas stations, and pipeline pumping stations. Many union leaders were jailed and beaten.161

During Aleman’s presidency (1946—1952), union leaders who were identified with the Communist Party or who promoted Cardenas’s development model were replaced by more pliant labor leaders. Aleman’s policy of freezing wages during a period of rapid inflation made the weakest people contribute the most to the process of capital accumulation. A 1956 article in Fortune magazine commented:

Indeed it might be correctly said that the true hero of the Mexican investment boom is the ordinary Mexican worker, whose acceptance of a declining real income has in effect “subsidized” much of the nation’s building. . . It is a token of Mexico’s political stability that this program of inflation has been accompanied by no political disorders or even by any notable diminution of the party in power.162

After a bitter confrontation with the rail workers, which occurred during the first months of his term, Lopez Mateos (1958—1964) was more lenient with strikers, and a number of them won raises, which the government accepted as necessary to maintain labor peace. The Labor Ministry began to use its extensive powers to pressure employers to increase wages and benefits granted workers. Wage increases, especially in strategic sectors of the economy, and tame leadership contributed to a period of labor peace that extended through the end of the 1960s. In 1970, wages totaled 35.3 percent of the GDP, up from 23.4 percent in 1951. Not only did labor’s share of national product increase but the national product itself was increasing. As a result, the buying power of wages quadrupled between 1952 and 1976.163

Workers in nationalized industries were especially favored, since the government was willing to pay the price for their loyalty and support, even though it was unwilling to mandate such benefits for the working class as a whole. In 1962, when Joaquin Hernandez Galicia became secretary general of the oil workers union, he rained down so many benefits on oil workers that the cost became a national scandal. As historian Enrique Krauze commented, with a few exceptions, workers accepted the labor leadership since they “knew that their situation was better than the great majority of Mexicans.”164