More Than 20,000 Miners Protest in Mexico ++= Wednesday, March 8, 2006

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060308/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_miners_protest

More Than 20,000 Miners Protest in Mexico ++ = Wednesday, March 8, 2006
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO, Associated Press Writer

MEXICO CITY - More than 20,000 union workers marched Tuesday in downtown Mexico City, accusing the government of meddling in the affairs of the national miners union by seeking to oust its leader.

The march comes days after the 250,000-member National Miners and Metal Workers Union shut down most mining and steel operations across the country during a two-day strike to support union leader Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, who is being investigated by the government for alleged corruption.

Mexico's Labor Ministry said last week that it considers Elias Morales, a dissident who had been ejected from the miners union, as the union's new leader, citing documents filed by members of the union's oversight committee.

The union, however, says the documents are false and that Gomez Urrutia remains in charge.

John J. Sweeney, president of the U.S. workers union, the AFL-CIO, sent a letter to President     Vicente Fox to express his concern about the situation.

"I am writing on behalf of the more than nine million members of the AFL-CIO to express my extreme concern over the direct intervention of the Mexican government's in the internal affairs" of the miners' union, the letter stated.

"The government's arbitrary removal of Mr. Napoleon Gomez Urrutia from his elected position of General Secretary of the organization infringes on the union's constitution, violates Mexican law, and undermines conventions of the International Labor Organization ratified by Mexico," the letter stated.

The National Workers Union, an umbrella organization encompassing a host of Mexico's organized labor groups, called the march Tuesday that drew about 23,000 workers, Mexico City police said.

In a memorandum on its Web site, the Telephone Workers Union said the government is seeking to oust Gomez Urrutia because of his opposition to proposed labor reforms, and his blaming mining company Grupo Mexico for the Feb. 19 explosion at its coal mine in northern Mexico that killed 65 miners.

The government denies that it is interfering in union affairs.

Fox said Tuesday that Gomez Urrutia was not ousted by the government, but rather by mining union members themselves who have accused him of fraud.

The accusations stem from the distribution of $55 million paid last year by Grupo Mexico as part of the 1990 privatization of two copper mines. The union says that of the 6,500 workers and former workers of the mines who are entitled to a share of the money, 5,300 have been paid an average of $7,600 each.

Other former workers of the mines who claimed payment but were turned down have filed lawsuits, and authorities said Monday they are requiring Gomez Urrutia to appear to make a declaration.

In an interview published Tuesday in the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada, Gomez Urrutia denied reports that he had fled the country, saying he's in the northern state of Coahuila talking to miners about last month's coal mine disaster.

Families of the dead miners have been equally critical of Gomez Urrutia, Grupo Mexico and federal labor authorities.
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Dow Jones newswires correspondent Anthony Harrup contributed to this report.
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http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/17289.html

Workers to hold march to back miners´ union
El Universal = March 07, 2006

The nation´s union leaders will hold a march in Mexico City Tuesday to support the leader of the miners and steelworkers union, who kicked off a two-day strike last week after the government recognized an opponent as head of the union.

"We´re going to march for the respect and independence of unions and we´re going to march to support the miners and steelworkers union," said Eduardo Torres, a spokesman for the National Workers Union (UNT), which represents 1.5 million workers in 200 unions.

The union leaders, who expect 30,000 workers will join the march through downtown Mexico City Tuesday at 4 p.m., said they don´t recognize Labor Secretary Francisco Salazar as the government´s negotiator with labor.

"We´re asking that he be removed from negotiations," said Torres, referring to Salazar.

Union leaders accused Salazar of interfering in the miners and steelworkers union´s affairs after the secretariat recognized Elias Morales as temporary leader over Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, said Torres.

In a special assembly Monday, regional leaders of the Miners Union voted 79 to 51 to confirm Gómez as their legitimate leader.

They announced that workers may take over toll booths on the nation´s highways.

Other unions may consider a nationwide strike, UNT spokesman Torres said.

Salazar said last week Gómez was removed as leader by union officials who responded to workers claims for part of a US$55 million fund the union received as part of a settlement following the privatization several mines.

Federal Investigative Agents (AFI) raided Gómez´s house in Mexico City on Monday as part of an investigation being conducted by the federal Attorney General´s Office (PGR).

Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca confirmed that PGR is trying to locate Gómez.

Mexico City prosecutors are conducting their own investigation and have, in coordination with Sonora state prosecutors, issued a summons to Gómez based on complaints filed locally by workers from the Cananea Mine in Sonora in which he is accused of theft and fraud.

The dispute over the union´s leadership has overshadowed efforts to uncover the bodies of 65 miners who died in a Feb. 19 explosion in a coal mine owned by Grupo México SA in the northern state of Coahuila.
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https://www.americas.org/item_25371

MARCOS'S WORDS TO THE WORKERS
Published by MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS
February 2006, VOL. 11, NO. 2

[The following translation of Marcos's words comes from the article by Herman Bellinghausen, "En ambiente de comprensión, conviven en Puebla el EZLN y sindicalistas," published in the Mexico City daily La Jornada, February 18, 2006. The subheads and text surrounding the long quotations from Marcos are Bellinghausen's. Translation by Dan La Botz.]

One moment in particular was the dialog between unionized workers and subcomandante Marcos. With their specific trade union concerns, the years of activism, the episodes of the working class struggle, they are not going to heaven and even less keep up with what's happening in Mexico.

After listening to dozens of workers, Marcos began by saying, "to the sister [compañera] who is worried because they are going to rescind her contract, I believe the person whose contract is going to be rescinded is Marío Marín [the governor of Puebla currently embroiled in scandal]. It's necessary to demand that they rescind his contract and those of all of the politicians, as has been explained here, they have put themselves completely on the side of the bosses in order to steal from us the little that we have."

He pointed out: "What we have seen is that there is a kind of operation, a brutal machine that beings to drive workers to the edge, to the precipice, and there is a job done by the mass media to present all workers in the city who have unions as a kind of privileged sector, and to convince the majority of the population that those worker have to lose those privileges, forgetting that often they won them with their blood, their vigilance and their struggle, and that we should all become equal at the same low level. There is a great campaign of disinformation against the Social Security workers, against the brothers and sisters of the teachers union, against the telephone workers, against all workers who have a collective bargaining agreement, who have a wage and a secure job. The media are all in agreement with the employers not only that people like you who are fighting to defend your historic labor contracts lose them, but also that that your defeat should be applauded.

Suit and Tie

Among the hundreds of attentive labor unionists, some wearing suits and ties, which, in a Zapatista event, in my memory, is unusual, Marcos mentioned "the most recent case, that of the brothers and sisters from Social Security, where there was a media campaign to convince the population to take away the rights that they had,."

"This operation begins to throw the workers and their labor union contracts to the basement of the country. We do not believe that the future of Mexico should be that we are all in the basement, rather the opposite, we want to learn from you and to conquer for all of the workers of the countryside and of the city not only what you want, but even more.

"During these last several years, since Salinas, and perhaps before, then with Zedillo, now with Fox and what will continue with whomever heads the Mexican government, there has been an offensive against labor, to make workers lives more precarious, to remove all impediments in the way of capital and to treat us like slaves. This places us then, if memory doesn't fail us, in the great worker and peasant mobilizations that preceded the Mexican Revolution of 100 years ago."

A Kind of Dream Fulfilled

Even though everyone who is present doesn't agree with every aspect of the other campaign [the non- electoral campaign of the Zapatistas], the ambience of acceptance and mutual understanding represents a kind of dream fulfilled. An encounter between the indigenous poor peoples' army of 1994 with the independent workers of 2006. And they talked with each other directly; not that they didn't know each other but now they are building something together.

Marcos insisted in his warning. "It is a question of workers losing their conquests, the collective bargaining agreements. That unions become converted into a thing of the past or a caricature with what they are today putting forward. Yesterday there was a meeting of Francisco Hernández Juárez [leader of the Telephone Workers Union and of the National Union of Workers or UNT] with some of the union locals and he announced that he was reuniting with the Chapultepec Pact [the business alliance created by Carlos Slim, a longtime Salinas ally], with the political parties and with all of those that want to help him defend the workers. That he was ready to meet with Marcos, even though the idea didn't appeal to him very much. Well, it doesn't appeal to us at all, not even a little and for that reason we will not meet with him."

A recognition of the workers' struggle: "We remember that a few years ago, up there in the mountains, we received news of workers' mobilizations to advance their historic conquests, and in the last 12 years we have only received news of workers fighting to keep what they have or to keep them from taking it away. This process, which has us on the defensive, against the wall, doesn't only affect city workers, but also the peasants, the Indian communities and all of those who work through these lands."

And once more the sense of urgency: "The only way to keep from falling over the precipice which would make us disappear from the country, is to go over to the offensive, it may sound exaggerated right now when we are talking about one thing or another that they are taking away from us, but we think, and this is the proposal of the other campaign, that we have to go over to the offensive on a national level. To take the offensive, to go for them, to put them where they ought to be. Where Marín [governor of Puebla], Slim [Mexico's richest man], and Fox [the Mexican president] ought to be is in jail."

"A Frightening Show"

There are also successful resistance struggles, like those of the EZLN: "There are the workers like those of Euskadi [rubber worker who defeated a plant closing effort and created a kind of worker cooperative] and Pascual [a worker-owned bottling plant], who have demonstrated that they can run the plants and make them produce for the workers, and we think the same thing." And he announced, "We are going to be in Mexico City on May 1st [International Labor Day] and our proposal is to make May Day a demonstration throughout the entire country. In every city where there are brother and sister workers they should come out and we should make a frightening show, because all this time we have been accumulating fright. Let's change things, so that those who will have to be afraid are those on top.

"Above all, it is a question reaching the Indian people, so that they understand that in the labor movement the people are not on the other side, but rather the labor movement is a brother, just as we signed the Sixth [Zapatista declaration] and said that we want another country and a new Constitution. And we are not just talking about the rights and culture of the Indians. We say that this new Constitution should have labor rights but now in a new Mexico without bosses and with out charros [bureaucratic union leaders]. The paradox is that the neocharrismo [new group of bureaucratic union leaders, presumably referring to Hernández Juárez and the UNT] is only 30 years old."

The other campaign, like the covered faces of the Zapatistas, has revealed that which nobody wanted to see, that "there are people that have absolutely nothing and that these people are our brothers and sisters. People like this are those that touch the heart and put before us the challenge that we have to do things for them and for ourselves. Another country, there is no other choice. That's why our proposal is to look down, to magnify the voices of each one, the struggle of each one, and together create a great uprising, a great upheaval."

To the working class that responded to the call of the Sixth declaration of the Lacondón Jungle, Marcos observed, "we think that it is not just that only we have this privilege of being students. The entire other campaign should learn just what the working class of Mexico is, not that of Roberto Vega Galina [head of the Social Security Workers Union] and Francisco Hernández Juárez [head of the Telephone Workers Union, both are leaders of the UNT], but of the other. And where better than in Puebla, beginning with a call to the workers of the other campaign so that the whole country can begin to work toward another May 1st, anti-capitalist and leftist."

This article was originally published by the sources above and is copyrighted by the sources above. We offer it here as an educational tool to increase understanding of global economics and social justice issues. We believe this is 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. AMERICAS.ORG is a nonprofit Web site with the goal of educating and informing.
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