Dissident Mexico Teachers Go on Strike for 100% Raise and ‘Union Democracy’

MEXICO CITY —  Tens of thousands of dissident teachers walked out of public schools in a wildcat strike Monday to press their demands for a 100% pay raise and for “union democracy,” including the ouster of their pro-government leaders.

Thousands of primary and secondary schools in the capital and throughout the country were closed or only partially operating. The states most affected were Mexico, Oaxaca and Chiapas.

The dissident teachers, a faction of the National Union of Education Workers, rejected a 10% pay increase offered by the government last week and said they will remain on strike indefinitely. Teachers earn an average of about $150 per month.

The focus of the teachers’ anger is the boss and so-called “moral guide” of the union for more than 15 years, Carlos Jonguitud Barrios. The strikers said, however, that they want free elections for an entire new leadership, in addition to Jonguitud’s removal.

“The two issues, salary and democracy, go together,” said Jose Manuel Herrera, who is striking for the first time after 26 years of teaching. “If we had leaders who represented us, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

The strike is the greatest demonstration yet of a growing movement to reform official unions that belong to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, called PRI.

For the last six weeks, mariachi, jazz and salsa musicians have turned one of Mexico City’s most important intersections into a bandstand of protest against their government-imposed bosses in the Musicians Union.

Dissidents a Minority

Dissidents in the National Transportation Workers Union have publicly accused their secretary general, Silvestre Gonzalez Portillo, of corruption. Fidel Velazquez, chief of the PRI’s Mexican Workers Confederation, has been forced to call a special assembly to vote on whether the secretary general should remain in office.

The dissidents appear to be a minority among the millions of workers organized in PRI unions, but they have gained momentum recently, in part because of the official leaders’ acquiescence to more than six years of economic austerity and a 50% drop in real wages.

The dissidents also received an unintentional boost from the government itself.

In one of its first important acts, the government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari on Jan. 10 arrested Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, the powerful and allegedly corrupt leader of the Oil Workers’ Union for 25 years, along with dozens of his associates. They remain in jail on charges of gun smuggling, tax evasion and murder.

Hernandez’s arrest was a political windfall for Salinas, whose legitimacy has been questioned by opposition leaders charging that the PRI stole the presidential election last July. But in bringing Hernandez down, Salinas also showed dissident union groups the vulnerability of their bosses.

Salinas has vowed to fight corruption and modernize his party, its unions and the nation’s economy. In doing so, he would like to get rid of many of the union leaders the dissidents abhor.

But those union leaders have provided the government with decades of labor stability, winning wage increases and benefits for their workers and political power for themselves. In exchange, they staved off strikes and turned out voters for the PRI at election time.

When the PRI lost nearly half of the seats in Congress last year, including many for labor candidates, it became clear the old system no longer worked. Now, Salinas’ challenge is to topple the discredited labor leaders without losing control over unions.

That task is complicated by Salinas’ economic program, which calls for a reduction of state workers, the continued sale of state companies and continued austerity.

So far, Salinas has prevailed. At the state-run Altos Hornos de Mexico, a steel foundry in Coahuila state, a plan to modernize outdated equipment and increase production forced the union recently to agree to 4,450 layoffs over the next year.

The government quashed an attempt by the jailed Hernandez to chose his own successor in the Oil Workers Union and instead picked Sebastian Guzman Cabrera to run a more docile union.

Labor godfather Velazquez, meanwhile, refused to recognize an election in the Musicians’ Union that apparently overthrew his longtime friend, Venustiano Reyes, secretary general of the union for nearly 30 years. Velazquez replaced his crony, but with a close friend of Reyes, Federico del Real.

In both unions, the new leaders were put into place through tightly controlled elections that excluded dissident groups.

The government’s greatest challenge for control, however, will be over the teachers’ union, where dissidents have been organizing for a decade and already head several locals across the country.

Jonguitud has defended himself publicly and has said the government cannot afford the 100% raise dissident teachers are demanding.

The strike is problematic for the government, which must renegotiate a national wage-and-price control package with business and labor in July. The agreement had kept wage boosts to 10% for the first six months of the year.

Dissident leader Teodoro Palomino claimed that 500,000 teachers and administrators were on strike Monday, with 20,000 of the nation’s 150,000 schools closed.

Victor Manuel Garcia, a spokesman for the secretary of public education, said that at least 200,000 teachers were on strike. He had no estimate for schools closed, but he said 60% of the teachers were out in Chiapas, 40% to 60% in Mexico City and almost all in Oaxaca.

The Education Ministry and union officials say there are 1.1 million teachers, but the dissidents claim that represents the number of jobs. There are many fewer teachers, they say, because so many hold two jobs.

Among them, is Jose Manuel Herrera, an administrator of San Juan Aragon Primary School 21 in the mornings and a secondary schoolteacher in the afternoons. When he leaves work in the evenings, Herrera said, he helps his wife sell candy to support their five children.

“Seven or eight years ago, we could even take an occasional trip on my salary. Now, I am totally strapped,” he said. “I used to wear a suit and tie to work. Now, I only have three pairs of pants to my name.”