The Battle for Control of Mexico’s Unions : At Odds Are the Traditionalists and the Progressives
MEXICO CITY — Francisco Hernandez Juarez turned telephone company workers into telephone company shareholders. He turned an eclectic group of small unions into a strong voice for skilled workers demanding reform in organized labor.
Along the way, the bearded, bespectacled 43-year-old secretary general of the 50,000-member telephone workers union has become the personification of a new labor movement in Mexico. He is a labor leader who proposes change instead of opposes it, who bluntly tells his members that their jobs may depend on their efforts to improve the nation’s inadequate telephone system, and who is willing to stake pay raises on higher productivity.
That makes him essential to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s government, which is determined to move Mexico forward from developing-nation status to compete successfully among the world’s industrialized economies. Thus, Hernandez Juarez, who represents workers at Telefonos de Mexico--a company with a high profile on foreign stock markets--is Exhibit A for a government trying to sell Mexico to international investors.
But Hernandez Juarez’s message--that the restructured economy requires fundamental changes in organized labor--also makes him a threat to Mexico’s traditional labor movement, which is doing all it can to undercut his influence.
Fidel Velazquez, the venerable, 93-year-old leader of Mexico’s largest labor federation, has personally attacked Hernandez Juarez and publicly given his support to a dissident movement within the telephone union.
“Don Fidel, who was practically my godfather, has declared war on me,†Hernandez Juarez acknowledges, still using the title of respect commonly applied to the aging leader.
The war is for control of Mexican labor, once a well-oiled, vote-gathering machine that has grown creaky in the last decade. Velazquez’s Federation of Mexican Workers, known as the CTM, represents a system of old-style labor bosses who derive their clout from control of large numbers of rank-and-file workers. Hernandez Juarez’s influence comes from a relatively small number of strategically placed skilled workers.
Which force ultimately prevails is of keen interest to U.S. firms looking for opportunities south of the border under the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement. Hernandez Juarez’s movement offers the promise of a labor leadership that understands international competition and is willing to cooperate in meeting quality and productivity goals.
Ten years ago, the CTM had real economic and political power. Labor leaders headed congressional committees and governed states. The federation could demand and get contracts that kept members’ wages and benefits ahead of inflation. In return, union rank and file loyally turned out at political rallies and voted for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI.
But as wages eroded, so did party loyalty. In the highly disputed 1988 presidential election, it became painfully obvious that the CTM could no longer get out the vote.
The federation has been just as incapable of responding to an economic policy that has relied heavily on wage controls to lower inflation. It has also failed to stem massive layoffs from the government’s selloff of state-controlled industries.
“The traditional labor movement is finished,†said labor consultant Agustin Arrangoiz. “The modern world economy will not let unions stay the same.†Hernandez Juarez, he adds, “has turned himself into the grand alternative.â€
Hernandez Juarez’s office, on the second floor of a modest building only a couple of blocks from bustling Paseo de la Reforma, is filled with paintings and statues of Don Quixote, in papier-mache, wood, onyx and just about any other material imaginable.
Most are gifts from admirers, he says, and most came with notes alluding to Hernandez Juarez’s quixotic quest to reform the Mexican labor movement. But those who have watched the labor leader over the years say the comparison is not quite accurate. He took over the telephone union at age 26, and is not a man given to tilting at windmills.
“He does not like for people to say this, but he is a very pragmatic guy,†said Raul Trejo Delarbre, an investigator who has studied the labor movement.
Unlike traditional unions, which have continued--unsuccessfully--to demand wage hikes in the face of clear evidence that companies buffeted by international competition could not afford them, Hernandez Juarez has considered management problems in his negotiations.
“He realizes that if there is no company, there is no union,†said Pilar Vazquez, a researcher who has studied the telephone workers union. At a recent two-hour meeting with telephone operators, Hernandez Juarez warned them that their company will ultimately face competition.
“Petroleos Mexicanos already has its own telephone network; so does Banamex,†he said, referring to the state oil monopoly and the country’s largest bank. “Ninety percent of the problem is management, but we have to take care of the other 10%. Put a smile in your voice when you answer a call.â€
The government’s anti-inflation program will limit raises to 9.9%, Hernandez Juarez says, adding that he is trying to get workers more money through performance-based productivity bonuses.
That attitude does not always make him popular.
“Being a good union steward used to mean getting people reinstated when they showed up for work drunk or didn’t come in on Monday because of a hangover,†said an operator who asked not to be identified. “Now the union won’t defend people like that.â€
But while Hernandez Juarez has changed some aspects of organized labor here, two things have hardly changed at all, critics say. His movement, like traditional unions, is dependent on personal loyalty and government favors.
One day each week, telephone workers fill their union hall, lining up to see Paco, as they fondly call Hernandez Juarez. It is a tradition that dates from the days of the haciendas , when the patron set aside a day to hear requests and complaints from anyone who came to see him.
They ask for loans, recommend relatives for jobs or, lately, question him about their stock. But mostly, they just want a few minutes with their leader.
“The figure of Francisco cannot be substituted,†said Trejo Delarbre. “When there is a problem, he has to go fix it personally.â€
Such adoration has made Hernandez Juarez increasingly less tolerant of dissent, say some telephone workers, who requested anonymity. Some dissident workers have pulled their stock out of the union trust, accusing him of mismanagement.
Still, his critics acknowledge, he is the kind of leader most union members want. Voting for union officials is clean, they said, and Hernandez Juarez is consistently reelected in secret balloting.
As he has strengthened his control over the union, he has also formed closer ties to the government.
Although he led strikes against the government when Telmex was state-owned, critics inside and outside the union say Hernandez Juarez has become too close to Salinas.
“Like anyone else, Hernandez Juarez enjoys getting phone calls from the president,†said Trejo Delarbre. “But there is a price.â€
“The closer he gets to the government, the less room he has to maneuver,†said Carolina Velazquez, an operator-turned-journalist who is no relation to the labor leader.
Don Fidel even accuses him of being unconditionally pro-government.
Hernandez Juarez replies that he has remained more independent than other labor leaders. While Velazquez has served three terms in the Senate, Hernandez Juarez has refused to accept a PRI nomination for public office.
“We would like two seats in Congress, but we want them filled by rank-and-file workers, not members of the national committee,†he said. “We do not want members of the national committee distracted. Besides, the interests of the union and those of the party are not always the same.â€
Hernandez Juarez is the perfect combination of worker and technocrat for a Salinas-era labor leader. His labor pedigree is impeccable. The eldest of nine children, he has worked since he was 12 selling newspapers, shining shoes and fixing cars. When he was 16, his father was fired from his job at the Reynolds Aluminum plant and blacklisted for union activities.
To help the family, a cousin who worked at Telmex recommended Hernandez Juarez for an engineering job in the central office.
He studied mechanical and electrical engineering at the National Polytechnical Institute and started his family--which now includes four children--during those early years at the company. His union activities were confined to organizing cultural events, from film festivals to lectures.
“During that time, I was in contact with very progressive people, which had an extremely important effect on my concept of the world and the labor movement,†Hernandez Juarez said. “Meanwhile, at the university, I had the opportunity to get some grounding in political science.â€
His peers in the PRI say privately that his intellectual base makes dealing with Hernandez Juarez much easier than dealing with the elderly CTM leaders, most of whom have grade school educations.
His style is markedly different from that of Velazquez.
While the latter’s trademarks are carefully tailored suits and thick cigars, Hernandez Juarez wears leather jackets and open-necked shirts. When Velazquez is scheduled to make a public appearance, workers are primed and cheering before he arrives at the podium.
Hernandez Juarez slips into union gatherings shaking hands. He picks up a microphone with a long cord and moves around the room in a manner reminiscent of Bill Clinton during the presidential campaign town meetings.
After the formal meeting ends, he chats with workers about personal and work-related problems as they hand him notes, reminders of their complaints.
“He’s quite a flirt,†noted researcher Vazquez. Most of the telephone operators, a bastion of Hernandez Juarez support within the union, love it. They line up to dance with him at the annual Christmas dinner and clamor to have their picture taken with him.
However, Hernandez Juarez has given the women in his union far more than a wink and a smile. When he took over the union’s leadership, Telmex switchboards were a virtual sweatshop.
Operators had to punch the time clock with their headsets in place, ready to work. They were limited to a five-minute break every four hours and had to ask a supervisor’s permission to take it. The company controlled shifts and often assigned them more on the basis of favoritism than seniority.
Hernandez Juarez supported the operators’ drive to change that authoritarian system through a prolonged strike in 1982.
More recently, when Telmex decided to replace World War II-era switchboards with state-of-the-art computerized workstations, Hernandez Juarez insisted on equipment designed to minimize computer-stress injuries. He also negotiated a commitment from the company to retrain the 5,300 operators--nearly half of the total--who will be displaced once the computerized system is in place.
Hernandez Juarez is legendary for insisting on retaining jobs in negotiating with companies. When the government sold Telmex to private investors in 1990, he won a commitment that no jobs would be cut and that workers would get a 3.3% stake in the company.
Up to that point, Hernandez Juarez was in good standing with Velazquez. He was even president of the Labor Congress in 1987, a post never filled without Velazquez’s blessing.
But Hernandez Juarez formed his own labor federation, the Goods and Services Companies Unions Federation--the FSEBS--grouping airline pilots, film technicians and other skilled workers. Next he began providing consulting services for other unions, attracting allies for his federation and bolstering his reputation.
Employees of the country’s second-largest bank asked for his help in evaluating the productivity plan proposed by the new owners of the recently privatized Bancomer. He is advising trolley drivers on the city government’s new transportation plan.
Then he received government recognition--a Labor Ministry registration--for FSEBS and began talking about reforming the Labor Congress, which is dominated by Velazquez’s CTM.
That was too much for Velazquez, who denounced Hernandez Juarez as a traitor.
Hernandez Juarez responded by forming an alliance with the CTM’s old rival, a federation of mainly service workers, known by the Spanish acronym CROC. The alliance could quell criticisms that Hernandez Juarez is creating a middle-class labor movement, too small to have political clout.
The danger for Hernandez Juarez is that he may have too many balls in the air.
He insists that he has time for all his activities--including devoting Saturday afternoon and Sunday to his family--but admits to concerns about the strong opposition from traditional unions.
“They think that what we are suffering is simply a passing problem that will disappear in the next administration and everything will be the way it was,†he said. “We can overcome this attitude, but it will not be easy.â€
Other observers are less optimistic.
“The great void in our economic reform has been the unions,†said Trejo Delarbre. “The modernization of Mexico requires dozens of Hernandez Juarezes, not just one.â€
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