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<h1><font size=4><b>Frustrated With Government Lies, Mexican Electricians
Declare Wildcat Actions</b></font></h1><font size=3>Posted by
<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/users/kristin-bricker">Kristin
Bricker</a> - January 14, 2010 at 12:53 am <br>
</font><font size=1>
<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2010/01/frustrated-government-lies-mexican-electricians-declare-wildcat-act" eudora="autourl">
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2010/01/frustrated-government-lies-mexican-electricians-declare-wildcat-act<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=3><b>Two Workers Detained and Later Released
Following Other Campaign Mobilizations<br><br>
<br>
</b>Following President Felipe Calderon’s executive order that shut down
state-owned Luz y Fuerza and put its 44,000 workers out of a job,
Mexico’s other state-owned electricity company, the Federal Electricity
Commission (CFE), began to remove equipment from Luz y Fuerza facilities.
When Calderon shut down Luz y Fuerza, he put its infrastructure and
territory under the CFE’s control. However, former Luz y Fuerza
workers, who consider their sudden firing to be illegal and immoral and
continue to fight for work, were outraged that the CFE was “plundering”
expensive equipment from their former workplace. Workers set up
protest barricades in front of their former workplaces in order to block
the CFE’s trucks from hauling out more equipment. Representatives
from the Mexican Electricians Union (SME) visited the barricades,
informed the workers that they were engaging in unsanctioned protest
activity, and requested that the workers remove them. Workers at many
barricades refused the union’s request, and the union refused to
recognize and support the
<a href="http://www.google.com.mx/search?hl=es&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=c9F&defl=en&q=define:wildcat+strike&ei=9YNOS_SICo2XtgfRv-nvDA&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title&ved=0CAoQkAE">
wildcat</a> barricades.<br><br>
One such barricade was the one located in Lechería. Former Luz y
Fuerza workers established that barricade on December 7 when a caravan of
CFE trucks tried to haul away a turbine from the power plant. The
barricade cut off access to the power plant to prevent CFE workers and
the contractors and police that accompanied them from removing more
equipment. Anywhere between five and twenty workers staffed the barricade
at any given time.<br><br>
The workers at the Lechería barricade report frequent harassment from
Federal Police. Heavily armed Federal Police first showed up at the
barricade on December 15, reportedly to “intimidate” the workers in the
barricades. On the night of January 7, approximately 30 Federal
Police reportedly arrived to forcibly disassemble the barricade.
The police removed materials that blocked the entrance and forced open
the plant doors. According to the workers, they carried out a
turbine, four jets, and a pick-up truck filled with tools and spare
parts. The Federal Police then entered the workers’ plantón
(protest encampment) located near the barricade and stole a laptop
computer that belonged to the workers. Raul Navarrete, a former Luz
y Fuerza worker who helped staff the barricade, told Narco News that the
computer contained videos, photos, and texts that documented the workers’
protest activities since they were first laid off. At the time of
publication, the police refuse to hand over the laptop.<br><br>
It is worth pointing out that the Federal Police receive training and
equipment from the United States through the Merida Initiative under the
auspices of combating drug trafficking.<br><br>
The situation at the Lechería barricade took a turn for the worse on
January 8. On that day, a man in a truck showed up at the plantón
and reportedly offered to help the workers re-install the barricade by
dumping gravel in front of the plant. Before the driver was able to
dump the gravel, Federal Police arrested him and workers Enrique Mejía
García and Sergio David Rodríguez Martínez. Both workers are
adherents to the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign and participated in the
protest encampment.<br><br>
The two workers were charged with attempted sabotage and attempted
“crimes against the nation’s consumption and wealth.” The men’s
lawyers argued that
<a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/01/10/index.php?section=politica&article=004n2pol">
the government had no basis for the charges</a> because the alleged crime
was never carried out. <br><br>
Crimes against the nation’s consumption and wealth is a serious crime and
made the men inelegible for bail.<br><br>
Because the two detainees are adherents to the Zapatista’s Other
Campaign, fellow adherents mobilized in Mexico City and joined former Luz
y Fuerza workers outside the jails where the two men were being
held. The round-the-clock protest encampments outside the jailsin
which around 50 people participated at any given timewere
effective. The government dropped the charges against the men and
released them on the night of January 13. <br><br>
The men were reportedly released without any sort of conditions or
negotiations. This is good news for their former co-workers, who
are already meeting to discuss how to continue their wildcat
actions.<br><br>
Narco News spoke with former Luz y Fuerza worker Raul Navarrete about his
experience in the wildcat barricade outside the Lechería power
plant.<br><br>
<b>Narco News:</b> What was your position in Luz y Fuerza?<br><br>
<b>Navarrete:</b> I was a Class A operator in a power plant in Iztapalapa
[in southern Mexico City].<br><br>
<b>Narco News:</b> How did the wildcat barricade come about?<br><br>
<b>Navarrete:</b> This barricade was organized by workers from
Lechería. They decided to come and camp out in protest on December
7. They made the decision when the CFE and the Federal Police began to
take valuable equipment from the jet repair workshop in the Lechería
power plant. [The former workers] came out despite the fact that
the SME offered absolutely no support. So the workers, who are SME
members, got together and set up the protest encampment. More
compañeros who also worked in that plant in Lechería started to come
out. And that’s how they started to organize themselves.<br><br>
Later, compañeros from the J. Luque [thermo-electric] plant set up an
encampment in front of that plant, and compañeros from the union’s school
also came out. In J. Luque there’s a warehouse that has cables and
transformers. They also got worried and set up a protest
encampment.<br><br>
There's also protest encampments in Tacuba, Necaxa, Pachuca, Toluca, and
Cuernavaca. Compañeros from our encampment visited the others to
see how they were doing and share experiences.<br><br>
<b>Narco News:</b> Why were the CFE and the Federal Police taking away
the equipment?<br><br>
<b>Navarrete:</b> We don’t know. More than anything else they were
taking out the turbines, which are used to generate electricity.
This worried us because if we went back to work, we wouldn’t have any
equipment to work with. The workshop is for repairing jet turbines
that are worth millions of dollars. If they take them away, we
won’t have anything to work with.<br><br>
<b>Narco News:</b> And the protest encampment didn’t receive support from
the SME?<br><br>
<b>Navarrete:</b> No. When they set up the encampment,
[representatives] from the [SME] Local in Lechería came out and told them
to go away. They told them they couldn’t be there. The workers
didn’t pay any attention to them and they stayed so that they wouldn’t
keep taking out equipment.<br><br>
<b>Narco News:</b> What are the encampment’s demands?<br><br>
<b>Navarrete:</b> An end to the plundering of the [Luz y Fuerza]
buildings.<br><br>
<b>Narco News:</b> How many workers in the Lechería protest encampment
are adherents to the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign?<br><br>
<b>Navarrete:</b> TwoSergio and Enrique. They’re both in
jail.<br><br>
<b>Narco News:</b> It’s said that those in the protest encampments
disagree with the SME.<br><br>
<b>Navarrete:</b> Exactly. They’ve differentiated themselves from the
SME. Of course, they also respect the SME’s ideas and politics, but
their vision was to come and form a protest encampment. And not
just be there, but inform people, hold political and cultural events so
that the residents were informed about what’s been going on. And a
lot of people were coming out. The workers in the encampment gave
them information about the situation. <br><br>
We didn’t agree with the SMEor rather, the SME leadership. They
didn’t let us camp out in protestit wasn’t permitted. They won’t support
us, so we started looking for our own resources, and for support from the
people. <br><br>
<b>Narco News:</b> What do you think of the latest SME proposal that the
18,000 Luz y Fuerza workers who haven’t accepted their severance packages
be rehired by the CFE and represented by the SME, presumably with a
contract that starts at zero? Their original demand was a reversal
of Calderon’s executive order and the re-opening of Luz y
Fuerza.<br><br>
<b>Navarrete:</b> We clearly understand that they won’t give back Luz y
Fuerza. Maybe they’ll give us a source of work. Some source
of income. But this is secondary. More than anything else,
we’re against how all this was carried outthe real reasons for why Luz y
Fuerza was shut down [Narco News note: There is evidence that
<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/10/privatization-behind-calderons-attack-electricians-union">
the shutdown of Luz y Fuerza has facilitated the privatization of its
fiber optic network</a>, and SME members are acutely aware of this
fact.] And above all, this blow to Luz y Fuerza workers was a blow
to the working class, to unions. An injustice was committed against
the 44,000 Luz y Fuerza workersand not just them. Many more people
have been affected. [Most Luz y Fuerza workers were breadwinners.]
<br><br>
In my point of view, from the beginning the process hasn’t been
clear. The government says it’ll give us work, but that’s not going
to happen. So above all, we’re doing this to defend our
rights. Now it’s not so much about giving us back Luz y Fuerza
. It’s about defending our rights as workers and as human
beings. <br><br>
We want the government to tell the truth. They’ve been demonizing
us from the beginningsaying we’re drunks, drug addicts, crazies, thiefs,
that we don’t work. Then they say that they’re going to hire us
back [with the CFE]. Well, if we’re bad people and drunks and lazy bums,
why would they rehire us? <br><br>
<b>Narco News:</b> Do you think they will rehire you?<br><br>
<b>Navarrete:</b> Look, I’ve got some friends who accepted their
severance packages. Three months have passed, and the government hasn’t
rehired them. [The government promised to do its best to rehire the
workers who promptly accepted their severance packages.] A lot of
people who accepted their severance packages did so for precisely that
reasonso they’d be rehired. They were desperate. And now
they realize that the government was manipulating them, that it wasn’t
telling the truth. <br><br>
I haven’t accepted my severance package because I don’t agree with how
this went down. Moreover, my severance package doesn’t cover all
that I’m entitled to. [This criticism is common amongst former Luz y
Fuerza workers, that their severance packages were poorly calculated and
are less than the amount to which they are legally entitled.] The
government said it was going to give us two-and-a-half years of our
salary. It sounded like a ton of money, but it’s not true.
<br><br>
I have a cousin that worked at Luz y Fuerza for thirteen years.
They calculated his severance package using a much lower salary than what
he was actually getting paid. He accepted his severance package out
of necessity. He has a family; he has children.<br><br>
The government told so many lies, and people believed them. People
think the government is giving us a very good severance package, and that
we’re just fighting for the sake of fighting because we can’t get a job
like everyone else. In my case, I’m a computer engineer. I’m
still young and I can look for another job. But there’s people who
have spent there whole lives in Luz y Fuerzathey were educated there, as
people and as workers. They’re 45, 50 years old. Where are
they going to find work?<br><br>
<br><br>
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