Over the past six years, we have been the grateful recipients of the encouragement and friendship of colleagues throughout the world—particularly of Leo Gerard and the USW, with whom we continue to explore a formal unification in defense of workers’ rights in Mexico, Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean. The USW, along with the IMF, ICEM, and countless other organizations throughout the world, has flooded the Mexican government with letters on our behalf. More recently, in June 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark, I was unanimously elected by 1,400 delegates to be the first and only Mexican to be on the executive committee of the world’s most powerful labor organization, IndustriALL Global Union, which represents more than 50 million workers from 140 countries. Our global colleagues have stood with us in solidarity. Their support encourages us even more in our efforts to defend the dignity of workers throughout the world.
Despite the hospitality and justice I have received in Canada and the kindness of colleagues in many other countries, I still hope to one day soon return to Mexico, my home. I still keep the baseball I picked up in the union’s ballpark in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, the week after Pasta de Conchos, days before I would leave for Texas. I still remember the promise I made, to return to that park one day. I’d hoped that time would come sooner than it has, but I fully intend to keep that promise.
Los Mineros has grown and progressed tremendously during the fight we’ve been engaged in for the past six years, and adversity has driven us to be stronger than ever before. We strive to be open to change and new ideas. And given the geographically dispersed nature of our organization, we have adopted the use of technology and effective internal communication in a way that many of our peers have not. Aided by the Internet, videoconference tools, cellular phones, and advanced methods of dispensing newsletters, magazines, flyers, banners, press releases, and details on upcoming meetings, marches, and protests, we are proud to be at the vanguard of Mexican unionism.
Abroad, we have built alliances never before seen in Mexico. These relationships form a suit of armor that is almost impenetrable against the aggressions of the Mexican government and the irresponsible companies. Without this umbrella, we likely would have been destroyed. But just as important, these partner organizations give us hope that we are moving toward a truly international workers’ movement and solidarity on a scale we couldn’t achieve on our own. The governments of every country that supports repression of its workers must learn from this conflict.
In the face of the political persecution of the Miners’ Union, we have made it a priority to maintain constructive relationships with the more than seventy companies with whom we have signed agreements. It is our mission that labor unions no longer be seen by Mexican society as corrupt and hostile organizations. In the five years since the conflict began, we have renewed our collective bargaining agreements yearly with overall increases of 14 percent in wages and benefits—four or five times the inflation rate and the wage levels of other unions in Mexico. These increases are much higher proportionately than the 3.5 percent national average increases that the government authorizes companies to pay, ostensibly to counter inflation. In many cases we have doubled the wages in a matter of five years. These successes indicate that the vast majority of businesses recognize our union, and see that its leadership is serious about defending the interests of workers.
The Miners’ Union’s recent negotiations with ArcelorMittal—the world’s largest private producer of steel—are a good example of the progress we have made. ArcelorMittal is the owner of the steel mill complex in Lázaro Cárdenas, and it had inherited a catastrophically complex management system from the previous owner, Grupo Villacero. In two negotiations, first in March 2010, we developed a “rationality and efficiency” agreement, which stated that one company would absorb the four companies that were previously operating in Lázaro Cárdenas. The new arrangement brought the workers together and vastly improved productivity, and a second negotiation in August 2010 yielded an overall increase of 14 percent in the wages and benefits paid to the union members by ArcelorMittal. These negotiations took place in Canada, led by me, my fellow leaders of the union, and ArcelorMittal Mexico’s CEO, William Chisholm, with no involvement on the part of Mexico’s labor department.
In February 2011, we also negotiated the termination of an eight-month-long strike at the El Cubo mine in Guanajuato, where the workers of Union Section 142 were demanding that Gammon Gold, the Canadian company that owns the mine, respect their collective bargaining agreement and pay the share of its profits legally due to the miners. We reached a settlement that strengthened the collective bargaining agreement in its entirety, including increasing the share of profits due to the miners, and the company agreed to pay 100 percent of lost wages during the 255-day strike—something most companies would never agree to in Mexico. We also negotiated for three jailed local union leaders to be released; they had been detained under pressure from the company and the authorities, based on false accusations.
The cooperation between the union and companies like ArcelorMittal and Gammon Gold stands as an example of how a group of workers and a company can come to positive, productive agreements that focus both on productivity and the rights of workers, even in the face of stubborn persecution from Mexico’s repressive, antiunion government and a small group of despotic businessmen. In these negotiations, my colleagues—both in the executive committee and in the bargaining committees of each of the union’s local branches—and I have been the ones who have led discussions with the companies. We have made all this progress without the involvement of the labor department or Javier Lozano, whose dearest but frustrated wish was that the Miners’ Union disappear from the labor map of Mexico. The vast majority of collective bargaining agreement renewals were negotiated in Canada with the companies directly, with no invitation sent to Lozano. That hasn’t stopped him from trying to prevent settlement being reached, though, as was the case in the El Cubo negotiations. Lozano tried unsuccessfully to take the collective bargaining agreements from members of the Miners’ Union—the legitimate owners—and give them to proven traitors like Elías Morales and Carlos Pavón. His efforts failed.
In 2010, Fernando Gómez Mont was forced to leave Calderón’s cabinet due to incompetence, like many before him. He sought refuge once again in his law firm, where he continues as a member of the criminal defense team of Germán Feliciano Larrea. His shame will be mirrored by the shame of the others like him in coming years, as the Mexican public comes to understand the deceit and treachery of Presidents Fox and Calderón—presidents who have consistently acted against the interests of the people, always using the justifications that they are advancing freedom and democracy. Having launched their campaign of political persecution against the miners of Mexico, the government officials complicit with Grupo México cannot find a way to end the conflict without revealing their own misdeeds.
Although the PAN routinely accused PRI administrations of cronyism because of a 71-year-long winning streak at the polls, the PAN has proven itself to be even worse: at least the PRI managed to sustain the political and economic stability of Mexico’s image abroad, something the PAN has utterly destroyed. Polls reveal that few believe these right-wing lies any longer, as the PAN’s reputation with Mexican citizens has declined steadily in recent years, reaching 20 percent nationwide.
We repeatedly called for Felipe Calderón to resolve the problems underlying the three ongoing mining strikes and the overarching conflict between our union and the coalition of mining companies and labor department officials, but the president was stubbornly silent. In 2007, the first year of Calderón’s administration, we called at least four meetings to resolve the conflict, lawfully and with respect for the rights of the union’s workers and their families. In 2008, we called Calderón three more times, and three more times in 2009. We called twice more in 2010, and have continued to call on him until the present day. We want no part of the compromises Larrea and his “cat” Javier Lozano propose. Were we to
accept anything less than a full recognition of the negligence of the labor department and Grupo México, we would tacitly approve of the unlawful actions of the Fox and Calderón administrations. As we have always been, we are willing to resolve the conflict within the law. But we refuse to give them a free pass.
In February 2011, I sent President Calderón a letter and included a copy of a document I drafted over several months with the help of my colleagues. Called “A National Plan for Productivity, Job Generation and Responsible Co-management of the New Mexican Unionism,” the 120-page document presents a vision for twenty-first-century Mexican unionism, and it emphasizes two fundamental and linked concepts: increased productivity and the creation of jobs, and the role a new free and independent trade unionism plays in supporting them. This plan was hand-delivered to Calderón, so I’m absolutely sure he received it. As we’ve come to expect, Calderón never acknowledged the document, much less responded in a meaningful way.
When on February 19, 2011, a group of journalists questioned Javier Lozano on the statements of the respected Bishop Raúl Vera Lopez of Saltillo, who, like the union, bravely and commendably called for the rescue of the sixty-three bodies at Pasta de Conchos, Lozano adamantly refused, saying: “We will not risk more lives only to rescue bodies.” I responded publicly to Lozano that his statement was offensive and unworthy of someone holding his office. I questioned whether, if it were his father, son, or brother who were left in the bottom of the mine, would he speak in such a derogatory and insolent manner. He did not answer my question.
A few months before, on October 14, 2010, Raúl Plascencia Villanueva, president of the National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH), publicly responded to a question from the press regarding Grupo México’s responsibility for the Pasta de Conchos tragedy. He declared that they are in fact responsible and explained that in his expert opinion the owners of the mine and the public officials belonging to the different departments involved in the supervision of the Pasta de Conchos mine are all to be accountable criminally.
Precisely one day after the interview was published in El Universal, Marco del Toro presented a complaint before the CNDH arguing that the PGR had stalled the preliminary investigation into those responsible for the mine disaster, and that their actions constituted a violation of human rights. Although our complaint was consistent with the opinion Plascencia has expressed not twenty-four hours before, the CNDH did nothing to pursue the complaint or compel the PGR to continue the investigation it had abruptly halted in 2007.
A return to the starting point of this aggression and a rescue of the bodies of the sixty-three miners abandoned in the bottom of the Pasta de Conchos mine are the key to resolving the entire conflict. Before 2006, we must look back over a century, to 1889, to find an instance of workers’ bodies left in a mine in Mexico—every other time since, the bodies have been recovered. But also, as we have repeated all these years, there must be fair, just, and adequate payment for each of the sixty-five families that lost one of their loved ones in the industrial homicide perpetrated by Grupo México and Vicente Fox’s labor department. That includes, as we have explained in various statements and press releases, that minor children have an education up through college that is fully funded by the company; that each family have a dignified and decent household; and that the children and families are guaranteed the right to free health care until the children are adults. And of course we continue our constant refrain: An investigation must be opened to assign responsibility for the deaths and punish those responsible. The impunity cannot continue. No one should be untouchable in Mexico.
For many years the Miners’ Union has demanded that Mexico enact a law that penalizes the irresponsibility and criminal negligence of companies. We have talked with various groups of deputies, senators and members of different political parties, without any modification of the law protecting the lives and health of the workers.
For more than seven years, we have sought an end to the mining conflict. How can we resolve an unprecedented siege against a union and its leadership? How can we best end the series of grave offenses committed against the mineworkers, their families, and the entire population of Mexico? There is only one way this conflict can be resolved:
•The companies must ensure respect for the safety, freedom, and integrity of all the union’s members and their families, and of the union’s leaders. They must see us as active collaborators and treat us with respect and dignity. They must acknowledge the value of work and see that it is what builds their own wealth.
•The companies must recognize the freely and democratically elected leaders of the union, acknowledging that the workers are the only ones who can decide who will be their leader.
•The companies must arrange for a legal negotiation of an end to the strikes currently in progress. They must fully review the proposals and demands of the workers and abide by the commitments they made in the collective bargaining agreements.
•There must be restitution for the moral and material damages caused to the workers, their families, and the executive committee of the union through the tragedy at Pasta de Conchos and the other assaults on our members. The companies must withdraw their false accusations that have served as a pretext for persecuting us and do their best to repair the reputations of all they have slandered, including me.
•The companies and the government must build a relationship of respect with the union, incorporating a “hands off” policy regarding the organization’s internal affairs. The union has never tried to insert its members into companies, nor has it ever attempted to impose itself in decisions about a company’s plans for growth or investment. We have always been respectful of the autonomy of the companies who employ our members, and it’s that same respect that we demand in return. We do not interfere with them and will not allow them to interfere with us.
Despite the brutal war we have been engaged in, I believe that we can build solutions and come to agreements that will benefit all involved. Only after these conditions are met will we be able to build a solution that complies with the law and with the principles of justice. It is a question of political will, of shedding prejudices, and of their ability to view the worker as a vital part of the production process.
This book is my account of our struggle for justice, for respect, and for dignity. It recounts events that should never have happened and must never happen again, neither in Mexico nor in any other part of the world. These events tested the courage and endurance of an important labor union and its leadership. We have faced a backward business sector and a group of self-serving politicians. Absolute power—and its abuse—have corrupted and destroyed the souls of our opponents. In the first twelve years of the twenty-first century, Mexico has lived with the reality of obsolete and pernicious political practices. There have also been viciously demagogic and clumsy deceits that have distorted the reality, not just of the country, but also of the governing politicians themselves and many other persons. These are disagreeable experiences that certainly to a greater or lesser degree are repeated in other nations, since no one in the world is exempt from facing these challenges in life. The important thing is to be prepared and decisive in answering, repelling, and triumphing in each action and decision that we take for our own good and that of our families, but also our dignity and desire to overcome and the ongoing realization that we would all have.
I hope that this book leads its readers to the inescapable and absolutely vital conclusion the we must all struggle constantly for a better world, to rescue what is most valuable about humanity—its principles and fundamental values. I hope that the courageous and steadfast miners of our union become an inspiration to workers around the world. I know they have been to me. When I was first elected, my father was the example of a hero I strove for; now, my example and inspiration is the workers themselves (though I still think of my father often, and know that wherever he is, he looks upon our fight with a smile of satisfaction).
Ours has been a
true and extreme test of life, of survival and moral triumph, which will inevitably become a victory in fact, over the moral poverty of those who have opposed the changes in history and who have cared only about their own personal interests, which are those of an infamous minority.
I very much hope that this book becomes an important testimony in the history of the worker movement and the social struggle in Mexico, in this stage of neoliberalism that has been imposed on us against our will. Many arrogant public figures have not had the ability to see this case as a reflection of the failure occurring in many other countries, which today is in full decadent flower in the world. In Mexico, unfortunately a few backward and self-centered minorities persist in maintaining this situation against the will of the enormous majority of the population.
Mexico can—and must—change. Mexicans deserve better than this. We must learn that we all have the capacity and real power to transform organizations, unions, governments, corporations, and companies, to change the mentality of individuals. Above all, we must humanize—to make humane—the politicians and businessmen who flaunt their exploitation of the workers of our country. Our country needs to learn from and follow the model of developed nations, not just on labor issues but also on issues of education, social programs, and economic growth. We cannot, of course, imitate them directly, but we can learn what they have done to make their development possible.
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