LABOR: Perspectives
The government repression of the electrical workers' strike in July 1976 fit with cold logic into the overall panorama of economic and political crisis in Mexico. In only ten years,...
...The new President, Jose Lopez Portillo, initiated his regime in December 1976 with the announcement of the IMF loan...
...With 12,000 armed police, the government moved against the striking leftist union, arresting nearly a thousand people and ransacking the University...
...are to be cut back in favor of increased subsidies to the private sector...
...The pro- capitalist labor bosses are radicalizing the labor movement in both countries and pushing us toward a common alliance...
...Sept./Oct...
...The AFL-CIO leadership has fostered racist divisions among workers in the United States with statements like the following from one of the AFL-CIO's directors, Andrew Biemiller: As we have pointed out time after time, illegal immigrants have for years been taking jobs from American citizens and legal immigrants in increasing numbers, often work for substandard wages and accept substandard working and living conditions, are easy targets for blackmail and intimidation by unscrupulous employers, and are all too frequently a drain on the welfare resources of the communities where they live...
...the potential core of opposition had to be silenced...
...Carter's immigration policy is designed to assure that workers north and south of the border remain unorganized, vulnerable, divided, and most importantly controlled...
...2) employment in the public sector cannot be allowed to increase by more than two percent in 1977, severely undercutting the government's ability to curb unemployment...
...Wage increases on the other hand were held at 23 percent and then only for unionized workers, less than 25 percent of the work force...
...Meanwhile, Lopez Portillo has offered political reforms, in the form of promised legal registration of several left parties, in the hopes of undercutting the unpopularity of the core of his new policies: an all-out assault on the trade unions...
...6. For more on STUN AM strike, see Dateline article in NACLA's Latin America & Empire Report, JulyAugust 1977...
...2 These factors, as we have seen, sparked Peasants, farm workers and squatter communities have stood behind the electrical workers movement...
...Thus the governmentbacked take-over of Mexico's leading liberal daily, Excelsior, an increasingly vocal opponent of the government's changing policies...
...1977 41 chauvinist scapegoating which portrays the Mexican immigrant worker as the cause of unemployment and low wages in the United States...
...3 Echeverria resisted such unpopular moves for a time, for fear of splitting the thinly worn fabric of social control which tenuously held the country together...
...1977 3940 NACLA Report the most militant wave of labor insurgency to rock Mexico since the 1930's...
...In only ten years, the country's foreign debt had grown tenfold to a staggering $28 billion...
...IMF-IMPOSED AUSTERITY Shortly after the devaluation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced a $1.2 billion emergency loan to Mexico, accompanied by numerous restrictions on government economic policy, including the following: (1) government spending must be reduced and restricted to investments in "productive" enterprises - i.e., social spending on housing, education, welfare, etc...
...The IMF, as well as the Carter and Lopez Portillo administrations, are well aware that the austerity program they have jointly imposed on the Mexican working people will not be easily implemented...
...We North Americans can respond to the current attacks on Mexican working people by opposing the IMF austerity program and Carter's immigration policy, and by supporting the organizing efforts of all workers on both sides of the border...
...He also signed an agreement with Mexico's major industrialists to hold down wages in exchange for their "cooperation" in his price controls program...
...As unemployment and political repression in Mexico increase, millions of Mexican workers will continue to move north across the border in search of jobs...
...Finally, in August and September, the peso devaluation was announced: a 100 percent plunge in value vis-a-vis the dollar...
...Thus Carter's recently announced policy on immigrant workers (see Update) is the "domestic" half of international capital's program to "rehabilitate" the Mexican economy...
...7 If the trade unions in this country are ever going to protect workers from "substandard wages and working conditions" and "intimidation by unscrupulous employers," racism and national chauvinism must be combatted, and replaced by a clear understanding of the objective forces which demand international solidarity among working people...
...and (3) wage increases must be kept to a minimum while prices are free to rise...
...PERSPECTIVES 1. Punto Critico 1/31/77...
...Mexico's trade deficit was $4.5 billion in 1975, and in that same year the rate of economic growth dipped below four percent, representing an absolute stagnation in per capita production.' As a result of the economic recession, underemployment now tops 40 percent, and real wages at the end of 1975 were below 1972 levels...
...By 1974, both the IMF and the World Bank were pressuring Mexico to devalue the peso as an initial step in correcting the negative balance of payments, and to implement tight wage "controls to counter inflation and boost profits...
...International capital and important sectors of the Mexican bourgeoisie grew increasingly anxious as Echeverria's efforts to overcome the economic crisis without intensifying the class conflict seemed to produce nothing more than increased government spending, inflation and more political unrest...
...A leader of a current strike of electrical workers in Mexicali on the California-Mexico border recently told NACLA that the workers there have been actively seeking the support of unions and other workers' organizations north of the border, because to find a solution to our problems here, we will have to find support from workers in the United States...
...The devaluation was theoretically intended to cut the balance of payments deficit by making imports more expensive and exports more competitive on the international market...
...Increased immigration from Mexico and Carter's new policy place new pressures on the North American people to counter the racist and 40 NACLA ReportSept/Oct...
...AND NORTH OF THE BORDER...
...But first the groundwork had to be laid...
...basic consumer goods jumped by 40 percent in the weeks after the devaluation...
...In retrospect it appears that Echeverria finally agreed to accept the proposed devaluation and austerity program sometime in early 1976...
...2. Ibid...
...7. San Francisco Examiner, 9/11/77...
...A revolution in Mexico will mean a struggle against capitalism in the United States as well...
...Thus the repression of the Democratic Tendency in July 1976, as well as of another half dozen important strikes in July and August...
...3. Excelsior, 5/2/77 and 1975 World Bank report on Mexico...
...Having already dealt a serious setback to the Democratic Tendency of the Electrical workers, as we have seen, the government moved against another major center of union activity in July of this year: the STUNAM, Workers Union of the National Autonomous University of Mexico...
...In addition to the organized resistance of the Mexican labor movement, the guardians of international capital must face the implications such a program holds for the United States...
...In fact, the main effect of the devaluation was an immediate increase of prices...
...The cause of growing unemployment and declining wages in both the United States and Mexico is the crisis of the international capitalist system of which both countries are a part - not immigrant workers...
Vol. 11 • September 1977 • No. 7
