Labor Union Strategies
Manuel Garcia Urrutia M. outlines recent labor meetings which sketch out the strategies which will determine the rise of a new labor unionism in Mexico.
MEETING NUMBER ONE WAS the celebration of the 119th Regular General Assembly of the National Council of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), marking its 60th anniversary. This meeting represented the collapse into senility of a kind of labor unionism which refuses to die, but which now has no place in the development of a modern, democratic and just Mexico. Three moments sum up the CTM meeting: • the long applause for Fidel Velazquez, offered as homage to the system which he has served, accompanied by a presidential speech about the battered "historical alliance" [between the unions and the government], with special nostalgic reference to old union leaders who played their part in the deterioration of the population's decline in living standards; • the presence of top businessman Carlos Abascal, representing the most conservative employers' organization, COPARMEX, asking that we give our selves to the Virgin of Guadalupe — an implicit recognition of how bad things have gotten -and attempting to inaugurate, for the "n"th time, the "new labor culture," which is recognized in the speeches and agreements which are imposed upon us from on high, which have nothing to do with employer practice and the everyday reality which the workers live; • the CTM's censure of "divisive" organizations within the Congress of Labor (CT). A clear allusion to the Federation of Unions of Goods and Services [FESEBES]. This basically reflects the CTM leadership's interest in not being displaced from the leadership of Mexican labor unionism.
The CTM leadership has miscalculated. Because they will not be able to keep their leadership position in the labor movement with a strategy that is ever more docile, servile to the government, tied to the state, isolated and corrupt. For there are other federations [CROC, CROM, etc.] which do that even better.
It is union democracy, respect for differences of opinion within the union, and the development of wider social alliances, at both the national and international level, which will provide the basis for the union project which the country needs.
The second important recent meeting was the Third Forum of Labor Unionism before the Nation: Security and Social Justice, organized by 21 organizations with different histories, characteristics and perspectives, but which have as a common denominators: leaders who are representative, are elected, and have proposals for the challenges to the productivity of the Nation. The drawing power of these unions, their key place in production and services, the richness of their analysis in confronting diverse problems — derived from their diverse composition -and their possibility of acting in a united, mature and responsible way, not only represent a milestone for the labor movement in recent years but also aim at changing the correlation, shape and hegemony of the historic leadership.
Recent weeks also saw a San Francisco meeting organized to discuss action against the transnational corporation Sprint, under the Labor Side Agreements of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Labor organizations attending from Mexico, the United States and Canada have recognized the necessity of forming some regional labor union relationship to protect the interests of workers negatively affected by NAFTA. They also argue for a Social Compact which would include protection of the rights of migrant workers, independent of their legal status. A similar tri-national meeting in Cuernavaca shared concrete experiences of unity, action and organization, involving union, environmental and farmers groups which have been working together.
The conclusions of these international labor meetings laid out the challenges which the process of regional integration imposes: the construction of trustworthy partners in order to avoid actions such as that of the Teamsters in their opposition to Mexican truck drivers using the highways of the United States; the need to push, in the same direction, an alternative development strategy which gives meaning and priority to the social dimension of integration; and, last but not least, solidarity. Participants were also invited to the meeting against neoliberalism which will take place in April in Chiapas.
These meetings are no longer closed to independent unions. The CTM monopoly has been broken. The Mexican unions which came to relate to their U.S. and Canadian counterparts share different visions of the national reality, and seek agreements on strategy between Mexican organizations. * Source: La Jornada, March 4, 1996.
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* Mexico supposed existence of socialism and workers power on the one hand, with the real existence of the power of a party and a bureaucracy at the expense and on the backs of the workers on the other hand (even if these parties called themselves "communist").
In this sense, we can agree that we do not fight for power.
For this reason, incidentally, we do not consider as part of the definition of a revolutionary party the seizure of power for itself, as Marcos insists in his messages. The call for a front, however, is not apolitical. It is a call which understands the need for a struggle against the present powers and the need to oust them. The same Fourth Declaration at several points confirms this (against the centralisation power, again the idea that those who rule must do so while obeying the people, government of the people, for the people and by the people, etc.). The Zapatista struggle goes beyond immediate demands and beyond the idea of becoming the moral conscience of politicians, as some have claimed. It certainly struggles for a new power, not for the Zapatista Front, but for the people, recognising the pluralism (regional, political, ethnic, and cultural pluralism, which becomes more evident each passing day. This is implied in the points against the centralisation of power.
All of this has to do with another notion which appears in several documents of the EZLN. We are referring obviously to the document on "the mirrors," but the idea appears in several others. The idea is that the central objective now is the conquest of democracy and ending the party-state system.
This is the reason why it is possible and necessary to promote a Broad Opposition Front which is very pluralistic not only politically but socially. Plurality means that we can all have particular national projects, even different ones, but that convincing the people to freely support any of them requires a different system, it requires the conquest of democracy. Because of this, in spite of our differences, we can all agree in anite of our differences we can all agree in the struggle for democracy and the end of the party-state system.
Therefore those of us who have "the heart, the will and the ideas in the left side of our chest", as the Zapatistas say, know that we have our own project, but that project, to be achieved, requires first the achievement of a common objective, that is to say, democracy, so that we can then struggle under other conditions for our programs. We need, as the document of "The Mirrors" says, a revolution that will and tears says revoltan tat wi 22 International Viewpoint April 1996 make possible the Revolution. Therefore our objective is not power itself.
This revolution, the EZLN remarks, "is not a matter of the conquest of power or the installation (by peaceful or violent means) of a new social system, but something prior to both these things. It is a matter of building the anteroom of a new world, a space where, with equal rights and obligations, the different political forces will 'compete' for the support of the majority of society."
There are, finally, other nuanced aspects in the Fourth Declaration which the Zapatistas themselves or Sub Comandante Marcos have modified. One of them, for example, is the issue of electoral participation. In the Fourth Declaration it appeared as an initial definition, as a matter of principle, to participate in the Zapatista Front. In the message of 4 March, the Sub Comandante Marcos has clarified that the Zapatista Front as such does not participate in elections but that its members could support certain electoral processes. This is closer to a tactical definition in connection with each case and not a general definition against electoral participation without taking into account the level of consciousness and organisation of the masses.
The problem with this position is that it should not confuse the criticism and rejection of the current institutional powers with a rejection of all democratic practices, even electoral ones. The EZLN has a commitment on this point since it is one of the positions collected in the National Consultation to achieve a change in the rules of the political game in the country.
Renaiss
Neither should it confuse the current state of the institutional powers, despite their profound level of decomposition, and the current correlation of forces, with a situation which permits the creation of a parallel power to the existing one. Here we should distinguish between the level of consciousness and existing popular organisation in regions like Chiapas, and compare them with the rest of the country, even in important regions where the PAN ( National Action Party) is winning elections. Certainly there is the possibility that the emergence of the Zapatista Front could close this gap in consciousness nationally, but always on condition that its actions take into account the uneven level of development of consciousness and popular organisation.
All these aspects will certainly continue to be discussed and clarified in the months ahead. On some points the last word has not been said yet. Several events in the next months will help to clarify and define the project of the Zapatista Front. Without mentioning the political evolution in the country as a whole, on will have to take into account the results of dialogues between the EZLN and the government in San Andes, the new national encounters of the civilian committees, the encounter of the Zapatista Front in June, the Intercontinental Encounter in July, and the development of the proposal for a Movement of National Liberation and a Left Front, recently raised by the Zapatistas. * ance and