19 January, 2012LabourStart launches an online solidarity campaign in support of the Mexican Electrical Workers' Union. Affiliates are requested to support the campaign by signing the online protest letter.
MEXICO: The website LabourStart launched a solidarity campaign in support of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME, Sindicato Mexicano de Electrisistas). In October 2009 44,000 SME members were forced out by police from their working places.
Their jobs were terminated after liquidation of the state-owned company Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LFC). The contract for power supply to Central Mexico and LFC's assets were handed over to the equally publicly owned power company Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE), organized by a union with a reputation for passivity and corruption.
After LFC's closure previously safe jobs with highly skilled organized workers were replaced with non-unionized workers lacking professional training and experience. This resulted in 30 fatal accidents in two years.
Since then 16,599 SME members, who rejected severance pay and continued to fight for their jobs, have demanded that the government finds a "substitute employer" as stipulated in Mexican law. IMF strongly supports the SME members in their fight for their rights and calls upon the affiliates to visit the LabourStart campaign page and send on-line protest letters to the Mexican Government.
The protests are all the more important given upcoming negotiations with the government. Its initial commitment was to have a solution by November 30, 2011; however, negotiations were called off after the death of the country's Interior Minister in a helicopter crash.