10 July, 2013This important victory won by the Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union (SME) means that the government has recognised the pension rights of workers who are in resistance and meet eligibility conditions.
Following this victory, the SME has decided to dismantle the camp set up on 5 June in front of the Ministry of the Interior. However, union leaders acknowledge that the substantive issue resulting from the government’s dissolution of the state-owned utility company Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC) has not been resolved. During the next few days, talks will continue on the financial and employment conditions for reinstating the workers who lost their jobs at the LyFC.
Electricity workers maintained a permanent presence at the camp for one month, which led the government to recognise the pension rights of those workers among the 16,000 in dispute who have 23 years’ service and who have refused to accept their dismissal since the closure of LyFC in October 2009.
The SME said that it will now focus on securing the reinstatement of workers who have not accepted the Felipe Calderón’s government’s redundancy offer. One tentative proposal for a solution is to reinstate them to jobs at a subsidiary of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), which replaced the LyFC.
IndustriALL has closely followed the SME’s struggle for some years now, praises the persistence of the union and its members and congratulates them on this victory. It hopes that the struggle will have a successful outcome for the union and its members.
It congratulates the SME’s Central Committee, recently elected for the period 2013-2015, in which an absolute majority of more than 23,000 votes re-elected Martín Esparza Flores as General Secretary. José Humberto Montes de Oca Luna was re-elected as Secretary for External Relations.