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 Editorials | At Issue | May 2006 
Mexican Mine Disaster Brings Charges of Collusion
 Ginger Thompson - NYTimes
| | A miner touched a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe for luck before entering the Pasta de Conchos mine, where the search for bodies continues. (Luis J. Jimenez/NYTimes) |
Mexico City — Workers at the Pasta de Conchos mine feared that their work site was a disaster waiting to happen. For months, they had complained of a faulty main electrical switch, live wires on the ground and ventilation so poor that they sweated in winter.
Yet their union representative signed off on a government report calling the mine safe. Twelve days later, on Feb. 19, an explosion ripped through the mine, killing 65 men.
Fallout from that tragedy in a remote corner of northern Mexico has set off one of the largest labor crises in Mexico's recent history, provoking waves of wildcat strikes that have crippled the mining industry, shaken world metal markets and added a volatile element to the presidential election in July.
The explosion has also laid bare one of Mexico's oldest shams: the collusion between government, industry and trade unions.
For decades, the trade unions here have acted as extensions of the government, helping the ruling party dominate workers. All-powerful presidents have appointed and ousted union leaders at will, then doled out money and political favors to keep the unions delivering millions of labor votes.
Union leaders have taken payoffs from companies and collaborated with them to give workers just enough pay raises to keep them in line. Dissidents were usually fired, often beaten, sometimes killed.
Six years ago, the election of President Vicente Fox ended more than 70 years of authoritarian rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI. Mr. Fox promised change, saying corrupt institutions had stifled growth and stood in the way of a drive toward full democracy.
But as his term ends, the unions remain a cornerstone of power.
Political analysts like Sergio Aguayo, a veteran of Mexico's fight for democracy, said that in an effort to keep the economy stable, Mr. Fox's pro-business government chose to work with the institutions of the past, rather than try to dismantle them. The crisis among the miners, Mr. Aguayo and other experts said, shows that Mr. Fox has actually allowed unions to become more domineering and less democratic than ever. The titanic task of reforming them, the experts said, will be left to his successor.
Labor Minister Francisco Javier Salazar denied those assertions.
"The president has done a great job at changing the mentality of many unions, but we have done it without violence," he said in an interview. "Perhaps there are some who would have liked us to pressure union leaders, or to throw them in jail. But that is not the path we believe in."
At Pasta de Conchos, workers were told the mine was safe. Federal inspectors submitted a report on Feb. 7 saying the owners of the mine, Grupo México, had corrected 34 safety violations.
Workers said that problems remained but that inspectors were not interested in seeing them and had walked less than half the mine.
"We did not complain to our supervisors because we were afraid of being fired," said one miner, Israel Muñiz Cruz. "We did not talk much to the union, because we knew they were not on our side."
He added: "If I told the union about a problem, the union would tell the company I was complaining. Then my supervisor would wait for me to make any mistake to cut my pay or fire me."
Investigators still have not been able to dig out enough of the mine to determine the cause of the accident.
In an interview, Juan Rebolledo, the chief spokesman for Grupo México, the third largest copper mining company in the world, presented copies of internal inspection reports to show that there were no serious safety violations reported before the accident. He blamed the government for not inspecting the mine more often.
Labor Minister Salazar stood by the government's Feb. 7 inspection, saying it was meant only to verify that previous violations had been fixed. A full inspection, he said, was not required. In an interview with the newspaper Milenio, he suggested that the miners might have caused the accident, saying that they often took drugs before their shifts.
The secretary general of local section 13 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers, Oscar Flores, has filed a charge of industrial homicide against Grupo México.
Asked why the union did not file formal complaints about conditions before the explosion, he said, "Our members only came sporadically to complain about minor details, nothing more. And when we told the company to fix them, they took months to respond."
As President Fox came into office, in December 2000, he signed a document entitled "Twenty Commitments for Free and Democratic Unions," promising swift efforts to end the abuses bred by corrupt unions. He vowed to create a public registry of labor contracts and collective bargaining agreements, open union spending records, and guarantee all workers the right to cast secret ballots in union elections.
Five years later, however, his government proposed labor reforms that would have made it next to impossible for workers to join independent unions, bargain collectively or strike, human rights groups said.
Those proposals were beaten back in Congress. But Arturo Alcalde, a labor expert and another veteran of Mexico's fight for democracy, said Mexican workers who want to join independent unions still have to declare their vote before company, union and government representatives.
Official unions, Mr. Alcalde said, have the power in most cases to hire and fire at will. The government retains the power to confirm or veto the heads of labor unions. And union bosses accused of crimes continue to enjoy almost a perfect record of impunity.
In addition, Mr. Fox has publicly sidled up to a number of powerful union leaders who are suspected of corruption. Earlier this year, his government gave its blessing earlier to the dubious re-election of Víctor Flores as head of the powerful Labor Congress, whose 30 member groups represent an estimated 85 percent of the country's 9.5 million unionized workers.
Mr. Flores became head of the railroad workers union some 12 years ago, after the mysterious assassination of his opponent. He went along with the government in cutting some 70,000 jobs as it prepared to sell off the railroads. Retirees have accused Mr. Flores of embezzling pension money, which he denies.
Mr. Fox also allied his government with Elba Esther Gordillo, whose 1.5-million-member teachers' union is considered the largest trade organization in Latin America. Human rights groups have charged her with firing hundreds of dissidents for trying to start independent unions.
Ms. Gordillo owns a house in one of the most exclusive areas of San Diego, and travels across Mexico on helicopters and private jets.
In an interview, she denied any wrongdoing. "It is true that I live better than my teacher compañeros, there is no doubt about that," she said. "But it is also true that I work like a madwoman."
In 2001, the government opened an investigation into charges that Carlos Romero Deschamps, the leader of the oil workers' union, had conspired with Pemex, the state oil company, to funnel millions of dollars to the PRI's 2000 presidential campaign. Although the party and the directors of oil company were fined hundreds of millions of dollars, Mr. Romero and other union leaders escaped punishment or public shame.
In March, at a ceremony to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the nationalization of the oil industry, Mr. Fox shook his hand. Last month the PRI placed him on its list of Senate candidates.
The man at the center of the mining crisis is Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, secretary general of the miners' union and a leader who defies easy categorization.
The 60-year-old Oxford educated economist inherited his position as secretary general of the miners union five years ago from his father, Napoleón Gómez Sada.
Mr. Gómez Sada had controlled the union for more than four decades, and was remembered by labor experts as a faithful servant of the old regime. He approved less than a handful of strikes during his career, and cooperated with the government to break dozens of unauthorized walkouts.
His son, however, authorized more than 30 strikes in the last four years and, according to his supporters, helped defeat Mr. Fox's labor reforms. Mr. Gómez Urrutia also alienated much of the entrenched union establishment by challenging Víctor Flores's election as head of the Labor Congress.
Two days after the explosion at Pasta de Conchos, the government announced that it had approved Mr. Gómez Urrutia's ouster as head of the union and began an investigation into charges that he embezzled millions of union dollars.
Since then, Mr. Gómez Urrutia has gone into hiding. In a telephone interview, he denied the corruption charges, saying the government had fabricated evidence against him to distract public attention from its culpability in the accident.
The only collusion hurting the rights of miners, he said, was between the government and Grupo México. Both, he said, want to get rid of him for a more pliable union leader.
"I became a nuisance to the government and the companies," Mr. Gómez Urrutia said. When asked to explain why he had led so many strikes during his tenure, he said, "Mining companies earned record profits last year, so workers ought to benefit as well."
The government has leaked photos of mansions that it says he purchased with ill-gotten gains, and bank statements showing how he laundered money through off-shore accounts.
His ouster has divided the miners, and Mexico's labor unions. Many workers say it is Mr. Fox who was acting like a holdover from the old authoritarian days by intervening first to help make Mr. Gómez Urrutia head of the miners' union, and then to remove him five years later. But other workers have voted to support Mr. Gómez Urrutia's removal, saying that his control of the union was so complete that government intervention was the only way to be rid of him.
Meanwhile, thousands of miners have staged wildcat strikes, demanding that Mr. Salazar resign and that their leader be reinstated. Two workers were killed when police tried to break a strike at a steel plant in the western state of Michoacán.
And at a convention on Tuesday by miners supportive of Mr. Gómez Urrutia, union leaders vowed not to surrender, comparing the moment to their first strike 100 years ago at the Cananea Copper Mine. At least 11 miners were killed in that strike, and it was considered a harbinger of the Mexican Revolution.
Mr. Gómez Urrutia's opponents have vowed with equal vigor to keep him out. Last month, steelworkers at a plant in Monclova, an hour's drive south of Pasta de Conchos, walked through thuggish stone-throwing groups to cast ballots against the ousted leader.
After deductions for health care and other benefits, coal miners at Pasta de Conchos bring home a little more than $1 an hour. The families of the dead, having lost all confidence in the government, the union and the company, fend for themselves.
The company has paid each widow $75,000, and promised to pay their children's educational expenses through college. The government has sent food and supplies to improve the families' housing.
Asked what assistance the union had provided to the relatives of the dead miners, Oscar Flores, the departing secretary general, acknowledged that the union had given none. "All of our money is spent on administration costs," he said. "You know, things like gas, electricity and stationery." |
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