Correction on PEMEX and the union

David Agren left a correction to my 20-August post (“Throwing the bums out…“) pointing out that the dissidents within PEMEX are not likely PAN supporters.  They could be underwritten by PRD, which would still make sense, the point being that union fights are proxy wars between various political factions.

David knows more about the chincanery of Mexican political infighting than most.  He writes today in The (Mexico City) News about the PEMEX union infighting and the impact on any energy reform bill:

…such is the union’s clout that neither the governing National Action Party, or PAN, nor the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has dared propose altering the union’s relationship with Pemex in their energy reform proposals. Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño recently said that dealing with the union “is a different discussion,” while PRI senators approved a measure last week saying that they would only support an energy reform package that omits union changes. “People pay tremendous prices for fooling with the union,” said George Baker, a Houston-based energy consultant and expert on the Mexican oil industry.

Only the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, which plans to unveil its own energy reform initiative on Monday, has dared to challenge the union, which some analysts say is a foe of the left-wing party.

“For the PRD, the oil workers union is a political enemy,” said Aldo Muñoz, a union expert at the Universidad Iberoamericana. “The Pemex union supports the PRI and, if it suits them, PAN candidates against the PRD.”

In January 1989, as the Salinas administration was looking at restructuring PEMEX, neutralizing the union was also considered vital to the process. Then, as now, the “union boss” was said to be corrupt. The boss in 1989, Joaquín Hernández Galacia, lived modesty, and at least had the virtues of plowing plunder back into worker benefits (including pensions at 100 percent of the retiree’s last salary, union owned markets, farms, factories and social service providers). As Hernández himself later said, “My workers were drunken and corrupt, but they were fearless and bowed to no one.”

Attempting to break the union, Salinas — under the pretext that Hernández was plotting an armed rebellion — had the boss’ home raided by army units. A soldier was killed and a cache of weapons discovered. Never mind that the soldier had been dead a day already (and had been killed in a training accident elsewhere) and that the weapons were army issue, brought in to Hernández’ house with the raid… the wildcat strike that followed gave Salinas the legal excuse he needed to install a new union leadership. And… now… Salinas’ leadership has to be removed, one way or another.