Power surges

When the President went on television Sunday night to justify the takeover and forced merger of Luz y Fuerza de Centro, he spoke of it as a necessary cost-cutting measure.  True enough, the company was hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate, and some sort of restructuring was inevitable.

However, no one for a second believed that… not even members of the President’s own party.  Those who applauded the move — like influential journalist Carlos Loret de Mola — saw both the timing (on a Friday night, at the start of a three-day weekend in the Federal District, after the all important World Cup playoff game between Mexico and El Salvador) and the police-strike method, as meant to be even an unfriendly merger, but a strike against the company union, SME.

Of course, the bloated payroll figures that have been floated around (“on average, the electrical worker receives blah, blah, blah” are — like all averages — highly misleading.  The company had a hugely bloated, and ridiculously compensated, management.  As it is, liquidating those supposedly overpaid workers will require a buyout of their jobs at somewhere between thirty and thirty-three months salary.

The same day the buyouts of the “bloated” salaries was announced, by the way, the León Guanajuanto city government decided to pay out 19 million pesos to former elected and appointed officials from the previous administration.  Managers had a way of taking care of their own.

Of course, with LyFC the company management were often SME members, which makes the “corruption”  and “overpayment” stories somewhat valid, as well as boosting the “average” figures.    But, having become the center of the rationale (as opposed to Felipe Calderón’s interest in privatizing the company during his time as Secretary of Energy during the Fox Adminstration, in whole or in part) as opposed to SME’s support for opposition parties ) there are questions being raised about other, “corrupt and inefficient” unions less hostile to the present adminstration.  Like Esther Elba’s Teachers’ Union, among others.

Not surprisingly, Ana María Salazar, in her Mexico Today news briefs, notes ” PAN said that closing down Luz y Fuerza was not a measure aimed at attacking unionized workers but rather because it was so inoperative… PAN leader ruled out similar measures against the PEMEX or Teachers union, the SNTE.

At least PAN’s former president, Manuel Espino Barrientos, is out of the closet on this… he says “all unions are corrupt”… but then, that’s a article of faith for his wing of the party.

Pablo Trejo Pérez, a PRD Delegate from working class Itzacalco, writing in a (badly translated) editorial in The [Mexico City] sees a “privatization” issue (and a union one) that hasn’t been much discussed.  The fiber-optics sytem owned by LyFC:

Behind the government’s onslaught against [LyFC] lies the dispute of what to do with a 1,100-kilometer long fiber optic network that belongs to the liquidated company. We are talking about a system that makes the transmission of voice and data over any domestic power line or low-voltage source possible, which made the company a major competitor with two more economically powerful companies: Televisa and Telmex.

The arguments the government has cited as reasons to liquidate the [LyFC] are meaningless and should be cause for reflection because the federal government has just declared war on electrical workers.

After three years in office, Calderón should understand that the strength of a government lies not in the strength of its police or armed forces’ ability to enforce authoritarian rule, but rather in the government’s moral authority. A strong state is maintained not by the use of force, but with social consensus that comes from legitimacy.

One possible protest suggested by an SME spouse involves getting people to turn on their lights, radios, televisions, space heaters, air conditioners, etc…. and try to cause a surge.  Power to the people takes a whole new meaning in this fight.