MEXICO.- On labor rights in Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) there are four perspectives. The unionized workers say that they have been taken away from them little by little, that now they are no longer given boots, uniforms, scholarships, medicines… The “trusted” employees, for their part, miss the loans with zero commissions, cars and houses with loans of just 2%.
Those who have seen these benefits from afar consider that they have been at a disadvantage: the 64% of the country’s population does not even have social security: if they get sick, they will be left to their own devices in a downward spiral against the diseases that plague them. Much less do they have other benefits.
The government headed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) argues ¾as the author of the reduction in benefits for oil workers¾ that the union has been “abusive” in collective bargaining negotiations.
That, in exchange for unconditional support from the administrations in power, they have made agreements to milk the company to the point of making it one of the most indebted in the world. Despite the fact that for decades it has produced and exported wholesale!
The debate of the last few days reveals, in summary, that Pemex is rocking between austerity, union abuses and the labor dignity of a country whose employees are far from fair conditions and wages.
According to the National Occupation and Employment Survey ( ENOE), the 61% of the employed population in the country does not have access to a health institution and the 32% of wage earners in Mexico work without benefits. All in contradiction to the commitments acquired with the International Labor Organization.
The ILO establishes that decent or dignified work is that which is carried out with an income that guarantees security in the workplace. work and social protection for families, provide better prospects for personal development and social integration.
The business instability of recent weeks at Pemex It focuses, then, on a dilemma: are the union’s benefits abusive or are those of the rest of the country’s workers miserable? What do the oil tankers keep and what has been taken from them?
The break
In recent days, protests by oil workers have been seen throughout Mexico. They denounce the breach of the Collective Bargaining Agreement by Pemex. They have placed tarpaulins and blankets in various sections of the Petroleum Workers Union of the Mexican Republic.
The discourse is the same: lack of safety equipment, medical supplies for the hospitals where they treat oil company staff; plant maintenance is lacking, uniforms are a thing of the past, non-payment of scholarships, housing support, administrative loans and coverage of vacancies to which the government has committed.
The union is not openly talking about a strike, but threats and whispers are the order of the day at a time when López Obrador has Pemex as the spearhead of his policies of government.
This week, the president went on the counterattack and said that the guild’s strategy has a perverse undertone . Through his spokesman Jesús Ramírez said that while “in the neoliberal administrations” the union leaders “dragged” before the PRI and the PAN, now “the combative comes out” for a simple reason.
“They will no longer be able to charge fees for temporary or permanent places”.
The federal government is doing it now. He controls the hiring through José Eduardo Beltrán Hernández, one of the five independent directors of Pemex and brother-in-law of the president, replied the manager of the Tula plant, Alberto Careaga.
In the game of forces between the government-employer and the unions-employees, a moment stands out for the escalation and the response that may have if the Democratic Party takes action on the matter due to the attention it pays to union issues:
At the end of 64, workers belonging to the National Union of Petroleum Technicians and Professionals will denounce Pemex in the United States for violations of labor rights contemplated in Chapter 23 of the Mexico-United States Treaty and Canada, after the Secretary of Labor broke up with the dialogue tables and left them with their complaints in hand.
The alleged abuses are: establishment of work days employment of 24 h up to 32 consecutive hours, when the Federal Labor Law and the international agreements signed by the country on this matter mandate only eight hours, between other “favors” that they are asked to do when in fact, they say, they are nothing more than working time without pay.
In the middle
When Cintya Hernández was a Pemex worker, she bought her apartment and a van. It was a basic right that any full-time worker should have, but, in some way, he felt that he was at an advantage compared to the rest of the population.
“I had loans at very low interest or at zero interest such as the administrative ones that they gave you every year, gasoline vouchers and others that were removed over time”.
These types of benefits were available to those who were not in the union, but the union members also did very well, he recalls. Three years later, the unionized workers acknowledge that they are still on good terms.
Adrián López in Mexico City says that they still receive: a savings fund that is equivalent to doubling their salary, orthodontics for the children, payments in case of needing glasses, external medical attention if there is not at the Pemex health clinics, three weeks of vacations and money for school supplies for the children.
These benefits are worthy to achieve the well-being mandated by international standards but they are an exception, a bubble in the Mexican reality that generates concerns inside and outside the union.
Ernesto Samperio, a trusted worker at the parastatal summarizes this perception as follows:
“Undoubtedly, unionized workers are doing extremely well because most of their jobs do not require a professional specialty, but their salaries are equal to or higher than those of a professional in the foreign market, in addition to the fact that they have no responsibility or pressure to deliver results”.
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