Mexico's Fox issues warning to unions supporting miners strike

Mexico City (Platts)--25Apr2006

Mexico's President Vicente Fox Tuesday issued a stern warning to unions
who plan a nationwide work stoppage by millions on Friday in support of
striking miners and steelworkers.

Friday's work stoppage is being organized by a union front which claims
that the government has trampled on labor rights by withdrawing official
recognition from Napoleon Gomez as leader of the Mexican miners' and
metalworkers' union. Gomez, who faces a criminal inquiry for alleged
corruption, is understood to be in Canada.

At a morning press conference, presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said
Tuesday: "The government and the State can never, ever be held hostage or
blackmailed by anyone." In a rhetorical question addressed to the organizers
of Friday's strike, Aguilar added: "Don't they realize that they risk
destabalizing the nation when there's only weeks to go to an election?" Mexico
goes to the polls July 2 to pick a new president.

The National Front for the Defense of Union Autonomy, which is organizing
Friday's strike, claims that 5 to 6 million workers will be involved. Unions
that belong to the front include telephone and rural workers, the electrical
industry and others in the state sector, though not the oil monopoly Pemex.
The stoppage will last for from two to 24 hours, the front claims. The
stoppage will come on the last regular working day before Monday's May 1 Labor
Day holiday.

Thousands of workers at Grupo Mexico copper and zinc mines, as well as
those at Villacero, have been on strike for weeks demanding recognition for
Gomez, whose loyalists remain in effective control of the union. The front is
calling for the resignation of Labor Secretary Javier Salazar, whom it blames
for the conflict and the clashes that led to the killings. Salazar, however,
is no longer the government's point man in the dispute. Judging the strike to
be politically motivated, President Fox has named Interior Secretary Carlos
Abascal, effectively the government's top official, as the man who has to find
a solution.

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