The huge amphitheater of the union hall became quiet. The men in blue jeans and t-shirts, many wearing baseball caps and cowboy hats, listened attentively to the Local 8 officers up on the stage.

Their union leaders told them that there was no guarantee that the new owners would rehire them. The new company would not accept the old collective bargaining agreement, and wanted a new "flexible" contract. Train crews would probably be reduced from six to three workers.

For over two years now they had been debating and discussing these issues: the change in employer, being terminated and having to be re-contracted, losing their seniority and their union contract, losing their working conditions.

And what would happen if the shops were closed? Nothing could be more serious for the 56,000 people of the town of Empalme, Sonora, Mexico.

Carlos Figueroa, the general secretary of Local 8, made a proposal. The debate became passionate. In the end, the workers agreed: to save their jobs and their contract they had no choice--they would strike.

Paro and Planton

Led by their union officers, hundreds of railroad workers, mostly men but also women office workers, filed out of the union hall and marched toward the yards only a few blocks away.

They passed by the huge old repair shops, calling out some workers inside who were repairing cars. As they walked through town they were joined by men, women, and children, nearly all railroad workers or descendants of railroad workers.

Arriving at the rail yards, the union leaders signaled to the engineers in the big diesel locomotives, and to the other workers busy making trains. The locomotives and the railroad cars stopped moving.

"Paro," shouted one of the union officials, the Spanish word for a work stoppage. A few workers moved some of the repair buggies to strategic points along the track. Others threw switches. A group of workers set up a human blockade--what Mexicans call a "planton"--on the main track. So on February 16, 1998 began what soon became the biggest railroad strike in Mexico in decades.

Shutting Down the System

The strike immediately stopped shipments by the Ford Motor Company plant in Hermosillo, Sonora which exports about 700 Escorts each day. The Cananea Cooper Company could not move tons of copper ore and hundreds of thousands of gallons of sulfuric acid. Executives from CEMEX--the Mexican Cement company--watched the gondola cars back up. Gamesa, the food company best known in Mexico for its crackers, had its cargo sidelined.

The Pacifico-Norte railway line, one of Mexico's principal railroads which passes through 17 states and serves the west coast and the northwest regions of Mexico, had been brought to a complete standstill. Tens of thousands of passengers found themselves stranded in cities and towns along the route, as local governments scrambled to find them blankets and food.

The paralysis of the railway would last for almost three weeks, creating an economic and political crisis for the state of Sonora and for the Federal government.

Mexico's attention for the past four years had been focused on the Mayan Indian rebellion in the southern state of Chiapas led by the guerrillas of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). But now here was another rebellion in northern Mexico, a rebellion of rank and file railroad workers.

They Did Not Fight Alone

The 3,700 members of Local 8 of the Mexican Railroad Workers Union (STFRM) had taken a courageous stand to save their jobs. But they did not fight alone.

Over the past several years in the state of Sonora, railroad workers, miners, telephone workers, teachers, university professors and other university employees, students, community organizations, and the Yaqui Indian groups had joined together to create the Broad Front of Social Organizations (FAOS). When the strike began, FAOS activists joined railroad workers in the city of Hermosillo about an hour north of Empalme, stopping trains there. FAOS activists in other parts of Sonora came out to help the strikers.

Local political leaders also came out for the workers. The mayor of Empalme, former railroad worker Jesus Avila Godoy, supported the railroad workers, as did Sara Valle, the mayor of the nearby town of Guaymas.

A couple days after the strike began a Roman Catholic priest, Father Rogelio Lopez, came down to the rail yard and said a mass at the "planton," right there where the workers were blocking the trains. Protestant ministers in Empalme also supported the strike, and their congregations joined them, praying for their union, for their jobs, for their contract.

The Miracle on the Highway

As the strike wore on, meetings were held to discuss strategy. Something else needed to be done. One worker raised his hand. "I propose we go to the shrine of the saint, Santo Judas Tadeo, the miraculous saint." So they marched to the shrine on a hill on the outskirts of Empalme. The hundreds of strikers and their supporters prayed to the saint at the little altar on the International Highway.

The crowd grew to overflowing, blocking the highway and stopping the traffic. The results were indeed miraculous: trucks on the highway which parallels the railroad line and serves the west coast of Mexico backed up for miles. With the saint's help, all surface transportation in the state came to a halt.

The strike drew everyone into the struggle. Lydia Cano, the 66-year old widow of a railroad worker and leader of the local Empalme chapter of the National Unifying Movement of Retirees and Pensioneers, organized a march of the railroad retirees and other retired government employees in support of the railroad workers.

Then Cano turned to the town's women, organizing the "Marcha de la Cazuelas," or the March of the Pots and Pans. Two or three thousand women and children marched through Empalme beating on pots and pans. Empty pots and pans, Cano told me, are "symbols of hunger and unemployment."

A Spreading Movement

The workers also had support on a national level. The Committee to Defend the Collective Bargaining Agreement headquartered in Mexico City came out on the side of the striking workers. Salvador Zarco, former general secretary of Local 15 and leader of the Committee, organized demonstrations in the national capital and held press conferences to explain the strikers' demands.

As news of the strike by Local 8 spread, workers in other local unions up and down the line began to get the message. They, too, threatened to strike if workers were not rehired.

Faced with the paralysis of the railroads in about half the country, the federal government handed down felony indictments for blocking the railroad lines and forced Local 8 to return to work. But just as Local 8 returned to work, Local 40 in the town of Benjamin Hill just up the line went out on strike, so still the trains did not move.

Meanwhile in the Sonora legislature all three political parties--the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the conservative National Action Party (PAN), and the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)--joined together and came out in support of the railroad workers. The Sonora governor, a member of the PRI, came out for the railroad workers as well.

In the national legislature in Mexico City, congressmen from the PAN and the PRD demanded an investigation into the privatization of the railroads and its affect on the workers and their union contract.

The pressure mounted on the government and on the government-controlled union. By the end of the second week, Victor Flores, the head of the Mexican Railroad Workers Union, surprised the unions' members by taking responsibility for the strike. While the strike was now official it still remained illegal.

Executives of U.S. multinationals and Mexican corporations pleaded with the Mexican government to end the strike one way or another so they could get their shipments moving. Some even suggested the use of force. Rumors circulated that a military train had been dispatched.

Mayor Avila Godoy of Empalme and other sympathetic mayors along the line tried to keep the state or federal government from sending in troops as they had back in 1959.

The Mexican government, already fighting a rebellion by Mayan Indians peasants in the southern state of Chiapas, hesitated to use the military to repress the strike in Sonora.

Finally, the government-owned railroad company FERRONALES, the new private owner of the railway FERROMEX, the Mexican Railroad Workers Union (STFRM), and Local 8 reached an agreement which would save many of the workers jobs and keep many workers under their old collective bargaining agreement. By March 5 the strike was lifted. If not a complete success, the strike was a partial victory.

Certainly the three-week strike in Sonora had shown that Mexican railroad workers would not give up their jobs without a fight.

Behind the Strike

What caused the huge February-March railroad strike in Mexico? What would make the Mexican railroad workers rebel?

The cause of this strike are many: the political and economic policies of the World Bank, the existence of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the interests of U.S. multinational corporations such as Kansas City Southern Industries and Union Pacific, the Mexican government's economic and labor policies, the nature of Mexico's "official" unions, and finally the needs and desires of the rank and file railroad workers--all played a role.

The World Bank had been promoting privatization and deregulation of railroads throughout the third world. The World Bank has argued that the state-owned railroad should be broken up, sold off, and run by private owners. The "free market," they said, would solve all the problems--at least for the corporations.

It Began With Subcontracting

In May of 1992 a World Bank mission made up of Zvi Raanan, financial analyst and chief of the mission; Jose Baigorria, engineer, and Robin C. Carruthers, economist, recommended that FERRONALES adopt a program to rationalize and modernize the Mexican railroad system. Among other things, the plan called upon FERRONALES to begin subcontracting shops and other services. That same year the company succeeded in modifying the collective bargaining agreement so that the company could sub-contract shops and service.

Thus in May 1994 the shops of Monterrey, the Valley of Mexico, and Jalapa were subcontracted to the French-English firm GEC-ALSTHOM with 580 workers. In June of 1994 the Chihuahua and Torreon shops were subcontracted to GIMCO, made up of a consortium which includes the Canadian VMV firm. Later the San Luis Potosi and Acambaro shops were subcontracted to the U.S. firm Morrison Knudsen.

In the process of subcontracting, the number of shop workers was reduced, often dramatically. For example, the shop in San Luis Potosi had about 4,500 workers in the 1980s. But when the"modernization" process began, many workers were pressured into accepting "voluntary retirement," so that only 1,172 workers remained in 1994. When the shop was then subcontracted, the Mexican National Railways kept on 170 workers, while Morrison Knudsen recontracted only 275.

While some categories of workers received higher wages from the new employer, in general workers' wages and benefits declined.

The subcontracting of shop work violated the Mexican Constitution, Article 28, which specified that strategic industries such as the railroads must be exclusively owned and managed by the Mexican state. Consequently, to remove that legal obstacle, in January of 1995 the Mexican legislature modified Article 28 so that the railroad was no longer considered to be a strategic industry.

The closing of shops and the subcontracting of shop work was not simply an economic issue. Historically, the workers of the repair shops had been the most active and militant members of the Mexican Railroad Workers Union (STFRM). By shutting down shops and contracting out the work, management was able to remove some of the most dedicated members of the union.

At the same time, in preparation for the privatization process, FERRONALES downsized the workforce, usually by pushing Mexican railroad workers into early retirement. In 1988, Mexico employed 100,000 railroad workers, but by 1996 it employed only about 43,000.

New Private Owners

The World Bank's plan for the Mexican railroads called for privatization, that is the sale of the state-owned railroads to new private owners. The first step was to take the national railroad system and cut it up into five separate lines: Northeast (Ferrocarril del Noreste, 3,961 kilometers, 19.3% of the national system); North Pacific (Ferrocarril Pacifico Norte, 6,200 kms, 30.3%); Southeast (Ferrocarril del Suretese, 2,200 kms, 10.7%); a northern line (Ferrocarril Ojinaga-Topolobampo (1,090 kms, 5.3%)and the Mexico City rail yards (Ferrocarril Terminal del Valle de Mexico).

The first big privatization came on December 5, 1996 when the Mexican government sold the Northeast Railway to Mexican Railway Transportation (TFM), a consortium which included Kansas City Southern Industries (KCSI), for 1.4 billion dollars. This was the sale of a 50-year concession of 80 percent of the stock, with KCSI holding 49 percent of the stock.

With the approval of the Mexican labor authorities, the old state-company and the new TFM railroad management fired the workers and nullified the old collective bargaining agreement. Workers had to accept termination and their severance pay and be re-contracted without their previous seniority, pay or benefits. In addition, many hundreds of the Northeast Railway workers lost their jobs.

The most recent privatization occurred on March 7, 1997, a new private company called Mexican Railways (FERROMEX) bought the state's Pacific-North railway line for 524 million dollars. FERROMEX is a consortium made up of several Mexican and foreign parties.

Jorge Larrea Ortega, the mogul who owns Mexicana de Cananea and Mexicana de Cobre, two of Mexico's largest copper companies, is the principal figure in the Grupo Mexico, which is the major stock holder in FERROMEX. Larrea bought the Cananea copper mines in 1989 when the Mexican government began its privatization process. To ensure that there would be no problem from the miners union, then President Carlos Salinas de Gortari sent the Mexican Army to occupy the town and mine of Cananea in order to prevent union protests.

Larrea's partners include Associated Civil Engineers (ICA), one of Mexico's biggest construction companies, and the Union Pacific, one of the largest railroad companies in the United States. Together these partners form Grupo Ferroviario Mexicano (GFM) which in turn owns FERROMEX.

FERROMEX purchased the Pacific North line (Pacifico Norte),the line on which the strike just took place. Pacifico Norte is a 6,500 kilometer route which rises north along Mexico's Pacific coast, turns east when it nears the U.S. border, then passes through the western states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora, before the railway turns east through Chihuahua and Coahuila. In addition to the track, stations, and roundhouses, the purchase included 405 locomotives and 12,591 railway cars of various sorts.

When it bought the Pacific North line, FERROMEX failed to guarantee either the job security or the labor union agreement of the workers. With the approval of the Mexican labor authorities, the new company informed workers that it would both terminate the labor union agreement and rehire only some of the workers. This was the primary cause of the work stoppage or wildcat strike which began on February 16 in Empalme, Sonora.

A Union With Heroic Traditions

Mexican railroad workers have a long and heroic history. Many railroad workers fought in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 against the dictators Porfirio Diaz and Victoriano Huerta. Later in the early years of the century they formed craft unions modeled on the U.S. railroad brotherhoods, and in the 1920s joined together in a Confederation of Railroad Brotherhoods. In 1933 the railroad unions joined together to create an industrial railroad workers' union: the Mexican Railroad Workers Union (Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Republica Mexicana or STFRM).

But the Mexican Railroad Workers Union of the 1930s and 40s was too independent for the government. In 1948 the Mexican government intervened in the union with gangsters, police and the military and imposed a new loyal union leader: Jesus Diaz de Leon, known as "El Charro" (the Dude). El Charro and his successors worked with the government and the state railroad company and private lines to keep the workers down.

Nevertheless in 1958 and 1959 the Mexican railroad workers rebelled, overthrowing the government imposed leadership, and electing Demetrio Vallejo to the top office of general secretary. Vallejo led the union in a national general strike which briefly paralyzed the country.

The government put down the strike with the Mexican Army, killing at least three workers and detaining tens of thousands. Union halls were turned into jails to hold the strikers and local leaders. The state-company fired 10,000 workers. While thousands were arrested and held for only a day or two, 800 workers were held for longer periods of time. Some 150 were charged with being Communist agitators, 500 workers went to trial, and many received prison sentences. The top leaders received sentences of 11 years.

The military suppression of the 1959 strike devastated the union. After the strike, a new leadership took power in the union called the "Heroes de Nacozari," so-called for a railroad worker hero who in 1907 had saved the town of Nacozari, Sonora from being blown up by a careening load of dynamite. The Heroes de Nacozari, essentially a pro-government and pro-employer group held power in the union until the 1990s when the Mexican government began to change its economic polices and put forward its program of privatizing the railroad.

A Union in Crisis

The 1990s saw a vicious and violent struggle for control of the railroad workers union by rival factions. In the course of the struggle Lorenzo Duarte Garcia who had been general secretary of the union from 1989-1992 died in a mysterious automobile accident in June of 1993. Many believe he was murdered. Just three weeks later on July 17, 1993 Praxedis Fraustro Esquivel, then general secretary of the union, was assassinated in what remains an unsolved crime.

The death of those two officials cleared the way for Victor Felix Flores Morales to become head of the Mexican Railroad workers Union. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has ruled Mexico for the last 70 years, then helped to elect Flores to Congress. Victor Flores also served for a year as head of the Congress of Labor, Mexico's national labor federation.

A Rank and File Movement

Salvador Zarco, formerly the top officer of Local 15 which represents workers in the Mexico City railroad yard (Terminal Valle de Mexico), organized the Committee to Defend the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Zarco and scores of members of his local had been among the first group of railroad workers to be fired when the privatization process began. Zarco believes that management fired them to eliminate a group which criticized and opposed the government's reorganization of the railroads.

Zarco and other fired workers began to organize demonstrations against the forced retirements, the firings and the attacks on the contract. Zarco wrote pamphlets explaining the issues of privatization, and distributed them to the union membership. The Committee started a newspaper--"El Petardo" (The Firecracker)--which they distributed throughout the country.

Zarco and the Committee argue that the government, the labor authorities and the new private owners have violated the Mexican Federal Labor Law. The Federal Labor Law's Article 41 states clearly that, "A change of employer will not affect the labor relations of the firm or establishment." So, says Zarco, the companies should not have the power to fire workers, end their contracts, deny their seniority and lower their wages.

In November of 1997 Zarco and the Committee organized a 2,000-person caravan, made up mostly of workers from Locals 15 and 16 in central Mexico, who traveled from Guadalajara, Jalisco to Nogales, Sonora talking with other railroad workers and distributing literature, and trying to convince the unions members to resist the attack on their jobs and their contract. One of the place they stopped was in Empalme, Sonora where three months later workers decided to take action and stop the trains.

Once the strike in Local 8 in Empalme, Sonora broke out, Zarco helped to coordinate relations between the strikers, other unions, and the political opposition in congress.

Settlement of the Strike

Local 8 had begun the strike on February 16 as a wildcat, but after two weeks Victor Flores had spoken out, and taken the strike under the union's wing. In the first week of March in negotiations between the old state company FERRONALES, the new private company FERROMEX, the Mexican Railroad Workers Union (STFRM), and STFRM Local 8 of Empalme, the companies agreed to protect some of the workers jobs.

According to Local 8 general secretary (top officer) Carlos Figueroa, the companies agreed to protect the jobs of 86 workers on the Nogales-Nacozari short line, 10 office workers, 15 warehouse workers, 80 Piggy Back workers. In addition, FERRONALES will continue to operate the repair shops, which do not form part of the privatization deal, and will keep 1,200 shop workers on the payroll.

Still hundreds of workers had been pressured into signing their severance papers or had been forced into early retirement. Many await rehiring, but with no guarantees for their future. In addition to the problems on the Pacific-North Line, there are also similar issues on the Ojinaga-Topolobampo line and the Coahuila-Durango line, the latter bought by Penoles.

Victor Flores, head of STFRM, has said that if the new owner does not rehire most of the workers, he will call another strike against the Pacific-North Line. "If it is necessary to stop the trains from leaving," he told reporters on March 10, "then we will do so." However, until the strike led by Local 8 in Empalme, Flores had been an advocate of privatization, a supporter of the state company and the new owners, and a poor representative of his union's members, and many union members feel he is not to be believed.

While the settlement of the February-March strike was less than a complete victory, Locals 8 and 40 and the Committee to Defend the Contract did succeed in saving some workers' jobs and keeping some under the old contract. If nothing else, the Mexican railroad workers showed they would not go down to defeat without a struggle.

Dan LaBotz is a former truck driver and was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. He has worked as a staff person for several unions and is now a member of the National Writers Union (UAW). La Botz is the editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis, an electronic news bulletin on Mexican unions and workers, and the author of several books on U.S. and Mexican politics and labor unions. He is best known among labor union activists for his book A Troublemaker's Handbook: How to Organize Where You Work and Win (Detroit: Labor Notes, 1991). At present, he is finishing a Ph.D. in U.S. history at the University of Cincinnati where he also teaches.

Empalme: Town of Railroads and Baseball

Empalme, Sonora has two claims to fame: railroads and baseball. Founded in 1905 by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company (Sud Pacifico), the town was dominated by American railroad managers, foremen and skilled workers who lived in their own colony.

Empalme--the word means "junction"--grew up around the railroad yards and shop. A huge locomotive stands at the entrance to the town. The Mexican Railroad Workers Union Local 8 and the railroad union store are among the town's principal buildings. In front of the union hall stands the statue of a railroad worker with an oil can in his hand: the famous Hero of Nacozari, the man who gave his life to save the town of Nacozari by diverting a load of dynamite. Next to the union hall is the recently opened railroad museum.

But when not working on the railroads, the men of Empalme played baseball. Between 1930 and 1960, Empalme had the best professional baseball team in Mexico, "Los Rieleros de Empalme,"the "Empalme Railroad Workers."

During the 1940s, 50s and 60s several Empalme "beisbolistas" crossed the border to play in the farm teams of the United States. Federico Bojorques, now retired, told me he played in the minor leagues for seven years in Florida, Tennessee and Yakima, Washington.

The people of Empalme take particular pride in the fact that three of their baseball players have been chosen to play in the"Seleccion Cubana de Beisbol," the Cuban all-star team. One of those famous Empalme players, Esteban Angulo, heads the Drinking Water Commission of Empalme, an important post in this arid town.

Lydia Cano: Railroad Widow

Lydia Cano, today a 66-year old woman, grew up in Empalme at a time when Mexicans were forbidden from entering the American railroad managers' colony. "But as a little girl I snuck in there to go skating," she says, "because they had the only sidewalks and pavement. I could get away with it, because I had a light complexion, but if some Indian girl with dark skin and a braid went in there, they chased her out. The Americans kept to themselves. They didn't want us to be in their area. We were forbidden to enter."

Later Lydia Cano married, and her husband worked on the railroad. When the railroad workers struck in 1959, Lydia Cano, then 27-years old, supported the strike. But the Mexican Army arrived and broke the strike. "This union hall where we are talking," she told me, "was used as a jail for the striking workers."

In February, when Local 8 went out on strike, Lydia Cano was there once again, organizing the retirees and the women's "march of the pots and pans." "The women of Empalme, together with their children, were very brave," says Cano.

She worked with the union in the strike to help protect the jobs of railroad workers. "All we want," she says, "is that they treat the railroad workers as they deserve."

Cano has two children who live in Tucson, Arizona just a day's car trip to the north, and two grandchildren who live in Tijuana but go to college at the University of California in San Diego. But Lydia Cano remains in Empalme, in the shadows of the great railroad repair shops, on the side of the union. She tells me, "Empalme symbolizes struggle."

Mayor Jesus Avila Godoy: Railroad Worker

Jesus Avila Godoy, the Mayor of Empalme, tells me, "My father was a railroad worker, I have two brothers who retired as railroad worker, and I was a railroad worker for four years."

Later Avila Godoy went to college and became a school teacher and an activist in the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE), and in its democratic reform movement, the Coordinating Committee of the Teachers Union (la CNTE).

Avila Godoy's interest in political reform led him to join the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and on that ticket he was elected mayor.

During the strike Jesus Avila Godoy supported Local 8 and the strikers, trying to prevent the police or army from being used against the workers. "Ford Motor Company tried to move some trains, and that caused serious problems," he says. Avila Godoy worked with other local mayors to keep the Federal government from sending in the army to crush the strike.

He is glad that the settlement saved some jobs, but still many problems remain. "We're very concerned about the loss of jobs because of what's happening to the railroads," says Avila Godoy. "The railroad repair shops here with their 1,200 workers don't form part of the concession. But what happens when the new private owners take over? We are concerned that while the shops will remain open, they will no longer be used to make repairs, and gradually as the work dries up the workers will be laid off. We've been talking to private entrepreneurs to see if we can find another use for these shops to keep people working."

Avila Godoy explains that as mayor he wants to see the government and the companies do three things: protect the workers' jobs, protect the contract, and treat workers with absolute respect.