Organized Labour and Politics in Mexico: Changes, Continuities and Contradictions

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Middlebrook's Organized Labour and Politics in Mexico: A relevant question now would then be if the evaluations of Progresa-Oportunidades have shown positive results in increasing the educational levels of the ex-recipients what is impeding the state from alleviating poverty? The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which the weakness of the institutional capacities of the Mexican state has impeded the ccts from enabling the poor to obtain sustained income in the labour market that would allow them to move out of poverty in urban zones. We chose urban poverty for three main reasons: First, in Latin American countries in absolute terms there are more poor people in the urban zones than in rural areas, since the majority of the population now lives in cities World Bank, Second, people in towns cannot depend on self-produced consumption in the way that their rural counterparts can, and this is the reason why they become more dependant on the state provision of resources and services to increase their capabilities to obtain sustained income in the labour market.

Third, due to the high levels of labour informality that exist in Latin America, the main concern of state policy regarding employment is that poor people have sustained income generation, which is the reason why the relationship with the institutional capacities of the state regarding their opportunities in the labour market is more direct in urban zones.

Our results show that the weakness of the institutional capacities of the Mexican state makes poverty alleviation much less likely to occur because it impedes the provision of training and labour market policies that complement the programme and enable the poor to obtain a sustained income.

The paper is divided into five main sections. In the first, we review the environment that paved the way for the structural adjustment reforms that were implemented in the s and its effect on the institutional capacities and the welfare model of the Mexican state. In the second section, we review the way in which the ccts have evolved in the last three decades. In the third section, we present our methodology. In the fourth section we analyse the Mexican labour market.

The fifth section concludes the paper. The structural adjustment and its effects on the institutional capacities of the state and the welfare system. In the post-war period ss , known as a period of 'stabilizing development', Mexico's economic development strategy relied upon state intervention to encourage the industrialization of the country, mainly of urban areas, and protecting domestic manufacturers from international competition by means of isi programmes.

During this period, one of the main political actors was the Partido Revolucionario Institucional pri political party, which ruled Mexico from to In the course of the stabilizing development period, this political party built a corporatist and clientelist relationship with the private sector and different social actors, directing social protection schemes only to those well-organized enough to demand them, such as state workers the armed forces, the judiciary, and so on and the formal workers of the private sector, excluding workers in the informal sector.

In addition, since basic services such as education and health are considered as rights in the Mexican Constitution, the state complemented that model with the universal provision of those services and universal subsidies for rural and urban areas Scott, However, not only was the universal coverage of basic services never achieved, but also the quality of the services provided was low.

Notwithstanding, the isi programmes and the quasi-universal welfare system implemented from the s to the s were, to some extent, successful. Mexico's annual labour productivity growth rate was around 2. Nonetheless, the social rights provided were, on the one hand, just a way of keeping the different social groups under control to keep the isi system working and on the other hand, the industrial policies could not find a sector that could compete strongly internationally Moreno-Brid, Pardinas and Ros, Moreover, although the country produced much of the merchandise that was traded, the technology with which the products were produced was imported.

In the late s, Mexico was attempting to replace the technology as well.

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However, the industrial programmes of the state tended to "operate in combination with regressive or only mildly progressive tax structures and low tax revenues" Teichman, Most of the Latin American countries have historically suffered from the resource curse. Mexico has been no exception; the decline of oil prices at the beginning of the s joined with the globalization of the economy forced the political authorities to implement measures to control the macroeconomic stability of the countries.

After the collapse of oil prices, tied to rising inflation and high interest rates on its external debt, Mexico confronted its most serious economic crisis since its birth as a nation-state in , with poverty and socio-economic inequality as the most prevalent effects, which implanted the belief that the conservative-informal welfare model was exhausted.

Thus, conditioned and encouraged by the imf, Latin American countries initiated a process of state reform that would mark the end of the conservative-informal state and begin the era of the 'liberal-informal state' Barrientos, Seeking to reduce the huge fiscal deficit, lower inflation rates, address macroeconomic instability and adjust to the new global order, the Mexican government cut public spending, eliminating most of the state subsidies, reduced the size and scope of the state by dismantling or privatizing state-run companies, and opened up the economic and finance sectors.

The problem was, as Fukuyama pointed out, that "in the process of reducing the scope of the state those reforms decreased its strength or generated demands for new types of state capabilities that were either weak or nonexistent" Fukuyama, During the industrializing period, the state's revenue was mainly levied on industrial production, natural resources mainly oil-related profits and international trade with special schemes for workers in the primary sector and tax exemptions for corporations that invested in key industrial sectors and indirect taxation was based on a single turnover tax Alvarez, The fiscal system was part of the first generation reforms during the early s and it was reformed to enhance the openness of the economy and achieve macroeconomic stability and fairness in income distribution.

However, the tax system is still far from providing the Mexican state with enough non-oil revenues to fulfil its functions, and in relation to the gdp it is around 4. The main reasons for this have been the following. First, the influence of the international and local private sector, which had greater participation in areas previously reserved for state-owned enterprises, to which the state "grants extensive tax preferential treatment, currently accounting for about half of tax revenue" Alvarez, After the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement nafta , there has been a focus on fostering the growth of the manufacturing sector as the main strategy for generating employment.

Therefore, corporate income tax reductions and duty free vat exemptions on imports of machinery, equipment, parts and material have been granted in order to "set a competitive level against trading partners: Politicians under strong political competition direct more resources to those regions with high voter turnout, or leave segments of the population untaxed. Moreover, the federal government has focused on trying to decentralize the pull of federal revenue collection without helping or encouraging states and municipalities to improve their institutional capacities first.

For instance, in state governments were empowered to tax individual income obtained from professional services, leases of fixed property, disposal of property, and business activity. Nevertheless, "by only three state governments - Chihuahua, Guanajuato, and Oaxaca - had already implemented some form of local cellular tax" Alvarez, As a result, the Mexican state has been unable to mobilize enough resources towards social needs and the generation of employment despite the fact that public expenditure has increased in recent years.

Therefore, the state has had to implement a residual welfare model directed only at the poorest, who have to be involved in participating in the solution to their own problems. Moreover, due to its weakly institutionalized bureaucratic apparatus, the state has been unable to find sectors in which it could have a competitive advantage and this has impeded employment generation.

The bureaucratic or civil service reform, on the other hand, was part of the second generation reforms, which included governance considerations mainly pushed by the World Bank. However, the patronage and clientelist legacies and issues with the design and implementation of the civil service have constrained the development of an effective bureaucratic apparatus. The public sector reforms in Mexico were always restricted to some degree by the pri political party, whose officials used the resources of the state to reward party members and party activists for political support rather than to represent the interests of society.

The civil service reform was part of the Presidential Agenda of Good Government, which aimed at building institutions for markets. The new law only applied to around 40 workers at the federal level, leaving aside the unionized officials and those who work in offices where the state and the private sector share control. Therefore, it is a limited law if we take into account the fact that the number of civil employees of the whole Federal Public Administration is more than 1 , Grindle, Moreover, the traditional appointing methods are still used; the governmental officers have found gaps in the law to keep appointing positions.

Dussauge found that many workers are appointed using Article 34 of the lspc, which "was originally introduced to allow for non-competitive, temporary appointments, needed in case of emergencies and other exceptional circumstances" Dussauge, In particular, he "provided additional requirements for using Article 34 of the lspc, in order to limit the number of non-competitive appointments that were apparently being made for partisan reasons in most cases" Dussauge, However, he opened a window to patronage and clientelism by leaving every ministry in charge of the implementation of lspc without clear rules of inspection, constraining the development of an effective bureaucratic apparatus.

In the local governments the situation was even worse. For instance, in the case of the states by , only eleven out of the 32 had introduced a lspc.

The situation of the municipalities is the worst of the three levels of government. Cabrero and Zabaleta found that most of the municipalities in Mexico, even the urban and metropolitan ones, lack important basic rules and norms such as those that regulate basic aspects of the political structure or those of citizen participation in the activities of the municipalities.

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Moreover, most of the municipalities still lack civil service systems that provide corporate coherence and allow the public servants to gain experience as well. This, in consequence, brings about feeble intergovernmental relations between the different levels of government By the early s, the goals of the structural reforms had been accomplished, having been successful in lowering inflation, reducing fiscal deficits and to some extent income inequality as well. According to Handelman, in Mexico economic growth was also stimulated for the first time since the Mexican miracle Handelman, The consequences of the structural reforms put pressure on Latin American leaders to find ways to tackle inequality and poverty.

The introduction in the early s of the ccts was one of the main responses to these pressures, especially in Latin American countries, which have some of the highest levels of inequality in the world. The main goal of the programme was to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty by helping the poor to acquire capabilities that would 79 improve their chances of obtaining a sustained income in the labour market.

In the educational component, the objectives of the programme are, as we shall see later, very similar to those in Progresa-Oportunidades: The programme has been successful in achieving most of its objectives; however, its success comes from the strong institutionalization of the labour market, which has been materialized in the reduction in the levels of labour informalization and economic insecurity.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean eclac , in Brazil since , the annual employment rates have been higher than the unemployment rates, while in Mexico since , the annual employment rates have been lower than the unemployment rates According to De Andrade et al.

Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado was the president who started the implementation of the pro-market structural reforms.

However, it was Salinas who consolidated them. The programme included food support aid, credits to farmers, grants and scholarships for children, building and refurbishing public schools, communal electrification, and other similar measures. However, the programme was criticized as being corrupt and clientelist, and it was used more as a political tool for electoral purposes than as an effective poverty-reduction programme Molinar and Weldon, Under Salinas, gdp recovered, growing 2.

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Ernesto Zedillo therefore inherited a serious political and monetary crisis. In this context, a new means-tested programme was launched with the intention of raising the human capital of the extreme poor through the provision of cash conditional upon a change in their behaviour as a way to alleviate poverty. In , Zedillo announced the start of Progresa an Education, Health and Nutrition Programme supplanting Pronasol, a programme with similar goals but more concerned with the causes rather than the consequences of poverty.

The programme provided a cash transfer delivered every two months to extremely poor families conditional upon the school attendance of their children, who had to be enrolled between the third grade of primary school and the third grade of secondary school, and health checks for the whole family, especially pregnant and nursing women, on a regular basis. The general idea behind the programme was to provide a minimum income to the poorest so that they could invest it in the education and health of their children who, once educated and healthy, would acquire capabilities that would enable them to keep on obtaining an income in the labour market in the mid and long-term to move out of poverty by their own efforts Levy, Accordingly, Progresa was first directed at rural areas, where the incidence of poverty was higher at that time, and using a well-supported criterion to identify the right families and avoid clientelism the targeting methodology comprised three phases: In addition, in order to empower women and change their role within society, the cash transfer was 81 given to the mother of the household, and in order to encourage girls to stay in school, after elementary school the amount of the cash transfer was higher for them than for boys.

When Progresa was launched in , it covered around families in rural areas of twelve states.

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By the end of Zedillo's term of office, it covered almost 2 families living in marginal rural areas all over the country. Due to the good initial results of the programme, Vicente Fox not only maintained the programme but also expanded it. Nowadays, the programme, re-named Oportunidades in , covers more than 6 families, in both rural and urban areas. Fox took over in representing the right political wing pan, after 70 years of the hegemony of the pri, in a stable political, economic and social context.

This takeover by the right-wing party, however, is far from being the consolidation of democracy in Mexico. The main changes that the programme incorporated were the coverage of urban areas, grants to students in high school, a pension for elderly people and an official definition of poverty.

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However, when he faced the food crisis in and the financial crisis in , he not only continued spending on social programmes and maintained Oportunidades, but also expanded the programme making three main additions that were part of a strategy which he labelled: Vivir Mejor 'To Live Better': As we have seen, the programme has kept growing; however, it is still financed from the oil profits and loans from international institutions of development due to the weakness of the fiscal institutions.

Our methodology was a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods and can be divided into four main parts. This e-book examines the alterations, continuities and contradictions characterizing labour politics in Mexico because the Eighties. The realm of labor and getting older is complicated and multi-faceted.

Its starting place is shaped by means of a wide range of disciplines that either give a contribution to the complexity of its knowing, and provide fertile promise for study, improvement, and alertness within the years forward. With an ever-growing inhabitants of older staff, a lot of whom are suggesting they'll most likely proceed to paintings previous conventional retirement age, it turns into the entire extra vital that we bring up our efforts to improve a extra thorough realizing of older staff, the character in their interactions with paintings and the enterprises for which they paintings, and the method of transitioning to retirement.

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