More than 250 employees of a factory that manufactures beer bottles for Corona (amongst others) in San Luis Potosí have been fired for associating with a legally recognised independent union. The factory's owners are also purging the factory of sympathisers of the sacked workers.
Workers protest their firing in San Luis Potosí
Almost two years of unionising activity had resulted in workers ousting the corrupt, mainstream Confederación Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos (CROC) union from the shopfloor of the Industrial Vidriera Potosí (IVP) glass factory and replacing it with the independent Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de la Empresa IVP (SUTEIVP). The union's first action was to gain a 19% payrise off the employers: Grupo Modelo, who export the weak and tasteless Corona beer internationally, as well as selling a host of beer brands in Mexico.
Upon being informed of their redundancies, the sacked union activists (which included anyone with a delegated post in the SUTEIVP) attempted to a hold a legally-binding strike, only for the national labour abritration panel (the Junta Federal de Conciliación y Arbitraje [JFCyA]) to ban it and block workers from occupying the factory building. In response, the SUTEIVP have erected a permanent picket outside the factory gates.
Grupo Modelo is now cracking down on support for the newly jobless SUTEIVP shopfloor activists. CCTV has been installed in order to monitor their stall and keep records of workers who approach it, and informers have been placed on company transportation to and from the site, with workers being hauled in front of management if "they so much as open a [bus] window and greet picketers".
IVP workers have also been threatened with redundancy for refusing to sign a contract approving the reinstatement of CROC representation. CROC are affiliated to the state-run Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (CTM), an organism that is entrenched in the Mexican political culture of "charrismo" and mafiosi-esque corruption. The recent closure of the Grupo Navarra maquiladora in Puebla was also after the victory of an independent union against CROC in factory elections.
SUTEIVP have organised marches from San Luis Potosí to Mexico City (over 400km) and established a permanent presence outside the headquarters of Grupo Modelo and its sister companies, the US embassy and the JFCyA offices in the capital, with whom they have lodged an appeal against their ruling. Internationally, it calls for a boycott of Modelo products, which to readers outside Mexico will mean giving up yuppy favourite Corona beer.
Comments
Does anybody have a direct
Does anybody have a direct contact? Please publish or PM me.
There's going to be a corona concert series: people can target it.
Here's an online target:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/business/media/27adco.html?ref=americas
Found it myself: SINDICATO
Found it myself:
SINDICATO UNICO DE TRABAJADORES DE LA EMPRESA INDUSTRIA VIDRIERA DEL POTOSI, S.A. DE CV.
Margarita Castro, no. 233, col. Ricardo B. Anaya, teléfono 1663306,
correo electrónico: [email protected]
http://grupomodeloquieredestruirsindicato.blogspot.com/
On June 12, 2008, The Wall
On June 12, 2008, The Wall Street Journal stated that Anheuser-Busch InBev, which owns a non-controlling 50% stake of Grupo Modelo S.A. de C.V., may attempt to acquire the remaining 50%.
Grupo Modelo Chairman and CEO Carlos Fernandez Resigns From Anheuser-Busch Board.
Fri Jun 20, 2008 9:18am EDT
ST. LOUIS, June 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Carlos Fernandez G., chairman and chief executive officer of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo, S.A. de C.V., yesterday informed Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. (NYSE: BUD) of his resignation from the American brewer's board of directors, effective immediately.
Based in St. Louis, Anheuser-Busch is the leading American brewer, holding a 48.5 percent share of U.S. beer sales. The company brews the world's largest-selling beers, Budweiser and Bud Light. Anheuser-Busch also owns a 50 percent direct and indirect interest in Modelo, Mexico's leading brewer, and a 27 percent share in China brewer Tsingtao.
Grupo Modelo, founded in 1922, is the leader in Mexico in beer production, distribution and marketing, with 63.0% of the total (domestic and export)
market share, as of December 31, 2008. It has seven brewing plants in Mexico, with a total annual installed capacity of 60 million hectoliters.
It is the top selling beer from Mexico and is one of the top five selling beers worldwide. Available in over 150 countries, it is also Mexico's leading export brand. In 1997, Corona Extra became the top-selling imported beer in the United States, surpassing Heineken.
I am from Mexico and live in the united states, to my perception this is an intend on behalf of anheuser-busch InBev (AB InBev) to take away our sovereignty by assimilating one of Mexico's most productive companies and putting in place another major u.s. corporation thus creating a monopoly. Heineken from holland is already triying to do the same with FEMSA in Monterrey, northern Mexico. We should be focusing on stoping these terrible entities from taking on our national interests, instead, they divert our attention to these type of situations that probably are being manufactured by them so that we attack each other, we weaken ourselves and finally they (Corporations) take control. Don Julio and Jose Cuervo belong to DiaGeo (britain), Herradura to brown&forman (u.s.), Patron to bacardi (u.s.), Souza to beam,Inc. (u.s.), the question is then, Are we able to see beyond the closer and confusing reality? I call that perception.
Thanks for posting this
Thanks for posting this article Caiman