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 Business News | August 2005 
New Labor Boss Takes Over
 Julián Sánchez - El Universal
| | A former PRI lawmaker will head the nation's largest group of unions after the death of Rodríguez Alcaine. |
After being sworn in, the new leader of the nation's powerful workers' syndicate pledged on Tuesday to support Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) head and presidential hopeful Roberto Madrazo.
Joaquín Gamboa Pascoe, a former PRI lawmaker, was voted to take the reins of the CTM early Tuesday morning, despite dissent from Carlos Romero Deschamps, head of the powerful oil workers' union. The selection was made behind closed doors by a board of national labor leaders.
Gamboa, 78, is taking over after former CTM leader Leonardo Rodríguez Alcaine died last Saturday. Rodríguez Alcaine was also a stout PRI supporter.
During the confirmation ceremony on Tuesday, from which Romero Deschamps was conspicuously absent, Gamboa said he would support Madrazo over the other PRI figure gunning for the party's presidential candidacy in 2006, State of Mexico Gov. Arturo Montiel.
Montiel was picked by a group of PRI dissidents to run against Madrazo for the party's candidacy.
The CTM, which has 5 million members, has always been a critical source of support for the PRI because it can lock in a large block of voters for the party, which ruled Mexico until President Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) won in 2000. The confederation is made up of over 90 individual unions and syndicates from sugar cane cutters to state workers which have long-established relationships with the PRI.
In past decades, union leaders used their clout to coax favors from the PRI, while guaranteeing the PRI millions of votes in return. In recent years, however, cracks have begun to appear in the confederation, and votes from the unions, while still overwhelmingly for the PRI, are not as uniform as before. Other unions once belonging to the CTM have broken away in recent years.
The CTM has been criticized for being more concerned about drumming up support for the PRI than raising workers' salaries. In Mexico City, minimum wage is about US4 a day. |
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