El trabajo industrial moderno depende de la cooperación afinada de muchos trabajadores bajo el co... more El trabajo industrial moderno depende de la cooperación afinada de muchos trabajadores bajo el control de la empresa. Sin embargo, lo que aparece como un derecho natural del capital, para los trabajadores aparece como el control del capital sobre su comportamiento, ya sea que estén de acuerdo (acomodación) o no (resistencia). El artículo está inspirado en el trabajo de James C. Scott, quien ha señalado la importancia de las "formas de resistencia cotidianas". La resistencia generalmente toma dos formas, colectiva (sindicatos y huelgas) e individual (comportamientos). En la literatura mexicana la línea divisoria entre el control del capital y el control del trabajo se ha estudiado principalmente en su forma colectiva. Este artículo analiza las resistencias individuales de los trabajadores ferroviarios en los Ferrocarriles Unidos de Yucatán, durante los años revolucionarios en México y en la Península, y muestra cómo se alimentaron entre sí para aumentar gradualmente la esfera de control laboral sobre el lugar de trabajo. Los trabajadores se permitieron ser descuidados, beber en el trabajo, robar o ignorar las reglas del tiempo, ser beligerantes con la autoridad, sobre todo evitando el castigo más extremo: ser despedidos permanentemente. En este proceso, los datos sugieren que los trabajadores ferroviarios que colaboraron juntos en el patio de ferrocarriles se involucraron principalmente en la resistencia colectiva mientras que los que sacaban los trenes participaron principalmente en la resistencia individual. Sin embargo, en última instancia, ambos grupos se beneficiaron de la interacción de ambos conjuntos de acciones, al menos hasta 1940.
Abstract This article examines the evolution of written work rules on the railroads in Mexico fro... more Abstract This article examines the evolution of written work rules on the railroads in Mexico from 1883 to 1923, looking at three sets of work rules from the Porfiriato and three from the Revolution. Just as foreign investors, British and American, and foreign skilled workers, mostly American, played an important role in the establishment of Mexico’s first railroad companies, these same foreign businesses brought their written rule books, necessary for the impersonal management of labor in companies with large, diverse, and a far-flung labor force like the railroads, to Mexico. The first rules are often Spanish translations of the English-language originals and paid no attention to the workers’ opinions. Through the Porfiriato, however, Mexican railroad workers unionized, in part following the pattern of the American Brotherhoods, and their unions, through labor activism and strikes, fought to transform work rules from company commands to negotiated terrain, with some success before the Revolution broke out. When the Revolution did break out, however, it radically transformed the terrain of work rules, first because railroad companies, even before they collapsed in the face of revolutionary violence, lost the support of the state that they so needed to impose their work rules, and second, because the new state that emerged from the Revolution allied with organized workers to provide them with many of their revolutionary demands: legal trade unions, mandated work benefits, and collective bargaining. Thus, newly powerful railroad unions through strikes and activism and in alliance with the new state made work rules not only negotiated terrain between companies and workers, but terrain in which workers and their unions held the upper hand. As a consequence, the work rules of 1923, where unions are powerful and impose significant benefits to workers, bear little resemblance to those of 1883, where unions are not recognized by the companies, which felt no obligation to provide any benefits at all.
Real wages describe changes in the material standard of living of wage earners. This article revi... more Real wages describe changes in the material standard of living of wage earners. This article reviews the national experience of Mexico through the twentieth century, surveying more than thirty studies from the late Porfiriato to the opening of the twenty-first century. The data suggest that real wages follow a long-term cyclical pattern of alternate periods of declining and rising wages. As a consequence, twentieth-century Mexico was not kind to workers because the gains of one period seem to be offset by falls in the next. Wage trends in Mexico and the rest of Latin America seemed to follow similar paths, except during the years following Mexico's revolution, when a new labor regime especially benefited the country's wage earners. Following a significant downturn in the 1940s, workers in Mexico and Latin America experienced a favorable period of income growth during the postwar boom. The debt crisis of the 1980s induced a long decline that continued through the early years of globalization. 1. The authors thank Sarah Koning for research assistance and Jonathan Brown, Alan Knight, and Fred Wallace for useful suggestions on earlier drafts.
El trabajo industrial moderno depende de la cooperación afinada de muchos trabajadores bajo el co... more El trabajo industrial moderno depende de la cooperación afinada de muchos trabajadores bajo el control de la empresa. Sin embargo, lo que aparece como un derecho natural del capital, para los trabajadores aparece como el control del capital sobre su comportamiento, ya sea que estén de acuerdo (acomodación) o no (resistencia). El artículo está inspirado en el trabajo de James C. Scott, quien ha señalado la importancia de las "formas de resistencia cotidianas". La resistencia generalmente toma dos formas, colectiva (sindicatos y huelgas) e individual (comportamientos). En la literatura mexicana la línea divisoria entre el control del capital y el control del trabajo se ha estudiado principalmente en su forma colectiva. Este artículo analiza las resistencias individuales de los trabajadores ferroviarios en los Ferrocarriles Unidos de Yucatán, durante los años revolucionarios en México y en la Península, y muestra cómo se alimentaron entre sí para aumentar gradualmente la esfera de control laboral sobre el lugar de trabajo. Los trabajadores se permitieron ser descuidados, beber en el trabajo, robar o ignorar las reglas del tiempo, ser beligerantes con la autoridad, sobre todo evitando el castigo más extremo: ser despedidos permanentemente. En este proceso, los datos sugieren que los trabajadores ferroviarios que colaboraron juntos en el patio de ferrocarriles se involucraron principalmente en la resistencia colectiva mientras que los que sacaban los trenes participaron principalmente en la resistencia individual. Sin embargo, en última instancia, ambos grupos se beneficiaron de la interacción de ambos conjuntos de acciones, al menos hasta 1940.
Abstract This article examines the evolution of written work rules on the railroads in Mexico fro... more Abstract This article examines the evolution of written work rules on the railroads in Mexico from 1883 to 1923, looking at three sets of work rules from the Porfiriato and three from the Revolution. Just as foreign investors, British and American, and foreign skilled workers, mostly American, played an important role in the establishment of Mexico’s first railroad companies, these same foreign businesses brought their written rule books, necessary for the impersonal management of labor in companies with large, diverse, and a far-flung labor force like the railroads, to Mexico. The first rules are often Spanish translations of the English-language originals and paid no attention to the workers’ opinions. Through the Porfiriato, however, Mexican railroad workers unionized, in part following the pattern of the American Brotherhoods, and their unions, through labor activism and strikes, fought to transform work rules from company commands to negotiated terrain, with some success before the Revolution broke out. When the Revolution did break out, however, it radically transformed the terrain of work rules, first because railroad companies, even before they collapsed in the face of revolutionary violence, lost the support of the state that they so needed to impose their work rules, and second, because the new state that emerged from the Revolution allied with organized workers to provide them with many of their revolutionary demands: legal trade unions, mandated work benefits, and collective bargaining. Thus, newly powerful railroad unions through strikes and activism and in alliance with the new state made work rules not only negotiated terrain between companies and workers, but terrain in which workers and their unions held the upper hand. As a consequence, the work rules of 1923, where unions are powerful and impose significant benefits to workers, bear little resemblance to those of 1883, where unions are not recognized by the companies, which felt no obligation to provide any benefits at all.
Real wages describe changes in the material standard of living of wage earners. This article revi... more Real wages describe changes in the material standard of living of wage earners. This article reviews the national experience of Mexico through the twentieth century, surveying more than thirty studies from the late Porfiriato to the opening of the twenty-first century. The data suggest that real wages follow a long-term cyclical pattern of alternate periods of declining and rising wages. As a consequence, twentieth-century Mexico was not kind to workers because the gains of one period seem to be offset by falls in the next. Wage trends in Mexico and the rest of Latin America seemed to follow similar paths, except during the years following Mexico's revolution, when a new labor regime especially benefited the country's wage earners. Following a significant downturn in the 1940s, workers in Mexico and Latin America experienced a favorable period of income growth during the postwar boom. The debt crisis of the 1980s induced a long decline that continued through the early years of globalization. 1. The authors thank Sarah Koning for research assistance and Jonathan Brown, Alan Knight, and Fred Wallace for useful suggestions on earlier drafts.
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