Where the SINDSEP was “born out of struggles” against an authoritarian regime, Mexico City's municipal employee union was a pillar of support for Mexico's authoritarian regime for over sixty years. Its passive organizational culture, hierarchical internal structures, and limited leadership competition would all distinguish it from its Brazilian counterpart. This chapter explores the consequences of these differences for protest behavior. Although in general these characteristics made the union's leaders less capable of sustaining protest when they attempted to do so, the union's inability to process internal conflicts through democratic competition also produced a high proportion of protests associated with internal dissent. A final section analyzes union behavior more broadly, using process-tracing over time and additional quantitative analysis.

PUTTING THE SUTGDF IN CONTEXT: PUBLIC-SECTOR UNIONISM IN MEXICO

Public-Sector Unionism: Brazil and Mexico Compared

Public-sector unionism in Mexico shares important similarities with Brazil. Mexico has a similar rate of unionization (43 percent of nonagricultural employment versus 44 percent in Brazil). Public employees account for approximately 14 percent of Mexican nonagricultural employment as of 2000; the same percentage as in Brazil (Wilkie, Aleman, and Ortega, 2002: 407). By 1999, roughly half of all unionized workers in Mexico were public employees. My own data recorded more public-sector unions than private-sector unions in every case. Public-sector unions also had higher rates of protest. In Mexico City, for example, public-sector unions averaged 13.2 protests per year compared to 3 protests for private-sector unions.