MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday that he expects telecommunications firm Telmex and its workers to reach a deal later in the day or on Saturday.
The trade union of Telmex, which is controlled by the family of tycoon Carlos Slim, went on strike on Thursday for the first time in nearly four decades after failing to reach a deal with the company.
“(Slim) has told me that (Telmex) has come out ahead of competitors because of its workers. So I think they will reach an agreement,” Lopez Obrador told reporters during in a regular news conference.
Workers, who hung red and black flags outside the main Telmex office in Mexico City on Thursday, said negotiations broke down over several issues they said violated a collective bargaining agreement, including outsourcing work, nearly 2,000 unfilled vacancies that were previously negotiated, and changes to contractual benefits for new hires, the union said.
Members of the union known as STRM for the Spanish acronym of its name, the Mexican Telephone Workers Union, which represents about 60,000 workers, were voting on Thursday on a proposal to create a working group comprised of company and union representatives along with government mediators.
The group would aim to find a solution to the dispute within 20 days, according to a document shown on the union’s YouTube channel.
(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez)
