Spouses of workers of the public power company Luz y Fuerza de centro staged a protest in Mexico City. Photo EFE


President Felipe Calderon dissolved public power company Luz y Fuerza del Centro, or LyFC, which supplies electricity to the capital and central Mexico, early Sunday amid a labor dispute. Federal police occupied LyFC’s facilities after Calderon issued an executive order dissolving the utility company on the basis of “proven operating and financial inefficiency.”

The utility has labor liabilities of 240 billion pesos ($18 billion) and its costs are “almost double its revenues,” the president said. Since its creation, LyFC has “not stopped receiving huge budgetary transfers, which have increased in recent years instead of decreasing,” Calderon said. The funds transfers soared about 200 percent between 2001 and 2008, the president said.

“The results reported by Luz y Fuerza del Centro are notably lower than those of comparable companies and organizations that provide the same service at the international level,” Calderon said.

The utility’s workers will be compensated in accordance with labor laws, the president said. The Mexican Electrical Workers Union, or SME, said LyFC has some 88,000 workers, of whom 60,000 are union members and the rest work on a temporary basis.

The union has been battling the government, which has refused to recognize SME leader Martin Esparza. Thousands of union members took to the streets of Mexico City last Thursday to protest the Calderon administration’s actions. The SME called on the government Sunday to scrap the utility’s dissolution.

The union wants Calderon’s executive order cancelled, federal police out of the utility’s installations and the return of workers to their jobs, SME spokesman Fernando Amezcua said. EFE