Command and control at work: the evolution of the rules of work on Mexican railroads, 1883–1923

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.

Keywords:

• Mexico
• railroads
• work rules
• unions
• Mexican revolution

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers, whose comments strengthened the argument, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed us to begin the research for this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For this article, we have made generous use of the Archivo General de la Nacion (AGN), Departamento de Trabajo (DT); AGN, Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCOP); and the archive and library of the Centro de Documentación e Investigaciones Ferroviarias (CEDIF), which belongs to the Centro Nacional para la Preservación del Patrimonio Cultural Ferrocarrilero, in Puebla, México.

2. These arguments strengthen the viewpoint of an older literature that argued for the importance of unions and worker activism during the Porfiriato, as well as a newer literature that has argued for a workers revolution inside Mexico’s broader upheaval in the countryside. For the newer literature, Bortz, Revolution within the Revolution; Snodgrass, Deference and Defiance in Monterrey; Fowler-Salamini, Working Women, Entrepreneurs, and the Mexican Revolution.

3. Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent, 16.

4. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, 77.

5. Chandler, The Railroads, 16.

6. Ibid., 25.

7. Porfiriato refers to the years General and President Porfirio Diaz ruled Mexico, 1876–1911. By Revolution, we refer to the most violent phase, 1910–1923.

8. These are representative materials from a wider set of work rules.

9. Cuéllar, “Railroad Problems,” 195. There is an extensive literature on Mexican railroad history, but one might begin with Ortiz Hernán, Los Ferrocarriles de México and Kunz Ficker and Riguzzi, Ferrocarriles y vida económica.

10. Cuéllar, “Railroad Problems,” 196.

11. Skirius, Railroad, Oil and Other Foreign Interests, 25.

12. Stover, The Routledge Historical Atlas, 50.

13. Ibid., 55.

14. Osborn, “Railway Brotherhoods,” 577.

15. Finance Minister José Yves Limantour created Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México in 1907 as a limited liability corporation that brought together Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México and the Central Mexicano with majority government ownership.

16. Ortiz Hernán, Los Ferrocarriles de México, T. I, 286.

17. Shabot, Los orígenes, 245.

18. Coatsworth, “Indispensable Railroads,” 951. The expanded argument appeared in Coatsworth, Growth against Development.

19. Cuéllar, “Railroad Problems,” 194.

20. Gilly, The Mexican Revolution, 53.

21. Ortiz Hernán, Los Ferrocarriles de México, T. I, 233.

22. González Roa, El Problema Ferrocarrilero, p.145.

23. Ortiz Hernán, Los Ferrocarriles de México, T. I, 236.

24. Hardy, “The Revolution,” 250.

25. Cuéllar, “Railroad Problems,” 200.

26. Shirley, “America's Changing Investment Market,” 197.

27. Hardy, “The Revolution,” 260; Ortiz Hernán, Los Ferrocarriles, T. II, 152.

28. The best history we have of railroad workers during the nineteenth century (and somewhat beyond) is Van Hoy, A Social History.

29. Van Hoy, A Social History, 51.

30. Although Van Hoy presents scattered data, there is enough to be convincing.

31. Donly, “The Railroad Situation,” 244.

32. Ibid., 245.

33. French, “Business as Usual,” 226–31.

34. Eastern Railways, Wages and Labor Relations, 29.

35. The International Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was founded in 1863 and by 1898 had 32,000 members. Although there had been early disputes about whether to strike or not, by 1898, many of the Brotherhoods either permitted or supported strikes by workers against companies. Osborn, “Railway Brotherhoods,” 577–9.

36. Parlee, “The Impact of United States Railroad Unions,” 443.

37. Jonathan Brown demonstrated competing interests among Mexican and US oil workers in Mexico led to competing and conflictive unionizations.

38. Acta Constitutiva, Unión de Mecánicos Mexicanos, Puebla, 1900, Archivo General de la Nacion (AGN), Departamento de Trabajo (DT), C 5, e 5. Since temperancia is not a common Spanish word, one suspects that the Article was copied from a Brotherhood document.

39. There is a rather extensive literature in Mexico on early unionization, including Shabot, Los orígenes, 1982; Gill, Los Ferrocarrileros, 1977; and one of the most detailed, Rodea, Historia del Movimiento Obrero, 1944.

40. Shabot, Los orígenes, 42–5; Rodea, Historia del Movimiento Obrero, 29.

41. Shabot, Los orígenes, 46; Rodea, Historia del Movimiento Obrero, 29.

42. Snodgrass, Deference and Defiance, 123–44.

43. Bortz, Revolution within the Revolution; Bortz and Aguila, México y el Mundo del Trabajo.

44. Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent, provides a summary and critique of the debate over conflict vs. cooperation at work. Modern economists (see Reynolds, “Labor Relations”) often see cooperation as the norm and conflict as an aberration, whereas students of industrial relations during the period we are covering generally argue that “industrial unrest is in fact the all-inclusive problem of modern industrialism.” Watkins, An Introduction, 298.

45. Forgacs, ed., A Gramsci Reader, 286.

46. Orange and Alexandria Railroad Company, Instructions for the Running of Trains, 1856, in Richardson, The Locomotive Engineer, 110.

47. Licht, 1983, 80.

48. Richardson, The Locomotive Engineer, 143.

49. AGN, SCOP, Box 3, File 10, Ferrocarril Central Mexicano, Reglamento de circulación y servicio de trenes.

50. Camino del Fierro Nacional Mexicano, Reglamento para Gobierno de los Empleados (C.G. Crawford Press, NY, 1892).

51. And an additional 84 for telegraph operators.

52. Van Hoy, A Social History, 52.

53. General Notice/Aviso General.

54. Further research is necessary to find out to what degree there was a general sharing of rules among companies.

55. Shabot, Los orígenes, 42–4.

56. Alzati, Historia de la Mexicanizacion, 87–90.

57. Rodea, Historia del Movimiento Obrero, 127; Arnesen, “Like Banquo's Ghost,” 1601–33.

58. Shabot, Los orígenes, 44–8.

59. Rodea, Historia del Movimiento Obrero, 307.

60. Rodea, Historia del Movimiento Obrero, 306–17.

61. Alzati, Historia de la Mexicanizacion, 111–5; there is an account of the 1908 strike in Anderson, Outcasts, 214–5. Anderson’s analysis concentrates on the defeated 1907 Rio Blanco textile complex strike in the state of Veracruz, which ended in a massacre perpetrated by the Porfirian elite.

62. Centro de Documentación e Investigaciones Ferroviarias (CEDIF), Fondo Méndez Quijano, A. Clark to E. Brown, San Luis, Abl. 22–3, 1908, 6:03 AM.

63. CEDIF, Fondo Méndez Quijano, E. Brown to Comité Ejecutivo, México, 21 April 1908, Confidencial.

64. CEDIF, Fondo Méndez Quijano, Clark to Brown, April 22–23, 1908, telegrams March–April 1908.

65. CEDIF, Fondo Méndez Quijano, Clark to Brown, 22 April 1908.

66. Alzati, Historia de la Mexicanizacion, 162.

67. Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, Cédula de Sueldos y Reglamento para los Conductores y Empleados de los Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico. En vigor, 1 Julio 1909, México, 1909.

68. Emmons, “The Relations of the Electric Railway Company,” 91.

69. Ibid., 21.

70. The shift on work rules lends weight to the literature that argued for the importance of labor unrest during the Porfiriato. Hart, Anarchism; Araiza, Historia del Movimiento Obrero; Anderson, Outcasts; and Albro, Always a Rebel.

71. Bortz, Revolution within the Revolution, Chap. 9.

72. The literature on the revolution is vast but one might start with Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution (Lincoln, 1990). There is also a large literature on workers during the revolution, but one might start with an older strain that begins with Clark, Organized Labor in Mexico and Anderson, Outcasts. There is also a vast newer literature, but for the railroads, see Van Hoy, A Social History, Snodgrass, Deference and Defiance in Monterrey, and Alegre, Railroad Radicals in Cold War Mexico. For the Workers Revolution, Bortz, Revolution within the Revolution.

73. Ibid., Chap. 6.

74. Hardy, “The Revolution,” 253.

75. Fuentes Díaz, El Problema Ferrocarrilero de Mexico, 87.

76. Donly, “The Railroad Situation,” 237.

77. French, “Business as Usual,” 231–2.

78. Alzati, Historia de la Mexicanizacion, 275.

79. Fuentes to Bonilla, 1 January 1913, AGN, DT, Box 5, file 5.

80. J.F. Ealy and T.K. Eccles to E.N. Brown, 27 Marzo 1912, Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, Junta Directiva, Box 29, file 7560, legajo 18, 1912, CEDIF; Rodea, 1944, 404.

81. Ealy and Eccles to Brown, 27 Marzo 1912.

82. Rodea, Historia del Movimiento Obrero, 405.

83. A. Clark to E.N. Brown, 24 February 1912, Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico, Junta Directiva, Box 29, file 7560, legajo 18, 1912, Cedif.

84. M.J. Schneider, P.C. Morales, “Instrucciones generales para los talleres,” Aguascalientes, 20 October 1912 … AGN, DT, Caja 5, exp 5.

85. José Bustamante y Gabriel Martínez to Ramos Pedrueza, 30 November 1912, AGN, DT, Box 5, file 5.

86. There is a fairly straightforward account of the strike in Rodea, Historia del Movimiento Obrero, 410–28. Rodea does not go much beyond the documents he uses to write his history, which is somewhat positive about the outcome.

87. Rodea, Historia del Movimiento Obrero, 410.

88. Enrique González et al., 30 December 1912, AGN, DT, Box 5, file 5.

89. Fuentes to Bonilla, 1 January 1913, AGN, DT, Box 5, file 5.

90. CEDIF, Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, Secretaria de la Junta Directiva, file 5152-16, Annual Report, 1916, 8.

91. Bortz, Revolution within the Revolution, argues that military commanders issued the decrees in order to pacify the regions under their control, 120.

92. Secretario General, Unión de Mecánicos Mexicanos to DT, 25 October 1914, AGN, DT, 1914, Box 70, file1.

93. Unión de Mecánicos Mexicanos et al. to Señor Teniente Coronel Max Alarcón, Director del Departamento del Trabajo, 26 September 1914, AGN, DT, Box 73, file 13.

94. Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico, Secretaría de la Junta Directiva, file 5152-16, Annual Report 1916, CEDIF, 14–5.

95. Tena Ramirez, Leyes Fundamentales de Mexico, 870–2; Bortz, Revolution within the Revolution, Chap. 6.

96. Cuéllar, “Railroad Problems,” 200.

97. Gadsby, “Strike of the Railroad Shopmen,” 2.

98. Ibid., 20–1; Brenner, Day and Ness, The Encyclopedia of Strikes, 497.

99. Rodea, Historia del Movimiento Obrero, 441–2.

100. Hardy, “The Revolution,” 260.

101. Snodgrass, Deference and Defiance, makes this point in the case of metallurgical workers in Monterrey.

102. Francisco Monroy et al. to Departamento de Trabajo, 2 September 1921, AGN, DT, Box 308, file13. José Miramontes to Gobernador Constitucional, 10 November 1921, AGN, DT, Box 308, file 13.

103. Alianza de Ferrocarrileros Mexicanos, S.C.h., Contrato de Trabajo celebrado entre los Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico y Anexos (administrados por el gobierno) y la Alianza de Ferrocarrileros Mexicanos S.C.L. (México, Septiembre de 1923).