Discurso Slim

 

El ciudadano Carlos Slim Helú: Gracias, buenas tardes. Me da muchísimo gusto y me honra estar con ustedes en este foro tan importante, no había un antecedente, creo, desde 1931, cuando la Gran Depresión en la que hubo esa unidad entre el bloque revolucionario del Congreso con las Cámaras de Comercio e Industria.

 

Esa fue una reunión, una alianza importante que se formó y que permitió, con las políticas públicas que en ese momento se adoptaron, crecer 6.2 por ciento de 1932 a 1982. Ese crecimiento sostenido durante tantos años ha sido espectacular, era el famoso milagro mexicano, fue una transformación enorme que el país logró gracias a esos esfuerzos y a esas políticas públicas, en las que se hicieron políticas de Estado que permanecieron por tantos años.

 

Apena que desde 82, después de la gran crisis de la deuda externa, hayamos crecido cero en términos de per cápita, no es mediocre, es cero, es peor que mediocre, sobre todo si tomamos en cuenta la población que se ha expulsado, es cero por ciento, incluyendo a los mexicanos que han tenido que irse por no encontrar posibilidades de trabajo en este país.

 

Ese 82, esa gran crisis de deuda externa tuvo varias razones, una fue quizás los Cetes públicos importantes, otro sin duda fue la disponibilidad de petro-dólares, de disponibilidad de financiamiento, de crédito que permitió endeudarse en forma excesiva, pero la puntilla y la causa fue externa, fue la tasa de interés al 21 por ciento. Comprenderán que una economía o en una empresa o en una persona normal a la que le sube cuatro veces el costo financiero, tiene que entrar en problema.

 

De ahí, de esa deuda externa con varios fines, entre ellos cobrar, vino el plan y el modelo del Consenso de Washington, modelo que tiene varias virtudes, pero cuyos defectos hemos sufrido durante tantos años y que por supuesto los países en desarrollo no lo contemplan, no les hacen caso.

 

Hemos visto en estos abusos, que ha habido Fondo Monetario, los tecnócratas, los académicos, los dogmáticos, ideólogos brillaron por su ausencia, en ningún momento dado llamaron la atención. Lo más cercano fue la exuberancia irracional de los mercados de diciembre de 96, de Greenspan, cuando el índice era 6 mil 500, luego se fue a 13 mil.

 

Esa es una situación realmente clara, hay que tener una visión de largo plazo hacia delante, pero hay que saber lo que ha pasado en el pasado. No hay soluciones simplistas al desarrollo sostenido, el país pasó de ser una ciudad agrícola y rural a una sociedad urbana e industrial, ahora hay que pasar a ser una sociedad terciaria, de servicios, tecnológica, de conocimiento, tener contemplado qué es lo que esta sociedad y sus nuevos paradigmas reclaman, para irnos en esa dirección.

 

Me dio mucho gusto, en la inauguración del foro, no sólo el foro mismo, sino las palabras del presidente del Congreso, el diputado César Duarte, que dice: “Hay que hacer una revisión estructural del modelo y rediseño del sistema financiero”. Es lo que hace falta.

 

También el presidente del Senado habló de propuestas y compromisos, también habló de cambios estructurales para mejorar productividad y competencia, lo cual es indiscutible que son dos argumentos fundamentales en toda esta situación que estamos viviendo.

 

Esta crisis que se inicia en los noventa, que trata de frenar Greenspan, con su exuberancia irracional; en el 2000, 2001 hay un susto por la destrucción de riqueza de esa época. Después vienen una serie de políticas excesivas, agresivas, laxas, monetaria y fiscal que hicieron que esa crisis —que se estaba corrigiendo en 2001, que empezó a corregirse en el 2000, 2001, 2002— se saliera de toda proporción y nos llevara a lo que estamos viviendo hoy.

 

Hoy, el epicentro es la gran crisis de las instituciones financieras, por los excesos, los grandes excesos que tuvieron en sus políticas liberales, neoliberales con falta de todo sentido de cuidado, tanto —yo diría— principalmente el gobierno de Estados Unidos. Y, obviamente, las consecuencias vienen en las decisiones de la falta de regulación y supervisión de las instituciones financieras internacionales, creando nuevos instrumentos y derivados, en que su factor principal es lo que llaman “apalancamiento”, la posibilidad de hacer con 1 peso, 20 o 30 o 50.

 

Por ejemplo, para comprar commodity había que dar 5 por ciento de garantía. Para comprar derivados no se daba garantía. Entonces se multiplicaba por cientos los riesgos y, bueno, pues esto es lo que estamos sufriendo.

 

Fue una especulación con el petróleo, la especulación con los alimentos, que afortunadamente se vino abajo, los commodity en general, porque no había que dar nada y se creó una serie de jugadores, apostadores, neófitos, muchachos que llegaban creyendo que todo iba a ser para arriba y para siempre, y apostaban y apostaban. Y bueno, esto es lo que estamos pagando.

 

Pero lo grave es que, aunque el epicentro es Estados Unidos, las grandes consecuencias o más consecuencias se están teniendo fuera. Por ejemplo, Japón; mientras Estados Unidos cayó 3.8 el producto interno bruto en Japón cayó 8. En Alemania 8, creo que en Japón por ahí o 9, el último trimestre.

 

Estamos en el momento, yo diría, ya pasó el 29, estamos viviendo el 30; hay que evitar el 31, 32 y 33. Hay que evitar que ese mercado financiero que no se ha logrado estabilizar y no se ve que se esté estabilizando, y que, por supuesto a través del crédito contamina la economía real, no colapse el mundo económico como lo hizo en aquella ocasión y como se ve que lo está haciendo, en muchos sentidos, en este momento.

 

Está desmedido el crecimiento del desempleo, se habla de dos dígitos, España ya está también en dos dígitos y altos. Japón, Alemania, todo el mundo decreciendo mucho. Nuestros países tienen la fuerza, nuestros países —hablo de Latinoamérica— tienen la fuerza de la mejor en los términos de intercambio en estos últimos años; nosotros el petróleo, otros países el sorgo, otros el trigo, etcétera, y tenemos los minerales.

 

Tenemos una fortaleza económica, éstos, nuestros países, que tenemos que cuidar y aplicar con mucho cuidado para evitar estos colapsos físicos.

 

No cabe duda que el producto interno bruto mexicano se va a desplomar, se va a caer, va a ser negativo, ya desde el último trimestre del año pasado, no sabemos cuánto dure, pero va a ser muy fuerte el efecto.

 

Ahí es donde yo digo: el producto interno bruto va a ser negativo, va a ser sustancialmente negativo por la caída del petróleo y de la exportación, entre otras cosas, y las consecuencias también internas.

 

Pero hay que cuidar el empleo. No hay que preocuparnos si es menos 2 o menos 1 o 0. Hay que cuidarnos cuál es la masa salarial, cuál es el empleo, y hay que establecer como el acuerdo nacional que encabezó el presidente de la república, buscar medidas que protejan el empleo y el ingreso familiar. Eso es lo fundamental que hay que hacer en este momento.

 

A mí me da gusto que en ese acuerdo se retomó lo que todos estos modelos y esas ideologías y esos dogmatismos y doctrinas que estuvimos viviendo tantos años, desde 83, pero sobre todo cuando el consenso de Washington empieza a aplicarse con más firmeza en nuestros países, nos ha mantenido con crecimientos cero.

 

Yo creo que la gran bondad que estamos teniendo, al igual que ocurrió en esa reunión con el bloque revolucionario del Congreso es que nos estamos volcando a la economía interna, ya nos estamos dando cuenta que no todo es pensar afuera.

 

Pensamos que la inversión extranjera es maravillosa, parece que fuera donativo. La inversión extranjera no es un donativo. La inversión extranjera viene porque estamos ofreciendo buenas utilidades. Las empresas modernas son los viejos ejércitos. Los ejércitos conquistaban territorios y cobraban tributos. Las empresas conquistan mercados y cobran dividendos, regalías, royalty, transferencias de equis y de ye y de zeta.

 

Hay que volcarse a la economía interna. Obviamente necesitamos inversión extranjera y adoptar tecnología y tal. Pero tenemos que volcarnos en la economía interna, cuidar mucho nuestra economía interna, impulsar las Pymes, la pequeña y mediana, bajar la mortalidad empresarial, impulsar que en México —y no lo digo por nosotros— existan empresas fuertes que compitan internacionalmente.

No hay países fuertes sin empresas fuertes. Si los países no tienen empresas fuertes están volviéndose neocolonias, de alguna forma, necesitan tener la fuerza; no internamente, sino hacia fuera, de poderse proyectar.

 

Por eso vemos países que han impulsado mucho las empresas fuertes, su transnacionalización, inclusive con impulsos fiscales como es España que les da deducible el 75 al 90 por ciento de la inversión. Brasil que apoya con el Banco de Desarrollo, etcétera.

 

Y como lo ha hecho Estados Unidos desde la doctrina Monroe, desde Poinsett a la Colonia, ayudando a la independencia para controlar las economías y los mercados nuestros, hasta la fecha.

 

Creo que es muy importante atender la economía interna. Qué bueno que nos volcamos de nuevo a la banca de desarrollo; la teníamos olvidada. La banca de desarrollo es fundamental para el crecimiento de nuestro país. Tenemos que volver también a hacer infraestructura, a mejorar nuestra capital humano; tenemos un gran presupuesto en él, ahí va la calidad; es baja calidad. Necesitamos modernizarlo, mejorar la calidad y pasar ya a la cultura digital, ya no a alfabetizar, sino alfabetizar digitalmente a la población.

 

Necesitamos ser competitivos en esta civilización del conocimiento, de la información, etcétera, y necesitamos competencia, estoy de acuerdo con la competencia. Es muy importante, es como si fuéramos un atleta que no compite con nadie, no va a progresar nunca. Necesitamos usar en la competencia referencias internacionales. Qué tiempo hizo éste, cómo salta el otro, cómo juega el beisbolista o el futbolista; qué técnico es el mejor.

 

Sin duda tenemos que estar abiertos a la competencia y a la globalización. No es una alternativa; es una necesidad. Es un paradigma esta nueva civilización, aunque en este momento se está retrayendo porque el colapso económico, la falta de empleo, la falta de consumo, la caída de la economía americana y de las economías desarrolladas, obviamente, a los países que exportan les van a bajar sus importaciones. Van a bajar los precios de los primarios, como ya bajaron, etcétera; entonces va a haber una caída importante del comercio internacional.

Pero, aparte del concepto el comercio internacional se va a caer el empleo, va a haber mucho desempleo, va a subir el desempleo como no teníamos noticia en nuestra vida personal —sólo historia de los 30—; van a quebrar las empresas, muchas chicas, medianas y grandes; van a cerrar los comercios, va a haber locales cerrados por todos lados, van a haber inmuebles vacíos. Es una situación que va a ser delicada. No quiero ser catastrofista, pero hay que prepararse para prever y no estar viendo las consecuencias después y estar llorando.

 

Yo creo que como hicimos el 31, hay que retomar nuestras decisiones, hay que ver qué modelo necesitamos tener, cómo debe operar, cómo vamos a salir de esta crisis. Tenemos que salir más fuertes de esta crisis. ¿Cómo? Creando capital humano y físico. Si tenemos un buen capital físico, el capital humano va a ser muy importante.

 

Se impulsa mucho el empleo a través de las Pymes, todos sabemos eso. Pero también hay que atender nuestro sector agropecuario que puede estar un poco descuidado y, por supuesto, la infraestructura. Y lo más rápido, más efectivo y que genera mayor empleo que la infraestructura y que la construcción misma de la infraestructura —que es fundamental— es el mantenimiento de la infraestructura. Para eso no hay que esperar el plan, el proyecto, la ingeniería, ni el derecho de vía, ni tal ni tal. Ése se hace de un día a otro.

 

Las escuelas, hay 30 mil escuelas en mal estado. Hay que arreglarlas, hay que modernizarlas, hay que llevar ventanas, baños, techos, pinturas, que están realmente en deplorables condiciones;, igual hacerlo en los hospitales, en los centros de salud, en las oficinas de gobierno, en las zonas arqueológicas, cuidando la biodiversidad, el ambiente, etcétera.

 

Creo que hay una capacidad brutal en México de dar empleo intensivo, con muy poco dinero, y por supuesto, hay que buscar la combinación del capital público y privado para impulsar aquellos proyectos que lo justifiquen de esa forma. Creo que tenemos que buscar salir, como decía, más fuertes de esto.

 

A mí me llama la atención que todavía sigan los dogmas, después de 26 años de fracaso, todavía encuentran nuevas fórmulas y nuevos culpables para justificar que no es, aunque los que han sido más importantes lo han reconocido, como Williamson; yo creo que además, en esta situación de estos últimos años, hemos hecho chica a la clase media, la hemos afectado mucho.

 

Buena parte de lo que señalaba el presidente de la Comisión de Competencia, de que es el 30 o 40 por ciento de los ingresos, porque no tienen ingreso, la gente no tiene ingreso. La tercera parte de los estudiantes de la UNAM viven con un ingreso familiar de cuatro salarios mínimos, que hoy son 400 dólares..., eso no es ingreso. Necesitamos mejorar el empleo y el ingreso de la gente.

 

Se discute muchas veces entre riqueza e ingreso. No que la riqueza sea privada, colectiva, pública; tiene que manejarse con eficacia para crear más riqueza, y su fruto, que es el ingreso; tiene que tener una mejor distribución del ingreso.

 

Y vemos cómo se puede, sin duda, una de las formas de mejorar la distribución del ingreso es con educación, es con empleo, y buen empleo. La educación no solamente tiene la ventaja de formar capital humano, sino que es mejor oferta. El que tiene buena educación tiene mayores alternativas de trabajo.

 

Todavía me faltan varias cosas, pero básicamente insistir en el empleo en México. Creo que ya se me está yendo el tiempo. Yo creo que hay que buscar, sin duda, los capitales nacionales fuertes y competitivos, que al tú a tú con las trasnacionales, crear más riqueza pública y que no se usen.

 

Cuando falla una iniciativa fiscal en el Congreso, que no se usen los monopolios del Estado para sustituir la recaudación fiscal. Que no se suba la energía como se ha estado haciendo para recaudar fiscalmente. Que no se use la gasolina para recaudación fiscal. Ese acuerdo debe estar aparte. Deben ser empresas que se manejen con autonomía y fuera del presupuesto, para evitar que cuando se autoriza un ingreso no se sube un punto en la red o tal o tal y se le suben los precios y se tiene esa recaudación.

 

Por último, les quiero decir aquí, como hay varias cosas que han tenido que ver. Lo que dicen los Estados Unidos dicen: vaya a América. Compra en América. El ministro Sebastián, de la industria española dice: “ya hay algo que nuestros senadores pueden hacer por su país, que es apostar por España, por nuestros productos, nuestra industria y nuestros servicios”. Apostar por nosotros mismos. Está empezando a haber un nacionalismo económico para el consumo de Estados Unidos. Ojalá y para nosotros no sea “sell-México”, “vendamos México”.

 

Le estoy dejando, por favor, al Legislativo, información sobre lo que es la competencia a la que se refería el presidente de la Comisión. Aquí señala que las razones principales más problemáticas, factores de México, es ineficiencia de la burocracia gubernamental, primero, 18 por ciento; corrupción; inadecuada infraestructura, regulaciones restrictivas, regulaciones de impuestos, acceso al financiamiento, tax raise, crime, crimen y robo, inadecuada educación de la fuerza de tarea.

 

Les dejo esto que es del foro. Nos tiene en lugar 60. No es tampoco la ley de Dios, pues porque en primer lugar está Estados Unidos, ya sabemos que no es el más competitivo del mundo, pues nos están llenando de productos por todos lados.

 

Les dejo, por favor, la información esta,  y les agradezco mucho su atención, el tiempo y la invitación.

Why 'Stimulus' Will Mean Inflation

In a global downturn the Fed will have to print money to meet our obligations.

By GEORGE MELLOAN

As Congress blithely ushers its trillion dollar "stimulus" package toward law and the U.S. Treasury prepares to begin writing checks on this vast new appropriation, it might be wise to ask a simple question: Who's going to finance it?

That might seem like a no-brainer, which perhaps explains why no one has bothered to ask. Treasury securities are selling at high prices and finding buyers even though yields are low, hovering below 3% for 10-year notes. Congress is able to assure itself that it will finance the stimulus with cheap credit. But how long will credit be cheap? Will it still be when the Treasury is scrounging around in the international credit markets six months or a year from now? That seems highly unlikely.

Let's have a look at the credit market. Treasurys have been strong because the stock market collapse and the mortgage-backed securities fiasco sent the whole world running for safety. The best looking port in the storm, as usual, was U.S. Treasury paper. That is what gave the dollar and Treasury securities the lift they now enjoy.

But that surge was a one-time event and doesn't necessarily mean that a big new batch of Treasury securities will find an equally strong market. Most likely it won't as the global economy spirals downward.

For one thing, a very important cycle has been interrupted by the crash. For years, the U.S. has run large trade deficits with China and Japan and those two countries have invested their surpluses mostly in U.S. Treasury securities. Their holdings are enormous: As of Nov. 30 last year, China held $682 billion in Treasurys, a sharp rise from $459 billion a year earlier. Japan had reduced its holdings, to $577 billion from $590 billion a year earlier, but remains a huge creditor. The two account for almost 65% of total Treasury securities held by foreign owners, 19% of the total U.S. national debt, and over 30% of Treasurys held by the public.

In the lush years of the U.S. credit boom, it was rationalized that this circular arrangement was good for all concerned. Exports fueled China's rapid economic growth and created jobs for its huge work force, American workers could raise their living standards by buying cheap Chinese goods. China's dollar surplus gave the U.S. Treasury a captive pool of investment to finance congressional deficits. It was argued, persuasively, that China and Japan had no choice but to buy U.S. bonds if they wanted to keep their exports to the U.S. flowing. They also would hurt their own interests if they tried to unload Treasurys because that would send the value of their remaining holdings down.

But what if they stopped buying bonds not out of choice but because they were out of money? The virtuous circle so much praised would be broken. Something like that seems to be happening now. As the recession deepens, U.S. consumers are spending less, even on cheap Chinese goods and certainly on Japanese cars and electronic products. Japan, already a smaller market for U.S. debt last November, is now suffering what some have described as "free fall" in industrial production. Its two champions, Toyota and Sony, are faltering badly. China's growth also is slowing, and it is plagued by rising unemployment.

American officials seem not to have noticed this abrupt and dangerous change in global patterns of trade and finance. The new Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, at his Senate confirmation hearing harped on that old Treasury mantra about China "manipulating" its currency to gain trade advantage. Vice President Joe Biden followed up with a further lecture to the Chinese but said the U.S. will not move "unilaterally" to keep out Chinese exports. One would hope not "unilaterally" or any other way if the U.S. hopes to keep flogging its Treasurys to the Chinese.

The Congressional Budget Office is predicting the federal deficit will reach $1.2 trillion this fiscal year. That's more than double the $455 billion deficit posted for fiscal 2008, and some private estimates put the likely outcome even higher. That will drive up interest costs in the federal budget even if Treasury yields stay low. But if a drop in world market demand for Treasurys sends borrowing costs upward, there could be a ballooning of the interest cost line in the budget that will worsen an already frightening outlook. Credit for the rest of the economy will become more dear as well, worsening the recession. Treasury's Wednesday announcement that it will sell a record $67 billion in notes and bonds next week and $493 billion in this quarter weakened Treasury prices, revealing market sensitivity to heavy financing.

So what is the outlook? The stimulus package is rolling through Congress like an express train packed with goodies, so an enormous deficit seems to be a given. Entitlements will go up instead of being brought under better control, auguring big future deficits. Where will the Treasury find all those trillions in a depressed world economy?

There is only one answer. The Obama administration and Congress will call on Ben Bernanke at the Fed to demand that he create more dollars -- lots and lots of them. The Fed already is talking of buying longer-term Treasurys to support the market, so it will be more of the same -- much more.

And what will be the result? Well, the product of this sort of thing is called inflation. The Fed's outpouring of dollar liquidity after the September crash replaced the liquidity lost by the financial sector and has so far caused no significant uptick in consumer prices. But the worry lies in what will happen next.

Even when the economy and the securities markets are sluggish, the Fed's financing of big federal deficits can be inflationary. We learned that in the late 1970s, when the Fed's deficit financing sent the CPI up to an annual rate of almost 15%. That confounded the Keynesian theorists who believed then, as now, that federal spending "stimulus" would restore economic health.

Inflation is the product of the demand for money as well as of the supply. And if the Fed finances federal deficits in a moribund economy, it can create more money than the economy can use. The result is "stagflation," a term coined to describe the 1970s experience. As the global economy slows and Congress relies more on the Fed to finance a huge deficit, there is a very real danger of a return of stagflation. I wonder why no one in Congress or the Obama administration has thought of that as a potential consequence of their stimulus package.

Mr. Melloan is a former deputy editor of the Journal's editorial page.

The Next Disaster

On The Cover/Top Stories
The Next Disaster
Jesse Bogan, Kerry A. Dolan, Christopher Helman and Nathan Vardi 12.22.08, 12:00 AM ET

The Nov. 4 crash of a Learjet in an upper-class Mexico City neighborhood caused a disproportionate amount of destruction. All eight passengers were killed--including Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño, President Felipe Calderón's right-hand man, and José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, a leading prosecutor against the powerful drug cartels; seven people on the ground died, too.

Hours after the disaster, rumors shot across the capital city like the discharge of automatic weapons: The crash was the work of drug traffickers showing who was boss in this nation of 110 million souls. A preliminary report found no evidence of explosives and strongly suggested pilot error in turbulent conditions. Still, says Larry N. Holifield, former head of the Mexico City office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, "people won't believe it was an accident. They think everything down there is a conspiracy because half the time it really is." One witness to the crash believes the worst. "A plane just doesn't fall out of the sky," says Guadalupe Rodríguez, 42, a law firm assistant. "The narcos are saying, 'Here we are--and nobody's going to get rid of us.'"

You can forgive Rodríguez for thinking so. This year, through mid-November, there have been 4,300-plus drug-related deaths in Mexico, compared with 2,500 in 2007. Edgar Millán Gómez, who oversaw the joint efforts of the army and federal police, was assassinated in May in his home in Mexico City. Roberto Velasco Bravo, a federal chief of criminal investigations, was shot in the head a week earlier. The narcotraficantes have infiltrated the highest levels of law enforcement, including, allegedly, Mexico's principal link to Interpol and its former senior drug czar. Mexico, once again, is battling the ever powerful gangs. "It has been a fierce bloodbath," says Felipe González González, president of the Senate public security commission and former governor of the central state of Aguascalientes. "We have more dead than you have in Iraq."

Is Mexico descending into criminal and economic chaos? "Failed state? That is a very irresponsible remark," bristles Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S. "The challenge of corruption is being taken on. We are rooting out people who have been infiltrated. Look at the role of the Mexican private sector and civil society. Nowhere can you see signs of anything akin to a failed state."

But there is urgent concern north of the border about a potential strategic threat. "We're fixated on Iraq and Afghanistan, but from a homeland security perspective, right here on our border, isn't this more important?" asks Fred Burton, a former State Department counterterrorism official, now a vice president at Stratfor in Austin, Tex.

Washington, D.C. is fretting, too. "The consequences for both our countries in the near future and the not-so-near future could not be greater," says John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a.k.a. the drug czar. "The consequences if President Calderón fails and the institutions of government, at least in the northern part of his country, become controlled by terrorist mafias--well, we worry about ungoverned spaces far away from the U.S., and this is right next door."

No disagreement from Antonio Oscar (Tony) Garza, U.S. ambassador to Mexico. "The focus of the last couple years has clearly been security," he says. In the so-called Mérida initiative, Uncle Sam has committed $1.4 billion in military hardware to help Mexico battle the cartels. But as of late November no significant transfers had yet occurred.

The explosion of narco terror comes alongside a precipitous drop in oil prices and the crushing effects of a deep U.S. recession. The climate of fear is kicking the life out of the economy. The second wave of the global financial crisis is playing out in the developing world--and right on our doorstep. After expanding by 3.2% in 2007 to $900 billion, Mexico's GDP growth will slow to 1.5% this year and tumble to somewhere between zero and 0.7% in 2009, predicts Raúl Feliz, an economist at CIDE, a Mexico City think tank that specializes in economics and politics. While some of that meager expansion will come from government stimulus spending, its hands are tightly tied because state-owned oil monopoly Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos) contributes 37%--$80 billion in 2008--of federal revenue. Next year analysts expect a plunge in petrodollars. Unemployment will jump from its current 4.1%. Throw in part-time workers, who account for roughly one-third of GDP, and the jobless figure soars to 10%. Feliz expects that number to reach 12% next year.

Credit-rating agencies are taking notice. In November Fitch put Mexican government foreign and local currency debt on "negative outlook" (though the ratings are still investment grade). It said that Mexico's ability to absorb global shocks was limited.

To say nothing of internal shocks. Eighty percent of Mexican exports--$240 billion this year, up 10% from 2007--go to the U.S., where shoppers aren't spending. You can see the effects in Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from El Paso, Tex. Roughly 223,000 people work at 330 companies in the maquiladora sector, assembling auto parts for the likes of Lear and Delphi, set-top boxes for Cisco's Scientific Atlanta unit and medical devices for Johnson & Johnson, among others. But 22,000 people have lost maquiladora jobs this year, most of them since August, says Sandra Luz Montijo-Dubrule, president of the Maquiladora Association of Ciudad Juárez. "Seventy percent of our industry here is U.S.-owned factories. Now that the recession has hit, we don't have the consumers in the U.S.," she laments. Worse: Every maquiladora job supports four other jobs in the city.

Sidebars:
Industry & Unemployment 
Oil
The Drug War
Southern Discomfort

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Drug-related violence pervades all segments of life in Mexico. "The cartels have an extraordinary capacity for corrupting and intimidating," says U.S. Ambassador Garza. The drug lords operate through most of the country (see map). In Ciudad Juárez the body count is 1,100 this year--200 or more of those deaths in August.

The cartels are also taking a big toll on business. "U.S. companies are worried about the safety of their workers," says Maria Luisa O'Connell, president of the Border Trade Alliance in Phoenix, Ariz. "Drugs have become such a big problem." As they have for the business community throughout Mexico. As a result of many high-profile kidnappings and murders, one of the most vibrant businesses in the nation is security--bodyguards and armored vehicles. An executive can shell out as much as $500,000 a year to protect himself and his family, reports Stratfor.

Many Mexicans believe the problem originates in the U.S., and that the cartels could be wiped out tomorrow if gringos wrestled seriously with the demand side of drugs. But the Mexican government realizes what it's up against at home. "The state is fighting against an opponent with no limits on arms or financial resources," says Jorge Gonzalez, a professor of international economics at Trinity University in San Antonio, Tex. and a native of Monterrey, Mexico. Throwing 25,000-plus troops at the U.S. border and other hot spots like the northwestern state of Sinaloa, President Calderón has scored a few headline-grabbing wins. He first targeted the powerful Gulf cartel and its infamous enforcement arm, a group of army deserters known as Los Zetas. In late January special forces arrested Alfredo Beltrán Leyva (El Mochomo, or "Red Ant"), a reputed deputy of Joaquín (El Chapo, "Shorty") Guzmán Loera, Mexico's most wanted man. The last of the five brothers who allegedly ran the Tijuana cartel, Eduardo Arellano Félix, was arrested in October. Most Mexicans, however, believe the cartels are winning the war.

Still, Calderón's assault has disrupted the cartels' business in the U.S. It's reflected in the rising price of cocaine, recently $123 a gram on America's streets, up 27% since early 2007, notes Michael Braun, managing director at Spectre Group International in Alexandria, Va. and recently retired chief of operations at the DEA. Cocaine purity is down 16%.

On the economic front Mexicans like to point out how they are in better shape to weather tough times than they were 14 years ago, when the U.S. and others had to intervene to save the peso. Some of that is true. The federal deficit is down to 0.2% of GDP. Short-term interest rates on government debt, while still high, are 8.3%; inflation is at a manageable 5.8%. Solid companies like Wal-Mart de México (68% owned by the Bentonville, Ark. giant) and América Móvil, the wireless services provider, are still forging ahead with precrisis capital expenditures. There's still hiring going on at the factories in Guadalajara, Chihuahua and Reynosa operated by contract manufacturer Jabil Circuit.PepsiCo recently decided to spend up to $3 billion to expand its snack and drink business.

Mexico's other Nafta partner, Canada, has been investing. Two years ago Bombardier Aerospace, lured by tax breaks and a new university to train people in the industry, opened a wire harness factory in the state of Querétaro. Recently it unveiled a $250 million plan for another factory to make wings and fuselages. Canada's Goldcorp is spending $1.5 billion for a gold, silver, lead and zinc mine in Zacatecas State that will employ 1,000 people. That's on top of the three mines it already operates and the $80 million it's spending to drill for gold.

But these investments hardly make a dent in Mexico's economy. There is plenty of grim news to darken the bright spots. The three leading sectors of the economy--services, industrial and agriculture--are slowing; manufacturing is expected to contract next year (see charts).

One silver lining is that the banking system is well capitalized, at least for now, says Deborah Riner, chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Mexico. As a recent imf report points out, there is little exposure to U.S. subprime assets and no hint yet of a credit crunch. That's because the nation hasn't yet developed an addiction to debt. "In times of crisis, cash is king," says Ricardo Salinas Pliego (net worth: $6.3 billion), who controls TV Azteca, mobile phone provider Iusacell and home electronics retailer Grupo Elektra. Salinas recently spent $41 million buying a 28% stake in the bankrupted chain Circuit City.

Salinas' Banco Azteca makes loans to street vendors, cabdrivers, bricklayers and plumbers--at average annual interest rates of 50%. Vice-Chairman Luis Niño de Rivera indignantly defends the usurious rates, which he claims are the market rates. "There used to be no hope for low-income people who barely had access to credit," he says. "We have changed the history of all these people," as well as allowed them to buy goods and services from Salinas enterprises. With 1,530 branches, Banco Azteca has $4 billion in deposits and $2 billion in loans on its books. Borrowers pay weekly--often handing over small sums to one of Azteca's 5,500 collections officers, who show up on motorcycle. That keeps loan losses down to 5.5%.

Sidebars:
Industry & Unemployment 
Oil
The Drug War 
Southern Discomfort

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Default rates will rise in a degrading economy. Already there are bleak signs in the $85-billion-a-year auto industry. While Toyota North America insists it's sticking to its schedule next year, Ford of Mexico says it will "adjust our plans accordingly." Nissan Mexicana recently halted production for six days at its Aguascalientes plant and canceled a planned third shift in Civac. General Motors has cut 660 of its 13,000 workers, discontinued its line of GMC Kodiak medium-duty trucks in Toluca and slowed production of SUVs and pickups in Guanajuato. "Everyone is worried about the future," says a spokesman. Chrysler Mexico laid off 400 of 6,000 people in October and is culling 20% of its 1,200 white-collar employees. Delphi has 55,000 workers at 48 Mexican plants, down from 65,000 at 54 factories two years ago. The auto parts maker is asking some employees to take a voluntary reduced workweek at 50% pay.

On the other side of the border look for a large drop in remittances from Mexicans living in the U.S. For 2008 they will be down roughly 10% to $21.6 billion. In 2009, predicts Roberto Newell, chief executive of the Mexican Institute of Competitiveness, total remittances may be off by as much as 25% from last year. Of the 11 million Mexicans in the U.S., 60% of them send money home. Perhaps as many as 150,000 will be unemployed by June, says Manuel Orozco, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. Many more have already been forced out of high-paying construction jobs into jobs paying a lot less. After interviewing migrants, Orozco concludes that 3% to 7% of them will go home next year.

All this pinches the lives of people like Sandra Ruiz Martínez, 36. She lives in a two-room cinder block home that somehow stays pegged to the hillside of Ecatepec, Mexico City's largest suburb, with her seven children and her sister and her sister's two babies. Six years ago Ruiz's husband, an undocumented immigrant, went to San Juan Capistrano, Calif. to find work (and ended up starting a second family). As a cook, he used to send $135 every eight days. Since his hours were cut in August, he's been remitting the same amount every three weeks. Ruiz says she needs $8 a day to run her household. While the government helps pay for high school, she can't juggle finances until the money arrives, and none of her kids has gone past the equivalent of eighth grade. The latest squeeze means no new shoes or clothes for anyone. Still, the tiny house is full of laughter. "Why be broke and sad?" she shrugs. "We try to forget."

It may be a lot harder to forget next year, when some government subsidies disappear. Hit by the double whammy of sinking oil prices and lower production, Pemex's contribution to state coffers could drop 20% or more to $65 billion in 2009. This despite only $18-per-barrel production costs, a $22 discount on today's spot price in Mexico.

Pemex is in sorry shape. From a peak of 3.3 million barrels a day in 2004, output is down to 2.8 million barrels. Unless someone figures out how to halt the decline, Mexico may become a net oil importer by 2015, says Allyson Benton, analyst at Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy in Manhattan. Pemex vigorously contests the prediction.

The problem isn't a lack of resources. Exploration and production chief Carlos Morales Gil says Pemex has 14 billion barrels of proved reserves, 30 billion barrels of probable and possible oil and another 54 billion barrels yet to be found. The culprit is Mexico's constitution, which stipulates that all oil and gas reserves are the sole property of the people of Mexico. That bars Pemex from selling stakes in oilfields to foreign companies--depriving Mexico of the risk capital and the talent that Western oil companies are instead sending to colder climates and deeper waters.

The Cantarell field was so big that Mexico could afford to be xenophobic about oil production. It's no longer the gusher it was: Production is down from 2 million barrels a day in 2004 to 1 million today. "It made us think we inherited a guaranteed flow of dollars for the rest of our lives," sighs Morales Gil.

A new law passed by the legislature will help to a degree. While the wording of new contracts must still be painstakingly matched to the constitution, the reforms permit Pemex to develop the technology of foreign oil services companies--finally opening Mexico to deepwater exploration of the Gulf--and to pay them incentives based on Pemex's success. Morales Gil can envision a nonequity partnership to produce Mexico's oil via platforms on the U.S. side of the maritime border, where Royal Dutch Shell, bp andChevron are installing an estimated $6.7 billion spar platform that will be linked to fields as far as 10,000 feet below sea level. "Perhaps in these reservoirs it makes sense to get together with the other guys and plan a joint investment," he muses, but "keep the reserves separate."

Pemex says it must spend $20 billion a year for two decades just to keep output stable. That will be very tough to pull off without outside investment--especially for a company sagging under $100 billion in debt. David Shields, an analyst who has long studied Mexican oil, suggests the government take the liability off Pemex's books by converting it to sovereign debt.

Sidebars:
Industry & Unemployment 
Oil
The Drug War
Southern Discomfort

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But what foreign investor would be eager to buy that debt when the Mexican public markets themselves are pretty spooked these days? "People don't want to put their surnames on a share listing," Mexican stock exchange president, Guillermo Prieto, recently said. "At least six or seven companies have said crime is a reason [for not floating an issue]." The cartels have left particularly grisly marks, including at least 40 decapitations this year. "You have gangs publicizing that they've killed innocent people to enhance their reputation," says Peter Reuter, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and a Rand Corp. scholar. On Nov. 3 there were 58 drug-related deaths, including four men burned to death in the beach town of Sinaloa de Leyva. On that same day surgeons in a Ciudad Juárez hospital were ordered out of an operating room as hooded men executed a patient who had shown up with a gunshot wound. With so little faith in his own men, Juárez's mayor fired 400 police officers for failing lie detectors and other tests to root out corruption and started to recruit federal troops to the force.

Chronic fear of kidnapping, or worse, is driving more and more Mexicans north to the U.S. Alejandro Junco, proprietor of one of Mexico's largest dailies, El Norte, recently moved his entire family to live in Texas. Pablo Jacobo (Jack) Suneson Bautista, owner of Marti's, a high-end arts and crafts gallery on Guerrero Avenue in Nuevo Laredo, refuses to let his kids come home to work in the business. "No way," he says. "I am just afraid they might be singled out or there might be some kind of kidnapping attempt." No one knows how many Mexicans are fleeing. But Arturo Rolland, a broker at Latin Credit Mortgage & Realty in San Diego, guesses that maybe 100 families a month are moving from Tijuana to the Chula Vista/San Diego area to seek safety. Some because gangsters "are using Facebook and MySpace to track people and their relatives," says a source at the Asociación de Empresarios Mexicanos, an entrepreneurs group in San Antonio.

The narcotraficantes have found opportunity in the U.S., too. If the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar had Miami, then Joaquín Guzmán has Atlanta, which has become the East Coast distribution center of cocaine and other drugs for the Mexican cartels. Atlanta's accessibility to key interstates like I-95 and I-85 make it a perfect hub for moving cocaine and marijuana and taking bulk cash back to Mexico. Atlanta's fast-growing Mexican population, lured largely by the region's building boom, has provided excellent cover and resources for the cartel's U.S. emissaries.

Northwestern Georgia is dotted with drug warehouses and money-counting houses, often set up in empty suburban homes furnished with a few tables and laptops. From there cocaine is moved to New York, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Miami and Chicago. The cash can be counted and inserted within 24 hours in sophisticated hydraulic traps built into tractor trailers for the trip to Texas and the southwestern border. No need for cages or safes--the cash at the money-counting houses is kept in closets, and one Gulf cartel moneyman made it clear that the lives of families in Mexico of anyone messing with the efficiency of his money-moving operation were at stake. "I don't know how much more worried I would have to be," says John C. Killorin, director of the Atlanta High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.

The Gulf cartel has dug its claws into the Atlanta area, as shown by a federal indictment in September of 34 of its members who authorities say were organized into distribution and transportation cells. The feds say the leader, 20-year-old Edgar Rodríguez-Alejandro, was taking orders from the highest levels of the Gulf cartel in Mexico until he was arrested in May with 12 kilos of cocaine and $7.7 million, a slim fraction of the 16,000 kilos of cocaine and 116 weapons recently seized in the U.S. Two cells of Shorty Guzmán's cartel in Atlanta were tracked and 20 indicted in December 2007.

The cartels are getting hard for Americans to ignore. In July a Rhode Island distributor who owed the Gulf cartel $300,000 was lured to an Atlanta suburb and then jumped by three members of the gang, who held and tortured him. He was rescued by the feds. Says Rodney Benson, the DEA's special agent in charge in Atlanta: "My number one concern is that if we don't impact these organizations there may be increased violence down the road."

What about help from the Mérida plan? "The money is going to the wrong side of the border," contends Congressman Ted Poe (R--Tex.). "With the infiltration of law enforcement and so many corrupt officials in Mexico, we don't want that equipment used against us."

Sidebars:
Industry & Unemployment 
Oil
The Drug War 
Southern Discomfort

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December 9, 2008

Hidden Travels of the Atomic Bomb

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

In 1945, after the atomic destruction of two Japanese cities, J. Robert Oppenheimer expressed foreboding about the spread of nuclear arms.

“They are not too hard to make,” he told his colleagues on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, N.M. “They will be universal if people wish to make them universal.”

That sensibility, born where the atomic bomb itself was born, grew into a theory of technological inevitability. Because the laws of physics are universal, the theory went, it was just a matter of time before other bright minds and determined states joined the club. A corollary was that trying to stop proliferation was quite difficult if not futile.

But nothing, it seems, could be further from the truth. In the six decades since Oppenheimer’s warning, the nuclear club has grown to only nine members. What accounts for the slow spread? Can anything be done to reduce it further? Is there a chance for an atomic future that is brighter than the one Oppenheimer foresaw?

Two new books by three atomic insiders hold out hope. The authors shatter myths, throw light on the hidden dynamics of nuclear proliferation and suggest new ways to reduce the threat.

Neither book endorses Oppenheimer’s view that bombs are relatively easy to make. Both document national paths to acquiring nuclear weapons that have been rocky and dependent on the willingness of spies and politicians to divulge state secrets.

Thomas C. Reed, a veteran of the Livermore weapons laboratory in California and a former secretary of the Air Force, and Danny B. Stillman, former director of intelligence at Los Alamos, have teamed up in “The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation” to show the importance of moles, scientists with divided loyalties and — most important — the subtle and not so subtle interests of nuclear states.

“Since the birth of the nuclear age,” they write, “no nation has developed a nuclear weapon on its own, although many claim otherwise.”

Among other things, the book details how secretive aid from France and China helped spawn five more nuclear states.

It also names many conflicted scientists, including luminaries like Isidor I. Rabi. The Nobel laureate worked on the Manhattan Project in World War II and later sat on the board of governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science, a birthplace of Israel’s nuclear arms.

Secret cooperation extended to the secluded sites where nations tested their handiwork in thundering blasts. The book says, for instance, that China opened its sprawling desert test site to Pakistan, letting its client test a first bomb there on May 26, 1990.

That alone rewrites atomic history. It casts new light on the reign of Benazir Bhutto as prime minister of Pakistan and helps explain how the country was able to respond so quickly in May 1998 when India conducted five nuclear tests.

“It took only two weeks and three days for the Pakistanis to field and fire a nuclear device of their own,” the book notes.

In another disclosure, the book says China “secretly extended the hospitality of the Lop Nur nuclear test site to the French.”

The authors build their narrative on deep knowledge of the arms and intelligence worlds, including those abroad. Mr. Stillman has toured heavily guarded nuclear sites in China and Russia, and both men have developed close ties with foreign peers.

In their acknowledgments, they thank American cold warriors like Edward Teller as well as two former C.I.A. directors, saying the intelligence experts “guided our searches.”

Robert S. Norris, an atomic historian and author of “Racing for the Bomb,” an account of the Manhattan Project, praised the book for “remarkable disclosures of how nuclear knowledge was shared overtly and covertly with friends and foes.”

The book is technical in places, as when detailing the exotica of nuclear arms. But it reads like a labor of love built on two lifetimes of scientific adventure. It is due out in January from Zenith Press.

Its wide perspective reveals how states quietly shared complex machinery and secrets with one another.

All paths stem from the United States, directly or indirectly. One began with Russian spies that deeply penetrated the Manhattan Project. Stalin was so enamored of the intelligence haul, Mr. Reed and Mr. Stillman note, that his first atom bomb was an exact replica of the weapon the United States had dropped on Nagasaki.

Moscow freely shared its atomic thefts with Mao Zedong, China’s leader. The book says that Klaus Fuchs, a Soviet spy in the Manhattan Project who was eventually caught and, in 1959, released from jail, did likewise. Upon gaining his freedom, the authors say, Fuchs gave the mastermind of Mao’s weapons program a detailed tutorial on the Nagasaki bomb. A half-decade later, China surprised the world with its first blast.

The book, in a main disclosure, discusses how China in 1982 made a policy decision to flood the developing world with atomic know-how. Its identified clients include Algeria, Pakistan and North Korea.

Alarmingly, the authors say one of China’s bombs was created as an “export design” that nearly “anybody could build.” The blueprint for the simple plan has traveled from Pakistan to Libya and, the authors say, Iran. That path is widely assumed among intelligence officials, but Tehran has repeatedly denied the charge.

The book sees a quiet repercussion of China’s proliferation policy in the Algerian desert. Built in secrecy, the reactor there now makes enough plutonium each year to fuel one atom bomb and is ringed by antiaircraft missiles, the book says.

China’s deck also held a wild card: its aid to Pakistan helped A.Q. Khan, a rogue Pakistani metallurgist who sold nuclear gear on the global black market. The authors compare Dr. Khan to “a used-car dealer” happy to sell his complex machinery to suckers who had no idea how hard it was to make fuel for a bomb.

Why did Beijing spread its atomic knowledge so freely? The authors speculate that it either wanted to strengthen the enemies of China’s enemies (for instance, Pakistan as a counterweight to India) or, more chillingly, to encourage nuclear wars or terror in foreign lands from which Beijing would emerge as the “last man standing.”

A lesser pathway involves France. The book says it drew on Manhattan Project veterans and shared intimate details of its bomb program with Israel, with whom it had substantial commercial ties. By 1959, the book says, dozens of Israeli scientists “were observing and participating in” the French program of weapons design.

The book adds that in early 1960, when France detonated its first bomb, doing so in the Algerian desert, “two nations went nuclear.” And it describes how the United States turned a blind eye to Israel’s own atomic developments. It adds that, in the autumn of 1966, Israel conducted a special, non-nuclear test “2,600 feet under the Negev desert.” The next year it built its first bomb.

Israel, in turn, shared its atomic secrets with South Africa. The book discloses that the two states exchanged some key ingredients for the making of atom bombs: tritium to South Africa, uranium to Israel. And the authors agree with military experts who hold that Israel and South Africa in 1979 jointly detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic near Prince Edward Island, more than one thousand miles south of Cape Town. Israel needed the test, it says, to develop a neutron bomb.

The authors charge that South Africa at one point targeted Luanda, the capital of neighboring Angola, “for a nuclear strike if peace talks failed.”

South Africa dismantled six nuclear arms in 1990 but retains much expertise. Today, the authors write, “South African technical mercenaries may be more dangerous than the underemployed scientists of the former Soviet Union” because they have no real home in Africa.

“The Bomb: A New History,” due out in January from Ecco Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, plows similar ground less deeply, but looks more widely at proliferation curbs and diplomacy. It is by Stephen M. Younger, the former head of nuclear arms at Los Alamos and former director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at the Pentagon.

Dr. Younger disparages what he calls myths suggesting that “all the secrets of nuclear weapons design are available on the Internet.” He writes that France, despite secretive aid, struggled initially to make crude bombs — a point he saw with his own eyes during a tour of a secretive French atomic museum that is closed to the public. That trouble, he says, “suggests we should doubt assertions that the information required to make a nuclear weapon is freely available.”

The two books draw on atomic history to suggest a mix of old and new ways to defuse the proliferation threat. Both see past restraints as fraying and the task as increasingly urgent.

Mr. Reed and Mr. Stillman see politics — not spies or military ambitions — as the primary force in the development and spread of nuclear arms. States repeatedly stole and leaked secrets because they saw such action as in their geopolitical interest.

Beijing continues to be a major threat, they argue. While urging global responses like better intelligence, better inspections and better safeguarding of nuclear materials, they also see generational change in China as a great hope in plugging the atomic leaks.

“We must continue to support human rights within Chinese society, not just as an American export, but because it is the dream of the Tiananmen Square generation,” they write. “In time those youngsters could well prevail, and the world will be a less contentious place.”

Dr. Younger notes how political restraints and global treaties worked for decades to curb atomic proliferation, as did American assurances to its allies. “It is a tribute to American diplomacy,” he writes, “that so many countries that might otherwise have gone nuclear were convinced to remain under the nuclear umbrella of the United States.”

And he, too, emphasizes the importance of political sticks and carrots to halting and perhaps reversing the spread of nuclear arms. Iran, he says, is not fated to go nuclear.

“Sweden, Switzerland, Argentina and Brazil all flirted with nuclear programs, and all decided to abandon them,” he notes. “Nuclear proliferation is not unidirectional — given the right conditions and incentives, it is possible for a nation to give up its nuclear aspirations.”

The take-home message of both books is quite the reverse of Oppenheimer’s grim forecast. But both caution that the situation has reached a delicate stage — with a second age of nuclear proliferation close at hand — and that missteps now could hurt terribly in the future.

Mr. Reed and Mr. Stillman take their title, “The Nuclear Express,” from a 1940 radio dispatch by Edward R. Murrow , who spoke from London as the clouds of war gathered over Europe. He told of people feeling like the express train of civilization was going out of control.

The authors warn of a similar danger today and suggest that only close attention to the atomic past, as well as determined global action, can avoid “the greatest train wreck” in history.

Conoce tus derechos al ser despedido

06:00 08 de diciembre de 2008

CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (CNNExpansión.com) — Los recortes de personal son una posibilidad que debes contemplar dada la actual crisis económica. Aunque estas medidas están pensadas para ahorrarle dinero a la empresa, si eres despedido por una causa ajena a ti, o por decisión del patrón, existen derechos inalienables que debes hacer valer. Uno de los principales es que por ley debes recibir una indemnización constitucional de tres meses de sueldo. “Es importante destacar que el cálculo de estos meses se debe hacer no sobre el salario neto o nominal, sino sobre el salario integrado, que agrupa las prestaciones que por ley se permiten, pero independientes a aquellas que el propio patrón le haya concedido al trabajador” dice en entrevista el abogado laboral y catedrático de la Universidad Panamericana (UP), Uriel Santacruz Martínez. Además, el patrón está obligado por la Ley Federal del Trabajo (LFT) a indemnizarte con el pago de 20 días por año trabajado, la parte proporcional del aguinaldo y la prima de antigüedad, que se calcula en base a 12 días por cada año de servicio prestado. “A esto hay que agregar la prima vacacional, la parte del reparto de utilidades, horas extra pendientes, y los beneficios adicionales que se hayan pactado”, dice en entrevista el procurador general de la Procuraduría Federal de la Defensa del Trabajo (Profedet), Joaquín Blanes Casas. En algunos casos además del salario se dan incentivos, bonos o vales que también deben ser debidamente cubiertos. También tienes derecho a la proporción correspondiente al reparto de utilidades. No permitas abusos “El desconocimiento de los derechos laborales y el contrato ocasionan que a veces los empleados sean tomados por sorpresa, por ello es indispensable que sepan bajo qué términos están laborando para su patrón”, asegura la subdirectora Comercial de la Consultora de RH Mercer, Ana Velázquez. Por ejemplo, los términos de tu liquidación están sujetos a los del contrato individual o colectivo de trabajo que hayas signado al inicio de la relación laboral. Nadie puede obligarte a firmar: si al ser requerido por el área de RH para darte tu liquidación no estás de acuerdo con el cálculo presentado o tienes alguna duda, la recomendación de los expertos laborales es no firmar ningún documento. Debes saber que nadie puede obligarte a firmar nada, así que no cedas a presiones o intimidaciones de la empresa, ya que esta práctica, además de ser ilegal, “está sancionada y puede procederse legalmente contra el patrón o quien resulte responsable”, dice el abogado Uriel Santacruz. Retenerte es ilegal: algunas empresas amenazan al empleado con no dejarlo abandonar la institución a menos que firmen la liquidación. Este caso “constituye un delito grave, ya que se incurre en la privación ilegal de la libertad, que se persigue penalmente”, dice la subdirectora de Mercer. La recomendación es comunicarse con algún familiar para informarle la situación, salir en cuanto sea posible y acudir inmediatamente ante la Junta Federal de Conciliación y Arbitraje, la Junta del DF o la Profedet y denunciarlo. Vigilancia no equivale a acoso: existen compañías en que el despido va acompañado de la vigilancia permanente de algún miembro de seguridad interna para evitar robos a la organización. “Esta práctica se entiende cuando se maneja información confidencial o cuando se tienen antecedentes de que la persona pueda reaccionar de manera violenta, pero no justifica que se acose o intimide a la persona”, asegura Ana Velázquez. “Esta práctica también es ilegal, ya que se están violentando los derechos humanos del trabajador, y también puede procederse contra la empresa”, señala el catedrático de la UP. Calcula y pide asesoría: una encuesta hecha por la consultora Hewitt Associates destaca que el 39% de las empresas mexicanas está planeando algún recorte de personal debido a la crisis. “Bajo esta premisa lo mejor es tener información del contrato para saber los términos en los que la empresa nos liquidaría. Además hay que hacer un cálculo de la indemnización. Es preferible contar con la asesoría de un abogado o un contador”, dice el director de Consultoría en Talento y Organización de Hewitt Associates, Jorge Ponga. Si el cálculo no corresponde a las cifras presentadas por la empresa, es mejor no firmar. Si te obligan a firmar… si la presión ejercida por la empresa hace que firmes los documentos, no todo está perdido. “A pesar de esto el trabajador puede presentarse ante las autoridades laborales y decir que fue víctima de presión, por lo que todavía puede reclamar el pago justo de su indemnización y liquidación”, dice Uriel Santacruz. El lapso para presentar una inconformidad va desde los 30 días hasta los 365, dependiendo de los supuestos previstos por la LFT. Si vas a juicio: un juicio por inconformidad es un proceso largo y tedioso que puede durar mínimo seis meses y hasta más de dos años. “El 70% de los procesos son resueltos en favor del trabajador”, dice el catedrático de la UP. “Aunque la mayoría son ganados por el mismo, si no se tienen los recursos suficientes para sobrevivir este lapso de tiempo, es preferible llegar a un arreglo con la empresa”, dice la directiva de Mercer. En cualquier caso, lo mejor es acudir a un abogado laboral y evitar ser presa de los ‘coyotes’ que sólo buscan aprovecharse de la necesidad del trabajador, recomienda el directivo de Hewitt Associates. Si no tienes contrato: aunque no haya un contrato firmado, tus derechos laborales no cambian y posees los mismos en cualquier caso. “Siempre es preferible tener un contrato, pero si no es así, el trabajador tiene derecho a que se le pague el salario convenido y se le indemnice”, dice el titular de la Profedet. Las pruebas que pueden presentar el trabajador en este caso son recibos, depósitos en cuentas o testimoniales de otros trabajadores. También tiene derecho al pago de la parte proporcional de vacaciones, aguinaldo, prima de utilidades, etc.