Monte de Piedad Union Stands Firm: “Dignity is not negotiable”

ByBertha Becerra

This article by Bertha Becerra originally appeared in the March 22, 2026 edition of El Sol de México.

“Dignity is not negotiable. The collective bargaining agreement ( CBA ) must be respected.” This was stated by Arturo Zayún González, general secretary of the National Union of Employees and Workers of Nacional Monte de Piedad (SNTNMP), 172 days into the strike at Nacional Monte de Piedad.

“We’re going to reach six months. The Board’s objective is to end and terminate the CCT, regardless of the time it takes.”

In an interview with El Sol de México, González accused the board of trustees of not caring about time. “They have no capital invested in the institution. That’s why they don’t care about the time or the millions in losses at Nacional Monte de Piedad. We’ve been on strike for almost six months and they don’t care,” he emphasized.

He recalled that “in previous years they had an average annual surplus of 12 billion pesos.”

The union leader, who represents more than 1,500 workers, accused the conflict of being driven by self-interest. “Their main objective is to preserve the exorbitant salaries they have never been willing to make transparent. And their primary desire is to transform the institution into a business masquerading as altruistim,” he emphasized.

The strike, which began on October 1, 2025, is a response to a series of violations of the collective bargaining agreement and administrative decisions that have affected the labor structure.

“To those who today have the task of dismantling our collective bargaining agreement and weakening the union representation that belongs to all of us, I remind you that it seems the administration of the Board of Trustees of Nacional Monte de Piedad suffers from acute mythomania and selective amnesia, as they expect us to forget the systematic attacks that have marked recent years. We do not forget,” said the union leader.

He recalled that they have not forgotten the dismantling of the workforce. “We haven’t forgotten the arbitrary dismissal of the appraisers, the elimination of eight job categories that left nearly a thousand workers unemployed, nor the unjustified firing of twenty union representatives.”

He spoke of the arbitrary closure of 18 NMP branches “and the mass dismissal of colleagues who worked in them.”

Daily Humiliations

He pointed out that regarding human mistreatment, “we do not forget the daily humiliations, such as forcing workers to eat their meals in secret.”

They also denounced the obstruction of career advancement within the private assistance institution (IAP). “We report that they have gone more than 10 years without offering training courses and more than five years without posting job openings.”

The above prevents workers from accessing higher salaries than they are entitled to based on seniority and directly affects their averages for retirement, savings fund, Christmas bonus and vacations.

Regarding the economic punishment, the general secretary recalled that the most recent aggression “is the stagnation of three years without a salary increase for the working base, which is added to the suspension of salaries for more than a year to the members of the National Executive Committee (CEN).

He also pointed out that regarding real transparency in the Institution, “while workers are being punished, the administration should make transparent the scandalous increases of 2024.”

He reported that “officials who already received high salaries benefited from increases of up to 35 percent. They went from 800,000 pesos to 6 million pesos annually.”

He also alluded to the sale of assets and asked leader Zayún González: “To whom are the gold, diamonds, and precious stones being sold?”

In the case of high-end watches, he said that “it is unacceptable that the discounts stipulated in the 2024 Agreement are not applied to the public; but when these items are concentrated or acquired by officials, discounts appear that call into question the legality of the operation.”

He said ironically: “If the administration insists on suffering from Alzheimer’s in its duties and mythomania in its speeches, we are concerned that this ‘disease’ will spread to the more than 1,500 workers, which would drastically increase the costs of the medical service.”

Bertha Becerra has six decades experience as a reporter and counting, and covers news from the world of work and agriculture.