ARE YOU WITH THE TEACHERS OR WITH THE BANKS?

This editorial by Lev M. Velázquez Barriga appeared in the May 27, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier leftist daily newspaper.

What are the CNTE’s Demands?
Immediate repeal of the 2007 ISSSTE Law; restoration of a solidarity-based, collective, and intergenerational pension system; the full recognition of retirement based on years of service (28 for women and 30 for men) instead of the age of 65; the payment of pensions based on the minimum wage rather than on UMAs; the elimination of AFOREs as a privatization model (AFOREs are private companies who manage pensions as individual accounts, extremely restrictive and profitable for finance capital); and a profound restructuring of ISSSTE to restore its social character.

During his morning press conference on May 26, Secretary of Education Mario Delgado presented the benefits of the Welfare Pension Fund, created by the previous administration and now presented as an even better solution to the teachers’ demand for the repeal of the ISSSTE Law. Although the proposal has already been rejected by teachers, it has been filtered through social security specialists, who consider it a patch with various inconsistencies. I am discussing arguments that contradict the government’s version.

The current neoliberal two-tier system of retirement age brackets and privatized pensions benefits the banks, not the public, not the teachers.

Since [former neoliberal President] Calderón’s reform, anyone entering the federal public service has no choice but to use individual accounts. This is the case for 76 percent of workers; however, according to the Secretary of Education, they represent the largest group of beneficiaries of the aforementioned fund. For this vast majority, the decree freezing the retirement age bracket is not applicable; the 58 and 56 retirement age brackets for men and women are exclusively for those who joined Pensionissste in the achievement obtained by the CNTE, after 2.5 million injunctions; but those who have since been forced into personal Afores cannot retire at 58 and 56.

A [teacher’s college] graduate receives a teaching position between the ages of 22 and 23. From the outset, the teacher no longer enjoys the social right to retirement, as this was taken away from him when he was forced to rely on his own savings for his retirement, thus diminishing his already precarious teaching salary. Now, to access the much-lauded fund, he will have to meet the age requirement of 65; that is, if he wants to retire on his last salary, and not on the meager pension the bank will provide, he will have to work from 42 to 43 years, regardless of gender.

Before Calderón’s Law, retirement savings were also funded by state contributions; then, a teacher could retire at 27 years and six months of service, and a professor at 29 and a half. Where does Secretary Delgado deduce that his proposal is better than repealing the 2007 ISSSTE reform? As if that weren’t enough, he brazenly stated that, although the Afores manage 20.3 percent of GDP (double that amount in 15 years, according to official calculations), this corresponds to 70 million accounts, and this isn’t the bank’s money. Consequently, he concludes that it can’t be collected by the public administration because it belongs to the workers. Indeed, the AFORES funds are the property of the savers, but not the multi-million dollar profits that private banks make by charging them commissions, or from investments they make in their own businesses, or from the profits they make from usurious activity with other people’s money.

A call for dialogue, announcing at the CNTE’s meeting that there will be no further offers and publicly declaring, as the Minister of the Interior did the day before the meeting with the President, is a dialogue that is fruitless from the start, precluding any possibility of resolution and negotiation. However, at every turn, the democratic teachers’ union has shown at least three avenues to resolve their demands.

The teachers, the legitimate and sole owners of their own savings authorize the Fourth Transformation government to transfer the funds they deposited in their accounts from private, for-profit institutions to a social-interest management system. The implications are enormous; from the outset, these involve 3 million workers serving the state, strengthening public banking. Many of them, whose salaries were carded by choice or under duress, would be willing to transfer their payrolls, for example, to Banco del Bienestar, which would allow for unprecedented growth comparable only to the attempt to buy Banamex during the previous administration.

Through an attitude of infinite solidarity, Mexican teachers are demonstrating that the savings deposits of active workers can be used to support the pensions of retired workers, who are no longer receiving deductions from their paychecks for this purpose. This measure opens a virtuous cycle of benefits across generations, which would keep an intergenerational pension fund alive.

Faced with the government’s argument that there’s no way to finance the CNTE’s proposals for pension reform because it would entail government expropriation, in addition to the previous point, teachers and other public servants, such as those in the health sector, are implicitly giving their consent for the Mexican state to use the profits that, immorally and without the consent of account holders, are filling the pockets of private banks to the tune of billions of pesos annually. Fair and moderate management of profit accumulation could refinance, gradually increase, and equitably redistribute the solidarity pension fund.

It is possible to resolve the teachers’ conflict, but the decision comes down to two alternatives: to side with the teachers or to side with the banks.