Don’t believe the hype….just yet.

So yesterday, I mentioned that La Jornada had announced an electoral alliance between the PRD and the UNT (independent union federation).

This morning, I had the privilege of attending a meeting of the leaders of the UNT, in which there was some backtracking. The three presidents of the UNT who apparently met with PRD representatives earlier this week were conveniently absent from today’s meeting. They sent their seconds-in-command to fend off claims by the leaders of other member unions that political alliances needed to first be discussed within the UNT and that they should not be learning of them through the press. There was a lot of discussion of the pros and cons to forming alliances with parties in general and whether it should be done at the UNT or individual union level. For full details, you will have to wait for my academic paper on the subject….

(None of this is really secret, though, since the press was there. There will probably be a story about it in La Jornada tomorrow.)

In general, the meeting was interesting just to watch the labor leader interaction and hear all the cell phones going off. There were only about 5 women of the 50+ leaders there, and I had the pleasure of sitting next to one of them. In her union, there are only 2 women union leaders, and women have only belonged to the union for the last 2-3 years. We had a very nice chat that I won’t share with you.

Anyway, watch tomorrow for more news about UNT and PRD alliances.