Jolly Catemaco

It is not the season to be jolly in beautiful downtown Catemaco. At least for considerably more than half the municipal employees.

As of January 1st, a new mayor is in town and every one of them is at the whim of politics to either continue to be employed or to join the unemployed.

There is no functional civil service in Mexico. And the consequences are as can be expected: generally inefficient, corrupt, unfriendly, brow beaten and kowtowing to their superiors.

Mexican municipal governments separate their workers into three classes, base, confianza and elected.

"Elected workers" are the elected officials. In Catemaco there are 5, the presidente municipal (mayor), 4 regidores (councilmen) and 1 sindico (comptroller+/-). Effectively only the mayor is of importance. All are significantly over paid in relation to the median wages of their electorate. On the municipal level they are elected for three years, and cannot be reelected until 3 more years have passed.

"Confianza" employees are generally all the bosses and sub-bosses of departments, technicians and specialty workers. Their pay schedule is considerably below that of elected workers but way above the "base" employees. They are appointed by the mayor. Well substantiated rumors claim that  many contribute a percentage of their salaries to their political bosses. Although the mayor appoints most, significant interference is exerted by superior level politicians.

"Base" employees are generally the peons of the system, mostly near minimum wage workers, doing mostly menial jobs. Unless temporarily contracted, after 6 months they have lifetime tenure, and are damn hard and very expensive, to get rid off. They are entitled to form one, and only one, union.

Obviously the temporary nature of elected and confianza workers is problematic. Their only hope for future employment is related to their political connections.

Elected workers only continued employment rests with the next level government, which is the state, in case of municipal employees.

Obviously the best interest of elected and confianza workers lies in themselves instead of their community. The results are obvious to anyone familiar with Mexico.