NEWS ANALYSIS : Mexico Unions No Longer in Ruling Party’s Pocket : Politics: An ad from one labor group congratulating the PRI’s presidential candidate draws members’ fire.

Until this year, it was a routine matter: The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party named a presidential candidate, and labor unions fell into line behind him. But early in the 1994 presidential election campaign, there are signs of union rebellion.

Individual members protested to leaders this month when the federation of bank employees took out a full-page advertisement in the staid newspaper Excelsior congratulating Luis Donaldo Colosio on his nomination as candidate for the PRI, as the ruling party is known.

The union’s secretary general, representing employees at the government export-import bank, whose name appeared on the message, even wrote to the federation and the newspaper stating that he had not signed it.

“Our national executive committee is obliged to respect the political affiliation of all members,” wrote Carlos Gonzalez Rosas. “Therefore, collective support for any political party shows a lack of sensitivity and respect for the individual party preferences of our colleagues.”

The reaction is significant because Gonzalez’s union is in the vanguard of a movement known as the new unionism--professionals in service and technical industries who are redefining Mexican workers’ relationship to their unions, the government and, most of all, the PRI.

The union’s refusal to support Colosio and the PRI defies decades of tradition. Organized labor has provided the party’s soldiers, filling stadiums at campaign rallies and delivering votes at election time. Participating in party politics gave unions clout in establishing national policies, especially those affecting workers and wages.

The angry reaction from bank employees also signals that the very workers needed to modernize the economy are demanding a modernization of the political system, which government leaders have resisted.

“It is becoming more frequent that there is a diversity of political opinion within unions and that the diversity is recognized,” said Raul Trejo, who studies organized labor in Mexico.

He noted that Mexico’s teachers union is no longer officially part of the PRI, although its leaders remain active in party politics.

Similarly, when the Federation of Goods and Service Workers--a 2-year-old labor group that epitomizes the new union movement--invited Colosio to address members, many of them openly said they wanted leaders to extend similar invitations to other major party candidates.

“It is becoming more difficult, even counterproductive, to force party discipline on union members,” said Trejo. “It is no longer in the PRI’s interest to try to manipulate them that way.”

Workers may show up for rallies as required, he said, but they take out their resentment in the voting booth by casting their ballots for opposition parties. That makes the union role in politics more complex.

For example, instead of letting the national executive committee dictate policy, the teachers union elects a political committee responsible for deciding whether it, as an organization, should take a position on specific issues.

But Trejo cautions that change will come slowly and sporadically. The most backward unions will still try to force members to show support for the PRI. Fidel Velazquez, leader of the Mexican Workers Federation, the country’s largest organized labor group, still pledges his members’ votes to the PRI, “although no one believes him,” said Trejo.

“It is increasingly clear that unions are no longer central to the electoral process,” said Trejo. That forces organized labor to find a new role, perhaps similar to the one outlined by an editorial in the export-import bank newsletter.

“We are united, in this union, in the defense of our work and the institution where we work,” the editorial stated. “Our political participation is based on the defense of principles, rather than groups or individuals.”