MEXICO : Bid to Dedicate Day’s Pay to Peso Bailout Falls Flat : Union leader’s call for sacrifice met with boos.

During the last administration, in what was called “a day without a car,” Mexicans were told to leave their autos home one day a week in a show of unity against air pollution. This month, in a proposed show of unity in the face of an economic crisis, a union boss has asked for a day without wages.

Raising hackles across the country, Fidel Velazquez, the 94-year-old secretary general of this country’s largest labor federation, is advocating that the 10 million workers who belong to unions affiliated with the ruling party set an example: They should donate a day’s wages to help repay the $47.8-billion international rescue package being used to stabilize the peso.

Velazquez told reporters that he will formally propose the idea later this month at his federation’s 59th anniversary celebration.

“This initiative is not crazy, rather an example for the nation,” he said. “We will propose the same from the bureaucracy, the deputies and senators and all the productive sectors of Mexico.”

Many Mexicans differed with that analysis.

“This seems absurd to me,” said Eduardo Reynoso, a 47-year-old retired accountant. “The workers, who earn the least, are the last who should pay. One day of wages will not cover a 10th of the debt.”

Indeed, the gesture--which would raise less than $2 billion--would be almost entirely symbolic, a response to President Ernesto Zedillo’s call for patriotism and solidarity in difficult times.

Such an outpouring is not without precedent in Mexico. When President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized the oil industry in 1938, Mexicans lined up outside the Palace of Fine Arts to donate jewelry and piggy banks to pay for it.

“That is probably the vision that (Velazquez) is recalling,” said labor analyst Raul Trejo. “But this is not 1938, and we are not rescuing our oil. On the contrary, we are using our oil to guarantee these loans.”

Another important difference, he added, is that Cardenas asked citizens to contribute to a clear national project “and that is exactly what is missing now.”

As a result, Mexicans, already hit hard by a 40% peso devaluation and a 7% cap on wage hikes, are highly resentful of Velazquez’s suggestion that they sacrifice more.

The airwaves have been filled with rebuke for the idea. Irate calls from radio listeners and television interviews with people on the street added up to a resounding “No!”

“Workers have nothing to pay with,” said Remedios Penalver, a 34-year-old union member. “It is always the people who pay. I don’t agree with that.”

One woman, who would not reveal her name, offered a counterproposal to Velazquez’s initiative. She suggested a repeat of a Mexican billionaires’ dinner two years ago that provoked a scandal by asking those who had profited most from the government’s free-market policies to donate millions to the ruling party.

But this time, she said, the government should ask the wealthiest citizens to help alleviate the national debt.