Word: berm
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...Mexico City, an employer got a union's permission last week to fire 5,000 of its 23,000 members. The employer was ramrod-backed Antonio Bermúdez, boss of Pemex, Mexico's Government oil monopoly. The union was the Mexican Petroleum Workers' Syndicate, until recently one of the fastest-striking labor organizations in Mexico...
...Bermúdez' extraordinary action went back to one day last December, when, hot-tempered Union Boss Jorge Ortega tossed one of his lightning strikes at the new Alemán Government. Unlike its predecessors, the Alemán Government struck right back. Soldiers rode gas trucks, broke the strike. A more compliant leader took Ortega's place. But Pemex was still cluttered with an accumulation of political hacks dating far back to other administrations. Antonio Bermúdez, working 12 to 14 hours daily, laid careful plans. Last week, with President Alemán's support...
...days, will go some 4,000 "emergency" field laborers. Out, too, will go 200 so-called "confidential employees" attached to the central office. The union agreed to the firings partly because it lost last year's strike, partly because it knew that the Government was solidly behind Berm...
Such incidents gave Bermúdez a reputation for a close sense of duty almost from the day he entered politics in the sleazy border town of Ciudad Juárez, where he had made a $6 million fortune distilling Waterfill Frazier bourbon whisky. Within two weeks of his election as mayor in 1942, he had launched such a housecleaning as Mexico had rarely seen. He cracked down on a free-flowing traffic in narcotics, stolen autos and women, kicked grafters out of the city hall. He was the sort of independent President Alemán wanted to bring order...
...with Wildcats. Labor was only the most immediate of the tremendous problems facing Bermúdez. Pemex had fallen far behind on distributing its oil, and in discovering and developing new fields. On distribution, Bermúdez was hamstrung by the sad state of Mexican railways, but he had schemes to overcome that disability. One top-priority project: an $8,000,000 pipeline to bring natural gas from Poza Rica on the Gulf to Mexico City's industries and households. He also hopes to develop new fields that will give Mexico oil for at least 50 years to come...