„The team excavated a two metres by two metres mud-plaster domed structure, which it says was used as a kiln to dry malt and make beer 3,500 years ago.
Beers of different flavours would have been brewed from malted barley and fermented with yeasts with an alcoholic content of around 5 per cent.
The yeast would have either been wild or produced from fruit such as grape or fig, according to the researchers.“
Zur Alkoholdiskussion (pdf-Datei, 2,14mb); ein Text aus der Roten Flora (vermutlich 1990 verfasst) zur Diskussion um Alkohol, (andere) Drogen und die Auswirkungen psychoaktiver Substanzen auf die Subjekte im Kapitalismus und zum (Nicht-)Umgang mit Alkohol in autonomen Zusammenhängen und selbstverwalteten Projekten:
Ein weiterer Beitrag von LibCom zu den Entlassungen von 250 ArbeiterInnen in einer Fabrik in San Luis Potosí/Mexiko, welche Flaschen für das mexikanische Trend-Bier Corona herstellt, siehe hierzu auch diesen Artikel… ansonsten gab es bei Stella Artois (schmeckt ein wenig besser als Corona) in Leuven/Belgien einen wilden Streik:
Mexico: Corona bottle makers face redundancy for supporting independent union
Factory workers in San Luis Potosí in northern Mexico have been threatened by their bosses with the closure of their factory if they don’t renounce their elected independent union in favour of the bosses‘ union.
The threat from Grupo Modelo in the Industrial Vidriera Potosí factory comes not long after the firing of over 250 workers for being involved with the activities of Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de la Empresa IVP (SUTEIVP). SUTEIVP won union elections and recognition in 2007 against the charrista, state-affiliated Confederación Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos (CROC) and are now headed by one Valentín Marín.
Curiously enough, the actual wording of the statement by Grupo Modelo – who manufacture a variety of beers, the most internationally famous being Corona – does not mention SUTEIVP, instead threatening factory closure if support is given to „an executive committe headed by Marín“ himself, leading to various questions: to what extent is Modelo’s beef with the independent union, as opposed to the individual union bureaucrat? Are Modelo and/or CROC optimistic about recuperating a possible post-Marín SUTEIVP?
As for the SUTEIVP, its protest encampment of the fired workers outside the factory gates still lacks legal recognition as a strike, although SUTEIVP members who managed to retain their jobs have been granted legal recourse to strike in the future, currently a very real option in the heightening tension. SUTEIVP have rather played down strike talk however, while admittedly it could happen imminently, claiming (rather bizarrely) a cease in production would accelerate the plant closure. Apparently, their priority is „defending our source of employment, our wage rises and contractural improvements“.
Since when it was the business of workers to mediate with menacing union-busting tactics is unclear. Also unclear is the fortitude of the still employed SUTEIVP members to maintain a strike, especially with the continued hostility of the local labour arbritration organism, the Junta Federal de Conciliación y Arbitraje (JFCyA), which is also state-affiliated and runs in the same circles as the displaced CROC charros (corrupt leaders). In Mexico, a strike without legal recognition in practical terms spells impunity for sackings by bosses, assaults by police and kidnappings and disappearances by private gangs.
The role of SUTEIVP (more particularly, Marín) in this escalating conflict is still open to inspection.
Corona ist eine beliebte, „trendige“ mexikanische Biersorte … und in einer Fabrik in San Luis Potosí/Mexiko, wo Flaschen für Corona hergestellt werden, wurden laut nachfolgender Nachricht von LibCom gerade 250 ArbeiterInnen entlassen, weil sie eine unabhängige Gewerkschaft gegründet hatten:
Mexico: 250 Corona bottle makers fired for forming an independent union
More than 250 employees of a factory that manufactures beer bottles for Corona (amongst others) in San Luis Potosí have been fired for associating with a legally recognised independent union. The factory’s owners are also purging the factory of sympathisers of the sacked workers.
Almost two years of unionising activity had resulted in workers ousting the corrupt, mainstream Confederación Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos (CROC) union from the shopfloor of the Industrial Vidriera Potosí (IVP) glass factory and replacing it with the independent Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de la Empresa IVP (SUTEIVP). The union’s first action was to gain a 19% payrise off the employers: Grupo Modelo, who export the weak and tasteless Corona beer internationally, as well as selling a host of beer brands in Mexico.
Upon being informed of their redundancies, the sacked union activists (which included anyone with a delegated post in the SUTEIVP) attempted to a hold a legally-binding strike, only for the national labour abritration panel (the Junta Federal de Conciliación y Arbitraje [JFCyA]) to ban it and block workers from occupying the factory building. In response, the SUTEIVP have erected a permanent picket outside the factory gates.
Grupo Modelo is now cracking down on support for the newly jobless SUTEIVP shopfloor activists. CCTV has been installed in order to monitor their stall and keep records of workers who approach it, and informers have been placed on company transportation to and from the site, with workers being hauled in front of management if „they so much as open a [bus] window and greet picketers“.
SUTEIVP have organised marches from San Luis Potosí to Mexico City (over 400km) and established a permanent presence outside the headquarters of Grupo Modelo and its sister companies, the US embassy and the JFCyA offices in the capital, with whom they have lodged an appeal against their ruling. Internationally, it calls for a boycott of Modelo products, which to readers outside Mexico will mean giving up yuppy favourite Corona beer.
Entdinglichung 