Introduction to the Pension Reform in 2007
In 2007, a significant pension reform took place for Mexican bureaucrats. Then-President Felipe Calderón and Elba Esther Gordillo agreed that Miguel Ángel Yunes would take charge of the ISSSTE, an organization responsible for medical services, housing, and pensions for state workers. This shift from the foxism era to panistas ceded control of this organization to loyalists of the powerful magisterial leader, Elba Esther Gordillo.
Resistance and Legal Challenges
Other labor unions subject to Article 123, Section B of the Constitution resorted to strategic mobilization and litigation, filing a series of protective lawsuits (amparos) to halt the reform. By November 2008, approximately 1.8 million bureaucrats fell under the transitional Article 10 of the ISSSTE Law, while PensionISSSTE membership only comprised 294,000 workers.
Magisterial Pension Plan: A Piloting Experience
The magisterial sector had already experienced a pilot plan in their retirement savings scheme. In 2000, they agreed with the SEP to create the FORTE, accumulating 20,000 million pesos—which vanished by 2020. During the critical phase of this fideicomiso, Alfonso Cepeda Salas and Helena María Sanguinetti Dobal were key figures in the union representation.
Supreme Court Intervention and Pension Regulation
The Supreme Court addressed bureaucrats’ complaints, and the Pension Regulation of the New Law—published in the Federal Register on July 21, 2009—reduced the pension impact by only increasing the retirement age (and consequently service years, with a cap of 10 minimum wages already present in Law 83).
Presidential Decree and Future Implications
President Sheinbaum will halt the application of the current regulation via decree, setting the minimum retirement age at 58 for women and 60 for men by 2028.
It took three presidential terms for the magisterial guild to become exempt from this transitional measure through a decree. Teachers retiring under the individual accounts regime will be subject to the Pension Fund for Well-being.
Magisterial Democratic Insistence and Current Developments
The democratic magisterial insistence on abrogating the 2007 ISSSTE Reform has been met by President Claudia Sheinbaum. After a decade of upheavals, little remains of the educational reform signed in the Pacto por México and the structural union that validated the peñista agenda.
Juan Díaz de la Torre, who succeeded Elba Esther Gordillo as president of the General Council of the Union, concluded his six-year term. Alfonso Cepeda Salas took over the magisterial guild interimly.
The SNTE leadership must convene a National Extraordinary Congress to approve an Estatuto reform for the election of 60 sectional secretaries and the National Executive Committee by direct, secret ballot from the union membership.
Cepeda Salas completed his interim six-year term. His mandate expired on February 11, 2024, but presidential elections and recent judicial elections prevented the SNTE from holding elections.
Before renewing its national leadership, the SNTE must hold a National Extraordinary Congress.
