Mexican telephone union back to work, government to mediate

MEXICO CITY: About 30,000 workers at Mexico’s largest fixed-line telephone and internet company agreed to go back to work Friday while the government mediates a dispute over wages, pensions and benefits.

The Labor Department said that it would act as mediator and that the union and company would have 20 working days to reach an agreement.

Unionized employees went on strike Thursday at Telefonos de Mexico, better known as Telmex. It was once a state-owned company that controlled basically all phone service in Mexico. But since its privatization in the 1990s, anti-monopoly controls have forced it to yield ground to other cellphone and internet providers.