Of the approximately 700 million pesos (US$41.1 million) representing the monthly payroll of education workers of Oaxaca, the 22nd section of the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE) controlled 70% of it through a network of payers that distributed the checks issued for 23 years by the State Institute of Public Education (IEEPO).
Although Article 26 of the Fiscal Coordination Law states that workers have to be paid through electronic transfer, this did not happen in Oaxaca.
The leadership of the 22nd Section of the CNTE created a network of payers to distribute the 70,000 checks issued every two weeks. This way the union leader in turn, currently Rubén Nuñez, made sure that their union fees were collected before the teachers received their salary.
According to information obtained by EL UNIVERSAL, the 3,000 payers collected around 6 million pesos (US$352,010) for the union leaders using this scheme and even kept the payments to deceased teachers.
Only 30% of the 81,000 teachers got their salary on a bank account. However starting in August, of the 55,000 teachers that get their salary by check, 30,000 will be paid by bank transfer.
The union leaders oppose the measure and have said that they will seek legal ways to revert it.