BY MORRIS THOMPSON
 Herald World Staff

 MEXICO CITY -- Thousands of federal workers blocked key streets in Mexico for a
 third day on Tuesday to press their demand for bonuses.

 Unions representing the workers are demanding one month's pay as the term of
 President Ernesto Zedillo ends on Dec. 1, a type of bonus they have gotten when
 other presidents left office. They also are demanding bigger year-end bonuses --
 from the equivalent of 40 days' pay to the equivalent of 90 days -- and full-time
 status with benefits for about 23,000 temporary workers.

 Union negotiators were seeking bonuses for about 2.5 million lower-level federal
 employees, including the 1.6 million people who teach in Mexico's public schools
 and federal universities. Although negotiations were under way Tuesday,
 motorists still braced for another day of disruptions on Wednesday.

 The protests were a sign of the pressures that Vicente Fox will face when he
 becomes the nation's first president from outside the Institutional Revolutionary
 Party (PRI) since 1928. The nation's labor unions traditionally have been
 controlled by the PRI, and the PRI by the nation's president.

 For the first time since the demonstrations began last Friday, Mexico City
 officials on Tuesday ordered police to clear the blockades set up by the workers,
 who then marched to a new location to block the street.

 Blockades and other protests also were reported in about two dozen other cities
 across this nation of 100 million people.

 Average pay for the federal workers is $475 a month. They received cash bonuses
 at the end of the two previous presidential terms, but the presidential slush fund
 that was used to make those payments hasn't existed for more than two years.