[News] Defeat of fear well underway in Puerto Rican general strike

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Three Articles Follow

<http://www.seiu.org/2009/10/defeat-of-fear-well-underway-in-puerto-rican-general-strike-1.php>Defeat 
of fear well underway in Puerto Rican general strike

By Kate Thomas on October 15, 2009 10:30 AM
http://www.seiu.org/mt/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=1&tag=Plaza%20las%20Americas&limit=20

On the morning of day one of the General Strike 
in Puerto Rico, organizers are already declaring the protest a great success.

Yesterday late in the afternoon, the owners of 
Plaza las Americas, the largest shopping mall in 
the Caribbean, announced that it would remain 
closed on October 15 "due to security reasons." 
Coincidentally, Plaza las Americas owners also 
happen to be some of the biggest contributors to 
the Republican Party and their henchman, Governor 
Luis Fortuño. So it's very appropriate that the 
main gathering location of the strike is in front 
of this very shopping center, to serve as a 
symbol of the greedy upper class that supports 
the draconian measures taken by the current 
Puerto Rican administration.Two successful events 
that have already taken place today in the strike 
include the closing of Plaza Las Americas and 
more significantly, 
<http://action.seiu.org/page/s/PRcivilrights>the 
defeat of fear. Hundreds of thousands of workers 
are now marching for justice, overcoming the 
campaign of media terror launched by the Puerto 
Rican Government during the last days. Protesters 
are marching from seven different locations of 
the Banks Zone in San Juan today, heading towards 
the southern side of Plaza Las Americas--which is 
expected to largest public gathering in Puerto Rican history.

Today's national protest is being led by the Todo 
Puerto Rico Por Puerto Rico, a coalition that is 
composed of unions, civic, professional, 
religious, community and other civil society 
organizations, and includes SEIU Locals 1996SPT and 1199UGT.
******************************************************
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/10/20091015204322513884.html

Friday, October 16, 2009
00:21 Mecca time, 21:21 GMT
<http://english.aljazeera.net/>News Americas
Puerto Ricans strike over job cuts


Thousands of people have filled the streets of 
Puerto Rico's capital in a strike protesting 
against government move to fire thousands of workers.

Businesses, school and some official agencies in 
San Juan were either closed or faced disruption 
as the 24-hour strike took hold on Thursday.

Governor Luis Fortuno, who last month announced 
the firing of 17,000 public workers, appealed for 
calm and said the redundancies would shrink the 
US territory's $3.2bn budget deficit.

"Nobody supports firings, but there was no other option," he said on Thursday.

Unemployment in Puerto Rico, which has a 
population of nearly four million, was 15.8 per 
cent in August, higher than any US state.

Traffic blocked

The Caribbean island, which is home to several 
petrochemical, pharmaceutical and technology 
companies, has been in recession for more than three years.

Police guarded government buildings in San Juan 
as protesters headed to the Hato Rey financial 
district near Plaza Las Americas, the Caribbean's largest mall.

The mall, with 300 stores and more than 10,000 
employees, shut its doors, along with other 
businesses and private schools in the area.

Some traffic routes were blocked by protesters in 
early morning protests and many streets were 
empty as people decided to stay at home for the duration of the strike.

Fortuno has said that the job cuts will prevent 
the country's bond rating from being downgraded 
to non-investment grade and that the firings will 
lead to a cut in government spending by $2bn a year.

He has argued that a credit downgrade would cause 
more harm to the economy and lead to job cuts far 
in excess of those made in the public sector.

The government has passed a series of spending 
cuts and recruitment freezes, and has imposed temporary taxes.

It has also sunk money into public infrastructure 
investment and low-cost financing to help boost 
the economy, which shrank a record 5.5 per cent 
in the 2009 fiscal year that ended June 30.
  Source: Agencies
*******************************************************
<http://socialistworker.org/>
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<http://socialistworker.org/2009/10/15/general-strike-hits-puerto-rico>http://socialistworker.org/2009/10/15/general-strike-hits-puerto-rico
Analysis: Lee Sustar



General strike hits Puerto Rico

Lee Sustar looks at the background to Puerto 
Rico's dramatic general strike movement to defend public-sector jobs.

October 15, 2009

PUERTO RICAN unions are poised to shut down much 
of the island's economy October 15 in a general 
strike to protest massive public-sector layoffs 
by right-wing Gov. Luis Fortuño.

The unions were spurred into action when Fortuño 
announced that under the new Law 7, some 17,000 
government workers would lose their jobs to help 
close a $3.2 billion budget deficit--and the job 
cuts could reach 30,000 in coming months.

With unemployment on the island officially at 16 
percent, the job losses would hammer working 
class people already suffering from the recession.

The widespread anger over the layoffs has 
propelled even the more conservative unions into 
action. Roberto Pagán, president of the Puerto 
Rican Union of Workers (SPT according to its 
initials in Spanish), an affiliate of the Service 
Employees International Union (SEIU), told 
reporters that if Fortuño doesn't back down 
following the one-day work stoppage, the unions 
would move forward with an "indefinite general 
strike." Pagán, however, said that he expected 
airports would function as usual during the one-day strike.

Meanwhile, the more militant independent 
unions--which initiated the call for the general 
strike--were confident that the action would get 
a strong response. The spokesperson for the Union 
Coordination for a Broad Front of Solidarity and 
Struggle (FASyL), Luis Pedraza Leduc, predicted 
that the general strike would be "a massive 
demonstration that inundates the streets of San Juan," the capital city.

Fortuño--of the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP, 
the equivalent of the Republican Party)--has 
responded by upping the ante. He's threatening to 
charge strikers with "terrorism" if they succeed 
in disrupting the island's ports or the flow of commerce.

Law 7, passed in March, allows Fortuño to 
unilaterally dismiss public-sector workers, 
overriding labor laws that previously prohibited 
such actions. Union contracts are no protection 
for workers, either: Law 7 effectively voids any 
job protections they may contain. What's more, 
Law 7 clears the way for even more radical 
reduction in the number of public-sector workers 
by allowing for "Public-Private Alliances"--a 
euphemistic phrase for handing over government 
functions to private corporations.

If Fortuño thought he could get away with this 
blitzkrieg, it's in part because Puerto Rico's 
union movement has been divided in recent years. 
Earlier this year, unions that belong to the 
AFL-CIO and Change to Win (CTW) federations 
refused to join a May Day strike call by five 
independent unions earlier this year. Even so, 
some 15,000 workers joined a spirited march that day.

A major obstacle to labor unity in Puerto Rico 
has been the SEIU, which dominates the CTW 
federation. After a strike in 2008 by the Puerto 
Rican teachers union, the Federación de Maestros 
Puertoriqueño (FMPR), the SEIU made a political 
deal with the previous governor to try and 
replace the FMPR as the main teachers' union. 
Puerto Rico's teachers, however, rejected the deal.

Now, however, the scale of Fortuño's attack has 
spurred almost all of Puerto Rico's unions to 
respond to the grassroots movement to fight back. 
The AFL-CIO and CTW unions, for example, 
supported a protest called the People's Assembly 
June 5. According to some estimates, the turnout 
reached 100,000, which would make it one of the 
largest protests in Puerto Rican history. But it 
was the independent unions, rank-and-file 
activists and the left that kept pushing for the general strike.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A BIG boost to the strike movement has come from 
college students. At the Colegio de Mayagüez, a 
campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), 
the Student Council in Defense of Public 
Education (CEDEP) called for a mass meeting to discuss a response to the cuts.

On October 6, some 5,000 students turned out and 
voted to support any strike by professors and 
other collage workers, to back the general strike 
and to launch a 48-hour student strike of their 
own. After about 50 students decided to extend a 
protest by sleeping at the college gates 
overnight, thousands more decided to join them over the next two days.

The government struck back with an attempt to 
intimidate the student protesters with police 
violence. After students at the Canóvanas school 
tried to throw eggs at Fortuño, police brutally 
assaulted them. Meanwhile, Miguel Muñoz, interim 
president of UPR, met with police superintendent 
José Figueroa Sancha. Soon afterward Muñoz 
announced that all UPR campuses would be closed 
from October 12-16. Police are guarding the 
campuses' entrances to prevent students from 
using them as a mobilizing point for the general strike.

The university administration and the government 
are imposing censorship, and intend to prevent 
protests and violently attack demonstrators in 
order to avoid a bigger uprising in the country," 
said Giovanni Roberto, spokesperson for the 
Organización Socialista (OSI) and a student at 
UPR's Faculty of Education. "It's evident that 
the university administration recognizes that UPR 
is close to a general strike."

Even before the strike began, the biggest 
shopping center in Puerto Rico, Plaza las 
Américas, announced it would close on October 15. 
A complex with 300 stores that employs some 
10,000 people, Plaza las Américas was to be a 
rallying point for unions during the general 
strike--and employers evidently concluded that it 
was better to close voluntarily rather than be shut down by strike supporters.

The association of construction contractors 
released a statement that they expected the 
general strike would cost the Puerto Rican 
economy some $180 million--a substantial sum for 
an economy the size of the island's.

In another sign of the mass support for the 
strike, the archbishop of Puerto Rico, Roberto 
Gonzáles, said that the workers' protest is a 
"legitimate" effort to keep the government from 
carrying out firings that will have "negative 
consequences for individuals and their families."

In the view of Puerto Rico's socialists and 
left-wing activists, the strike marks a renewal 
of mass struggle that has the potential to shake 
up the island's politics. As Carlos Juan Irizarry 
wrote for the newspaper Socialismo Internacional:

Puerto Rico is at a historic moment, a moment of 
great suffering that also presents us with an 
opportunity to fight and to rise up together 
against the government and the oppressive system. 
The only way to stop [Law 7] is if we organize 
ourselves and show that we have power. We are not 
going to take any more abuse.








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