PUERTO RICO-LABOUR: Country Prepares for Nationwide Strike

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Carmelo Ruiz

SAN JUAN, Sep 29 1997 (IPS) - If hundreds of Puerto Ricans have their way come Wednesday the country will be locked tight as far as any kind of business activity is concerned.

That is because civic, religious, feminist and environmental organisations are calling for a general strike on that day to show their disdain for governor Pedro Rossell’s privatisation policy.

The main target of the privatisation campaign is the state- owned Puerto Rico Telephone Company (PRTC), a profitable, high- technology telecommunications company that can sell for several billion US dollars.

“The current government wants to be like the United States, where the state sector is much smaller,” says Alfonso Benmtez, president of Independent Union of Telephone Workers (UIET).

The government is also privatising other functions like garbage disposal, prison administration, public transportation, energy and water.

But Rossell is not the first governor to attempt to sell the PRTC, nor will the Oct. 1 general strike be the first such action ever taken to prevent the company’s privatisation. In 1990 Rossell’s predecessor, Rafael Hernandez-Colon of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP), tried to sell the PRTC to a group of Spanish investors but was thwarted by a general strike in March of that year.

The strike, which drew more than 100,000 protesters to the front steps of the Puerto Rico capitol building dissuaded the potential buyers and discouraged Hernandez-Colon from selling the company.

Several labour organisations representing more than 80,000 workers will take part in the Oct. 1 strike. Non-labour organisations involved include the Evangelical Council, the Puerto Rican Organisation of Working Women, the environmentalist group Mission Industrial, the Puerto Rico League of Cooperatives, and the Dialogue of National Reconciliation. Several legislators and mayors of the PDP have also pledged their support.

Under the slogan “Puerto Rico is not for sale”, the diverse organisations of the independence movement have united in support of the strike and in opposition to privatisation and neoliberal policies. Leaders of the Nationalist Party, the Independence Party (PIP), the Congreso Nacional Hostosiano, the New Independence Movement, and the pro-independence Socialist Front, among others, have announced that they will also participate in the work stoppage.

The Macheteros, a clandestine revolutionary group that engages in armed struggle, issued a press release last week calling governor Rossell’s privatisation of the PRTC the culmination of a politics of theft and plunder.

The government has responded by advising its employees that participation in the strike will be regarded as an unjustified absence while some agencies have notified their employees that disciplinary sanctions will be imposed on those who do not show up for work on Wednesday.

The Department of Education had earlier this year threatened with jail sentences those parents of public school students who protest the department’s policies. On Sep. 19, Rossell’s New Progressive Party (NPP) House representative Lissette Daz-Torres submitted a bill that would classify as child abusers those parents that bring their children to participate in labour strikes.

The measure, which was not approved by the House of Representatives, was repudiated by the Puerto Rico Civil Rights Commission and by the president of the Puerto Rico Bar Association.

Tension is particularly high in the San Juan campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), where an unannounced visit by governor Rossell resulted in a riot earlier this month. The governor came accompanied by vociferous NPP supporters waving placards and shouting slogans in favour of privatisation and against the Oct. 1 general strike.

The small crowd of supporters included members of the University Movement for Statehood (MUPE), a right-wing pro-NPP student group. However, members of the much larger group of students that protested the governor’s presence and his policies claim that many of those accompanying him were actually outside agitators falsely claiming to be students.

The riot started with a shoving match between the student protesters and the governor’s supporters and bodyguards which degenerated into a full confrontation, making it necessary for the university’s security force to stand between both groups so as to prevent a tragedy. There were no injuries or arrests.

At the time many students and lecturers saw Rossell’s surprise visit as a provocation, not only because UPR has historically been hostile to the NPP and its right-wing ideas, but because it took place only one week after an assembly of several thousand students approved a resolution in support of the general strike and in opposition to privatisation.

The assembly, which was the largest and most successful such student event in years, also resolved to shut down UPR on the day of the nationwide strike. After the assembly, students, professors and non-teaching employees united to form the University Front Against Privatisation (FUCP), which will carry out an educational campaign on the economic impact of privatisation and free market reforms, and will also ensure that the university is closed on Oct.1.

The government’s campaign includes bumper stickers, t-shirts and baseball caps with pro-privatisation and pro-government slogans, as well as full-page advertisements in major dailies and 30-second advertisements on radio touting the virtues of privatisation and free markets.

Some of these advertisements question the integrity of union leaders and accuse the strike’s organisers of secretly plotting Puerto Rico’s separation from the United States.

In addition, the two major dailies, El Nuevo Dma and the San Juan Star, have editorialised in favour of the PRTC sale and privatisation in general. A poll carried out by El Nuevo Dma last August found that 67 percent of those polled opposed the PRTC sale.

Meanwhile Police Commissioner, Pedro Toledo has warned that force will be used against the strikers, if it becomes necessary.