In the Diaspora
(This is one of a series of weekly columns from Guyanese in the diaspora and others with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean)
By Yarimar Bonilla
Yarimar Bonilla teaches anthropology at the University of Virginia. She has also written on the mass strike in Guadeloupe earlier this year (https://nacla.org/node/5668).
In January and October of this year two massive demonstrations took place in the Caribbean, both of which have received little if any media coverage in the Anglophone Caribbean. In Guadeloupe (an overseas department of France), anger over high gasoline prices was the trigger for a mass strike in January that shut down the island for 44 days and launched the largest political movement in the island’s history, with a list of demands that went far beyond traditional trade union negotiations. By the time the strike was called off, the movement had reached a deal with the French government on some 165 demands that included increases in the minimum wage, lower bank fees and reduced prices for public utilities.
The more recent protests took place less than two weeks ago in Puerto Rico where, on October 15, an estimated 200,000 people participated in a general work stoppage, protesting against the recent economic and labour policies being put in place by the current government administration.
In Puerto Rico the protest was fueled by the fact that, over the last few weeks, more than 30,000 government employees received termination letters. These dismissals were part of a broader set of policies taking shape under “public law 7” passed into law earlier this year on March 9, 2009, which is known as the “Special law declaring a state of emergency and establishing a plan for fiscal stabilization to save the credit of Puerto Rico.” This law was the equivalent of the local government’s economic recovery plan, and it was announced that the job cuts were necessary to close a massive US$3.2 billion budget deficit.
Public law 7 allows the current governor, Luis Fortuño, to suspend current union contracts and override existing labour laws in order to dismiss public service workers, and deny them any job protections contained in their union contracts. Not only can workers be dismissed without legal cause, but public services can be subcontracted by private companies in order to carry out the functions of the dismissed government workers. Generally speaking, then, the law is a pretext for reducing government jobs and paving the way towards increased privatization of government sector.
The expected consequences are dire. The government is the largest employer on the island. Public law 7 will increase the already high unemployment rate on the island, in the double digits before the massive retrenchment of public sector workers was announced. It will weaken the role and capacity of labour unions and significantly erode current labour rights, while opening the door to increased privatization and deregulation of the public sector. Some consider the law to be anti constitutional since it goes against existing legal statutes that protect labour contracts.
These actions have not gone unchallenged. A coalition of unions, religious leaders and community organizations called “Todo Puerto Rico por Puerto Rico” (All of Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico), has organized significant protests against the law that have attracted large numbers of participants. The work stoppage of October 15th was called for by this coalition as well as by the labour leaders of the Union Coordination for a Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL). There was also representation from local artists (protesting reduced funding for the arts), university professors, students, school teachers, environmentalists, lawyers, senior citizens, gay rights activists, and several other labour unions including the Puerto Rican Union of Workers (SPT according to its initials in Spanish), an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
College students have also been highly vocal; on one campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), the Student Council in Defense of Public Education called a mass meeting in early October attended by thousands of students, who voted to back the general strike. The week before the general strike, 10 campuses of the UPR were shut down in order to prevent protesters from using the facilities to organize the movement. Other forms of general intimidation were also employed to try to arrest a rapidly growing movement that was galvanizing cross-sectional support, including government officials being deployed to downplay the coming event in the media, and with the government going as far as to threaten to use the provisions of the US “patriot act” in order to persecute protestors as “terrorists”. These pre-emptive threats did not, however, deter the demonstrators from taking to the streets to demand the right to a job, a secure living and a wage, many of whom in fact actively claimed the label of terrorists on their placards and t-shirts during the demonstrations.
On October 15, demonstrators set out from 8 different points of departure in San Juan (the capital of Puerto Rico), including the university, the main government hospital, the department of labour, the largest local bank, the national arts theatre, and other government and corporate economic centres. All protesters convened at the end of the protest at the large shopping centre, Plaza las Américas, a large complex employing some 10,000 people, which shut down for the day.
This time around the protests were concentrated in San Juan, but organizers suggest that coming protests will span the entire island. There were also small protests in other parts of the island, and in the week preceding the strike numerous acts of civil disobedience were carried out. In the weeks leading up to the demonstration a disgruntled government worker had disrupted a press conference by the governor, Luis Fortuño, by throwing an egg at him. Much like the shoe thrown at George Bush by an Iraqi journalist during a press conference in Iraq, the egg incident or “huevazo” of Fortuño became a symbol of discontent and disapproval of his anti-worker policies. During the demonstrations, numerous protestors carried signs in allusion to the egg, and some even dressed up as super hero eggs.
A group of university students blocked the busiest expressway in Puerto Rico, Highway 52, burned tires, and refused to move for 5 hours until Rafael Cancel Miranda, a former nationalist activist and political prisoner, talked to the students and convinced them to re-open the highway.
Solidarity also extended to the diaspora, with protests registered in New York by Puerto Rican migrants in support of the strike (as in the rest of the Caribbean, remittances have become a crucial source of maintenance for families on the island, and the layoffs will not only put additional pressure on overseas family members but will likely lead to higher rates of out-migration from the island). There was also support from US labour leaders of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), with which the Puerto Rican Sindicato Puertorriqueño de Trabajadores (SPT) is said to be lobbying the US congress on the question of the dismissals (Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States by Spain under the Treaty of Paris in 1898, and today is a self-governing unincorporated territory of the United States).
Following the strike, numerous government workers have been appealing the government dismissals in the courts. Several groups of workers, including education workers, firemen, and others are arguing that they are exempt from the “Law 7” on which the firings were based. The firemen’s union has already received a positive response, and workers from numerous other sectors are also launching legal action.
The demonstration was considered a success in terms of mass participation and the lack of violent incidents. However the government has not issued a clear response. Organizers (though somewhat fractured) seem to be working together to offer a united response to the government’s increasingly anti-working class policies. In the weeks and months to come, we must keep an eye on Puerto Rico to see how workers and activists continue to push back against the neo-liberal anti-labour thrust of the current administration.