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Veraguas teachers strike to a tamborito beat
Torrijos, labor unions face off in politically charged wage struggles article and photos by Eric Jackson
There's bad blood between the nation's principal teachers' unions and President Torrijos. The same can be said about the unions representing workers for the Social Security Fund (CSS). It goes way back, but it boiled over last year when these organizations walked off the job in a 32-day strike that forced the president to back down a little on his Seguro Social reforms.
During that strike, Torrijos and his Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) moved to take over as many labor unions as possible, and also promoted coups in the union representing CSS doctors and dentists (AMOACSS) and the Certified Public Accountants' professional organization with mixed success. The attempt to create a pro-government "back to work" organization among teachers during last year's strike was a failure, but the effort survived and led to the creation of the Coordinadora de Unidad Magisterial (CUM), whose 13 organizations bargained with the government separately from the Frente de Accion Magisterial (FAM), which represents the six established public school teachers' unions. On August 4 the government and CUM agreed to a phased $90 per month across the board pay raise, CUM "ratified" it without much pretense of consulting with any membership and certainly without a vote of the teachers they claim to represent, and the government declared the wage issue closed. The FAM unions, however, held membership votes and overwhelmingly rejected the deal.
Andrés Rodríguez of the Asociacion de Profesores and FRENADESO
The government refused to budge and on August 15 the public school teachers' walkouts began. The first day wasn't a good show of strength because it was a holiday for much of the capital, as August 15 is the anniversary of the founding of Panama City by Pedrarias the Cruel on the site of an ancient indigenous settlement. The next day some schools in the Interior remained open and some of the metro area's elementary school teachers showed up for work but virtually all of the secondary schools were shut down. By the end of the week almost all public school teachers were on strike, even those purportedly represented by the CUM organizations.
This reporter talked to Saúl Méndez, the number two leader of the militant SUNTRACS construction workers' union who showed up at the August 17 teachers' protest march through the capital to lend his union's support, about the rebuff to CUM and the government. He said that CUM "didn't hold a ratification vote of their membership because they have no membership --- these are just paper organizations created by the government." And shortly thereafter as the FAM union leaders marched by the best known of their number, Asociacion de Profesores secretary general and FRENADESO leader Andrés Rodríguez was, in the best style of the leading professional sport in the city where he teaches high school art classes (Colon), using the body language of a boxer who has just scored a knockout.
Meanwhile at Seguro Social, the management said that the organization is on the brink of insolvency and there is no question of any pay raises at all in their contract talks. Priscila Vásquez led her ANFACSS clerical workers out on strike on August 14, staging periodic blockages of the Transistmica near the Arnulfo Arias Hospital Complex over the next several days as other Seguro Social unions met to decide whether, when and how to join the strikes and protests. The unions at the CSS have been known to stage rotating strikes, with one union going out for 48 hours, another union walking out as the previous strikers go back for a few day, then a third union striking in its turn and so on.
The politics of the CSS pay dispute are especially bitter because the Torrijos administration claimed to have solved the fund's financial problems with last year's reforms, yet there are chronic shortages of medicines at Seguro health care facilities and now the institution is pleading poverty. The PRD-aligned La Prensa editorial blaming all the problems on former CSS director Juan Jované, whom Mireya Moscoso fired in 2003, is sufficiently far-fetched that even the Torrijos administration isn't often making that particular claim.
Also on the 14th high school students at the Instituto Nacional blocked the Avenida de los Martires in front of their school, setting up flaming barricades but failing to goad the police into a full-scale pitched battle with the molotov cocktails that some of the masked schoolboys were brandishing. It did, however, make for some photo opportunities of the "young hoodlums have taken over our streets" genre for media that wanted to convey that message.
Teachers march through the Casco Viejo en route to the Presidencia
That, apparently, was the sort of first day of labor strife that the government had apparently hoped for. FRENADESO and ANFACSS are both registered as "no" committees for the October 22 referendum on the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan to expand the Panama Canal, and President Torrijos has several times a day been repeating that the labor unions don't care about the country, the students in public schools, the patients at CSS health care facilities or even really the money, that what's really going on is that they're trying to embarrass the government ahead of the referendum.
But the strategy of dealing with CUM rather than the established teachers' unions, and the flat refusal to talk pay raises with the CSS workers, appear to be very specifically designed to provoke strikes. That while this controversy was brewing it was discovered that the legislature and president had rushed through special tax legislation that essentially gave five individuals a capital gains tax break of some $400 million in the sale of Banistmo to HSBC added special venom to the dispute, as it could have reasonably been foreseen that it would have. Viewed from the labor perspective, what's going on is that Torrijos, who sees the momentum in the referendum campaign going toward the "no" side, is betting that in a confrontation with organized labor he can equate the "no" forces with the striking unions and portray them as a collection of thugs. Certainly the street blockages are always unpopular with those who are inconvenienced, and all the PRD-aligned television stations devoted much more time to complaints about the protests than to anything that the labor movement had to say.
But as the teachers marched the long route from Escuela Republica de Venezuela to Avenida Peru, up Avenida Peru to Via España, then down that street until it turns into Avenida Central and the length of that avenue and pedestrian mall and into the Casco Viejo to Plaza Catedral, the reactions of people along the way were overwhelmingly positive. While one woman put on a scowl for the protesters on Central, for example, on the balcony across the street several other women were cheering in solidarity. Going through the pedestrian mall none of the shopkeepers were pulling down their burglar gates as happened during last year's Seguro Social marches.
But then the teachers hadn't used street blockade tactics like the CSS clericals.
Look for the CSS strike to spread, and the public schools to remain closed until the government agrees to reopen wage negotiations with the FAM unions. And look for the public perception of who the bad guys are in these wage disputes to affect the October 22 referendum.
Above and below, teachers regale the government with mocking tamborito anthems
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