business & economy

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Business & Economy Briefs

Teachers' strike goes into its fourth week

by Eric Jackson

As this article was written, the strike by most of Panama's public school teachers, whose unions are part of the Teachers Action Front (FAM), was about to go into its fourth week and the government was threatening to bring in strikebreakers to reopen the schools.

The previous week the Ministry of Education (MEDUC) had been the source of a stream of wishful claims --- things like how the strike was petering out and 85 percent of the teachers were back to work, which were so demonstrably false that even the PRD-aligned media wouldn't take them at face value. FAM answered on August 30 with a huge protest march through Panama City, attended by 10,000 or more strikers and sympathizers.

Meanwhile both the Torrijos administration and FAM were organizing student and parent groups, the former to demand the reopening of schools, the latter to support the strike. It seems, however, that the great majority of public school students passed on both opportunities for activism and treated the strike as an extension of their midyear school break.

There was the tiniest of movement toward a settlement, but even that in the form of an exchange of insults. The government announced on television that it would stick to a $90 per month raise over five years pay offer that had been accepted by CUM, a coalition of government-aligned organizations, but would move up the scheduled pay raises. The unions, also indirectly, countered by saying that they would come down for their demand for $190 per month more to $120.

The strike has many political implications that complicate the bargaining over money. The Torrijos administration appears to have deliberately provoked the strike by dealing with an unrepresentative group of puppet unions and conducting a campaign of vilification against teachers in general during contract talks. This was probably done in the expectation that a strike would be unpopular and could halt the momentum toward the "no" side in the Panama Canal expansion referendum. Most of the teachers' unions, for their part, have either ideological or practical objections to that proposal or both and were not shy about a confrontation with the government.

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Residential security in Latin America
Seguro Social workers settle their strike
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