One-day national strike has limited success

On September 4 two left-leaning and labor-led umbrella groups, FRENADESO and the newer and smaller ULIP, held a 24-hour "warning strike" to press demands for a series of measures to rescue workers' living standards from inflation that has eroded their purchasing power. All of the different groups involved have their individual demands and there is a 15-point wish list about which both coalitions and all the participating unions agree, but the central points are an across-the-board 20 percent national wage increase and a freeze on the prices of key household staples.

The public schools remained open but the overwhelming majority of both students and teachers honored the strike by not coming to school that day. In most places teachers just stayed home rather than showing up to march or picket, but in Santiago the Veraguas Educators Association (AEVE) turned out in great numbers to lead a protest march that drew at least 2,000 people. The massive if often passive support for the strike is an indication that the educators' unions, which were defeated in a bitter 2006 strike, have regained lost strength.

The construction industry mostly shut down as the 56,000-member SUNTRACS construction workers' union is at the center of FRENADESO and the strike movement. Except for an incident in which police used tear gas to disperse SUNTRACS members blocking the Transistmica near the cement plant in Colon, the day didn't feature the running battles between cops and construction workers that have characterized past strikes.

In the Panama City metro area bus drivers decided to work, but carried fewer passengers as a lot of working people, whether or not their own jobs are unionized, stayed home that day. A lot of business and professional people took the day off as well, just to avoid expected traffic blockages. In Colon about half of the bus drivers heeded the strike call.

In the public health care system emergency services remained functional but otherwise most doctors and most Seguro Social orderlies and clerical workers honored the strike. Medical students and interns stayed away from the hospitals and clinics en masse. Only a small delegation from the COMENENAL alliance of physicians' unions, which supported the strike, took part in the protest in front of the legislative palace.

Business and labor, and the media aligned with each side, tended to report the strike in predictable ways, with FRENADESO, ULIP and the websites where their things get posted mostly claiming that the walkout was a rousing success, while the government, business leaders and management-aligned media panned it as an embarrassing failure for organized labor. The relatively small turnout at the mid-day rally in front of the legislature may have been kept down by the blazing heat, but it was mainly a sign that the labor / left rhetoric has had limited appeal to working people. Both FRENADESO and ULIP will continue their organizing and pressure tactics, but the warning strike indicated that there would have to be a dramatic attitude change for the sort of strike that might pressure the government into conceding demands to have much chance of success.

A few students block the road by the university. Photo by MJP

The police just direct traffic away from the university

Part of the doctors' contingent protesting across the street from the legislature

Teachers from the Instituto Nacional. Most of their colleagues neither marched nor went to work.

economy