Workers Struggles: The Americas – World Socialist Web Site
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Latin America
Workers mobilize against Noboa regime in Ecuador
On August 7, workers and students led a protest strike and march in Quito against President Noboa’s brutal cutbacks and layoffs. The demonstrators included teachers, health workers and transit employees. The workers’ anger was triggered by the government’s announcement that it would abolish six government ministries and lay off 5,000 workers, many of them from the Social Security system, in defiance of a Constitutional Court decision.
The demonstrators denounced the government’s attacks on public workers, part of the government’s dismantling of public health and public education. “People are hungry and have no access to healthcare,” declared a demonstrator.
Science workers protest wage cuts and layoffs in Buenos Aires
Led by the organization of Part-Time Young Scientists (Jovenes Científicos Precarizados), hundreds of striking workers employed by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, CONICET) camped out in Buenos Aires, demanding wage increases and an end to the layoffs mandated by the Milei Administration. As a result of continuing price increases, wages for science workers have fallen 35 percent this year.
The CONICET workers set up tents at the conclusion of a 48-hour strike, followed by a candle-light march.
Supposedly independent of the federal government, CONICET has been a victim of President Javier Milei’s budget cutting and attacks on science. In addition to the layoffs and attacks on wages, Milei eliminated science of scholarships and refused to give jobs to 950 young scientists that had already been hired while temp workers continue to be eliminated.
CONICET administrators refused to meet with the demonstrators.
Thousands protest the Gaza Genocide in Argentina
On Saturday August 9, chanting: “Milei, Zionist, you are the terrorist!” (Milei, sionista, vos sos el terrorista!) and “we are Gaza’s children!” (Todos somos niños de Gaza!) thousands protested and marched in central Buenos Aires and called for global protests against the use of famine as a weapon by the Netanyahu regime against Palestinians.
The demonstrators denounced the fascist government of President Javier Milei, who supports Netanyahu’s policy of ethnic cleansing and occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Milei recently travelled to Israel and has invited Netanyahu to visit Argentina. Mass demonstrations took place in other Argentine cities, namely: Bariloche, El Bolsón, Trelew, Comodoro Ribadavia, Ushuaia, Rio Grande, Jujuy, Salta, Tucumán, San Juan, La Rioja, Catamarca, Mendoza, Santa Fe, Córdoba, Cosquín, Alta Gracia, Villa Dolores, La Plata, Bahía Blanca, Mar del Plata, Neuquén and Viedma and in the Uruguayan city of Concepción.
Sanitation workers in Bolivia fight layoffs and privatization
On August 4, Sanitation workers at the Alpacoma and Saka Alta recycling terminals in La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, having initiated a 2-day strike and occupation of the terminals, issued a press release denouncing the city’s privatization plans that would leave them without jobs and asking for the support of La Paz workers.
Following a breakdown in negotiations with the city, COLINA LLC, a private company, sent an attack force to take the recycling centers by force and expel the occupying workers.
On Wednesday, workers, pushed by their trade union agreement (COD- Federation of Departmental Workers) who negotiated behind the workers’ backs, accepted a temporary agreement (to continue negotiations). City administrators insist the sanitation workers’ jobs will be protected. COLINA is known for its anti-union policies and for the use of strikebreakers and attack forces.
United States
New York City legal aid workers striking for contract increases
Scores of legal aid workers for Urban Justice Center in New York City have launched rolling strikes at the agency’s centers across the city demanding improved wages, healthcare and retirement benefits. The strike involves workers from two separate unions – the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys (ALAA) and United Auto Workers Local 2325, whose contracts expired on June 30 of this year.
Calvin Harrison, told the Amsterdam News, “We’re currently the lowest-paid legal services shop in the city, and we are asking for a wage floor of around $60,000. We’re asking for fair protections from layoffs and discipline. We’re requesting the same benefits that other organizations similar to ours have.”
Management has been unwilling to work out a wage structure where workers would be on a scale that recognized years of experience and provide equal compensation for the same work. The unions are apparently not seeking a master agreement. Instead, agencies are settling contracts individually.
Illinois canning workers strike isolated since June 1 by labor bureaucracy
Some 65 workers at the Teasdale Latin Foods facility in Hoopeston, Illinois are into their third month of a strike against management’s attempt to outsource jobs, establish a two-tier wage system and gut scheduling and other rights. The Illinois plant is just one of Teasdale’s operations across the United States that produces canned beans and hominy, sauces, spices and tortillas that are stocked on the shelves of Walmart, Aldi, Giant and Jewel stores.
But the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) Local 1 announced that they “are building support nationally.” But this campaign is not aimed at mobilizing workers, rather, their union and the “national AFL-CIO join their effort to inform store managers…”
The BCTGM stated, “We are now in the process of reaching out to grocers like Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, Target, Albertsons, Meijer and Aldi to inform them that their private label beans—such as Great Value, Dakota, Joan of Arc, B&G, Essential Simply Organic, Good & Gather, B&M, Happy Harvest, IGA, Casa Mamita and Simply Nature—as well as Teasdale labeled bean products from the Teasdale plant in Hoopeston, Ill., are now being produced by unskilled, underpaid replacement labor.”
Canada
Air Canada cabin crews set to strike
More than 10,000 Air Canada cabin crew workers, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), are set to walk off the job as early as August 16 after voting by 99.7 percent to authorize strike action. Both Air Canada management and union officials continue to negotiate a new contract. The union has said that should an agreement not be reached by August 13, a legally required 72-hour notice to strike could be issued.
Hundreds of flight attendants held “mobilization demonstrations” outside the country’s major airports in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal on Monday in an effort to show their determination to win an acceptable new contract. Air Canada and the union have been bargaining since the start of the year. The strike mandate vote came after the airline and union concluded a conciliation process without reaching a settlement.
The contract dispute follows on from the expiration of an unprecedented ten-year contract that expired this past March. That deal, recommended by union officials and ultimately accepted by the membership in 2015, has subsequently seen workers’ wages fall steadily behind, particularly after the inflationary spikes in recent years.
Currently, the average flight attendant salary is about $53,000 per year. Entry-level compensation is a miserable $40,950 annually. These entry-level workers in particular have seen their real wages steadily eroded. Wages for new hires have increased by only 10 percent over the past 25 years.
Alongside demands for significant wage increases, workers are seeking to end management’s payment model that enforces unpaid hours of work. According to contracts that are in effect at Air Canada (and generally) across the international airline industry, duties performed by flight attendants prior to boarding and after deplaning, including performing required safety checks and assisting passengers, go unpaid under current pay structures.
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