In Brazil, workers at the General Motors plant in Gravataí, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, are battling to have the Metalworkers Union represent them in their upcoming contract negotiations instead of a pro-company outfit. Nearly 1,000 workers occupied the plant May 23 to prevent potential strikebreakers from entering, bringing production to a halt. They were joined by hundreds of members of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST).

The $600 million plant, which opened last July, manufactures nearly 8,000 subcompact Celta hatchbacks a month. Altogether GM workers in Brazil produce 40,000 vehicles in three locations.

The nine-hour occupation ended when GM officials agreed to meet with the workers’ representatives. The auto workers are also fighting for an 11 percent wage increase. Unionists say that under a contract signed by the company union, workers received no overtime pay and lacked other basic rights.

Meanwhile, a severe energy crisis has led to the threat of widespread power blackouts in Brazil. The Cardoso government has adopted a plan, effective June 1, to impose a mandatory 20 percent reduction in electricity consumption for six months, under penalty of cutting off service. The plan will also increase electricity rates. Workers face the prospect of layoffs as companies seek to reduce their costs.

The government has also proposed to declare Mondays a day off for both state and private enterprises, stating that this measure, which would not directly affect schools and hospitals, would reduce energy consumption by 35 percent.

The United Workers Federation (CUT), which denounced the energy ministry as the "Ministry of Blackouts," has called a strike for June 1 of nearly 30,000 workers at the national electrical company, Eletrobrás, to demand a wage increase due since April, as well as job guarantees and improved working conditions. To address the threat of layoffs, said CUT president João Felício, the union is demanding a 10 percent cut in working hours with no pay cut as well as a ban on overtime.

Unionists at the energy company Light, in Rio de Janeiro, have already begun a strike to demand that 280 laid-off workers be called back to work. CUT vice president Luiz Gonzaga Tenório said the workers, who have not had a wage increase in six years, demand a raise of 7 percent.  
 
Airline workers protest in Buenos Aires
On May 25, a national independence holiday in Argentina, airline workers at the Ezeiza international airport in Buenos Aires blocked a Boeing 747 plane to demand payment of back wages for 7,000 workers. Dozens of workers at Aerolíneas Argentinas unfurled an Argentine flag and encircled the plane for an hour.

The same day, in an unusual display of unity among the various airline unions, some 4,000 airline workers dressed in their work uniforms and their families marched to the Spanish embassy in the Argentine capital to press their demand for back pay.

The Spanish government controls both Aerolíneas Argentinas and Iberia airlines. SEPI, the Spanish government’s holding company, has said it is withholding April pay because of huge debts racked up by Aerolíneas. At the rally in front of the embassy, speakers emphasized that their target was the government, not the people, of Spain.

Workers also threatened to block the plane that was to fly Argentine labor minister Patricia Bullrich to Madrid.

In Argentina’s impoverished provinces, working people are facing critical conditions, which has led to a social tinderbox. Public employees in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Chaco, and La Rioja, among others, face the prospect of delays in wage payments. In mid-May paychecks for 25,000 substitute teachers in Buenos Aires province bounced. Gov. Carlos Ruckauf said the national government owed the province $335 million, and Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo promised to send a partial payment.

The Argentine government has been prioritizing payments to U.S. and other international bankers on Argentina’s mushrooming foreign debt, which has increased to $133 billion--48 percent of the national economy. It is desperately seeking to negotiate a debt swap, asking holders of debts that come due in the next five years to exchange them for debt with longer maturity, in a move to gain breathing room to continue to carry out austerity policies to satisfy capitalists abroad and at home.

The crisis has led to a wave of road blockades by unemployed workers and others throughout the country. In the provinces of Río Negro and Neuquén, small fruit growers in the Alto Valle region blocked the highways with their tractors, demanding government subsidies and better prices to cushion the economic crisis. The farmers in Neuquén, who had demanded 40 million pesos in subsidies, suspended their protest May 25 after the government both offered 16 million pesos and threatened to unleash the police. The fruit growers, however, vowed to resume the protests if the authorities did not carry through their promises.  
 
Uruguay devastated by joblessness
Uruguay has been hit by unprecedented levels of unemployment--reaching almost 15 percent in the first quarter of this year. The economic crisis has worsened with the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which is devastating the cattle industry--the source of 80 percent of the country’s export income, which normally yields $500 million a year in hard currency.

The Uruguayan government is pushing through an austerity package that would institute a new tax, effective June 1, of 3 percent on domestic and imported products, supposedly to finance measures to compensate for the foot-and-mouth disease crisis. Employers would get a rebate in their payments to the social security fund.

In the rural areas, employers’ contributions to the national retirement plan will be eliminated and their social security contributions to health care will be cut in half.

The social tensions have heightened attention to unresolved political struggles. Some 70,000 people marched through the streets of Montevideo, the capital, on May 13 to demand the truth about 163 people who "disappeared" during the years of the U.S.-backed military dictatorship, from 1973 to 1985. The action was organized by the main trade union federation, PIT-CNT, together with mothers of the disappeared and other community and human rights organizations.  
 
 
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