The 5,000 members of the Brotherhood of Non-Teaching Personnel (HEEND) set up pickets at all 11 campuses of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) as well as at the university's central offices and a number of smaller agricultural experimental stations. Students and teachers have joined the picket lines in solidarity, and a photograph of members of the Federation of Pro-Independence University Students (FUPI) joining the picket line was featured in a newspaper here. The workers who maintain the facilities are in a different union.

The current contract states that after working for 30 years a person is entitled to retire whether or not they have reached retirement age. Currently 160 people among all university employees qualify for early retirement. The university wants to limit early retirements to 75 people a year.

For the first five days of the strike the union allowed only a few people onto campuses, including employees of the seismic network and people in charge of animals and plants used in scientific investigations. When negotiations broke down October 13, union president Sonia Reyes announced the closure of the campuses.

The vast majority of teachers and students are not trying to enter the campuses, with the exception of some professors in the medical sciences departments, who are organizing to give classes off-campus.

Crews of up to 40 pickets were stationed at the entrances to the flagship campus in the Río Piedras section of San Juan, Saturday October 13. Strikers had parked their cars in front of the normally busy gates to block vehicular access. A small camp had been set up to make the strikers comfortable for the long haul.

Many strikers are veterans of the 1998 general strike against the government sale of the telephone company and of the struggle to remove the U.S. Navy from Vieques. One woman wore a hat that read, "No Navy," and a man sported a T-shirt reading "Puerto Rico: No Se Vende" (Puerto Rico is not for sale). Many strikers had on HEEND T-shirts. Others wore shirts and hats depicting Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara or denoting other struggles.

HEEND Secretary for Information and Propaganda Ileana Desiderio told the Militant that women form more than 50 percent of the union's membership. He emphasized that the union is in favor of the early retirement provision covering all employees of the university, not just the members of the HEEND.  
 
 
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