The government authority is demanding the union turn over control of the workers’ health insurance to a private outfit and cut the number of full-time union representatives and their time spent on union business.

The workers, who have not had a raise in three years, are demanding a wage increase and opposing other AAA demands.

This is the first strike by the water workers since a weeks-long walkout in 1974.

Two days after the union walkout students at the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico staged a 24-hour strike to protest the suspension of a professor for actions in opposition to U.S. military recruitment offices on the island. Students on two other campuses carried out similar protest strikes. A number of striking students visited UIA picket lines to show solidarity.

At the picket lines at the AAA operations center near San Juan, which employs 300 workers, union members are picketing on 8-hour shifts. In preparation for a long strike they have put up tarps for protection from the sun and rain, and have installed portable bathrooms, kitchens, domino tables, and televisions.

Pickets estimated that about five managers were operating the plant.

The health insurance plan for the water workers has been paid for by the company but administered by the union. After a government audit claimed the union has mismanaged the funds. the bosses stopped payments to the union-run plan and contracted the Triple-S private health insurance company to replace it.

Strikers explained that Triple-S has a history of offering generous coverage to attract new customers and then reducing benefits down the road. Many workers voiced the opinion that union control of the health insurance plan makes it harder for management to raise the deductibles in the future.

Another point in the dispute is union rights. Currently the union has 170 delegates and 20 full-time officials whose salary is paid by the water authority. The company wants to reduce both the number of full-time union delegates and the time they spend on union business. Leading up to and during the strike, the big-business press, the colonial government, and U.S. police agencies have run a violence-baiting campaign against the union, accusing the union leadership of corruption and the membership of sabotage and other illegal acts.

On August 26 FBI agents visited the offices of the UIA and told the unionists that blocking the airport today, as they did during a 1998 general strike, would be considered a terrorist act.

In 1998, when the Puerto Rican government announced the planned sale of the state-owned telephone company to GTE, now Verizon, union members staged a 40-day strike. The high point of that walkout was a two-day general strike across the island that involved hundreds of thousands of people and shut down most commerce and public offices.

During the general strike, access to the international airport was blocked for several hours by thousands of unionists who converged from both directions on the intersection that provides access to the facility. UIA members were a large component of the protesters who parked their cars on the expressway and got out to picket.

On October 6 officials of the FBI made further threats against the UIA, insinuating that unionists were planning to sabotage the country’s water supply. “During the past days it has been brought to the FBI’s attention the occurrence of two alleged criminal acts at the Aqueduct and Sewer Authority’s facilities,” FBI agent Luis Fraticelli said in a written statement. “It should be left clear that whatever criminal act and/or conspiracy to interrupt and/or destroy the infrastructure of the potable water service is a federal violation that will be processed criminally.”

That day, students at the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) held a 24-hour strike in defense of a professor who was suspended by the administration for protesting the presence of the U.S. military on campus.

Héctor Rosario, a mathematics professor from the Mayagüez campus of UPR, was suspended on September 2 for six months without pay for participating in protests against the presence on the campus of the U.S. military’s Reserve Officer Training Corps recruitment offices.

“We sent letters and made phone calls to university administration and they refused to respond,” said Ernesto Chévere, a student who participated in the strike. “When we got no response, that’s when Professor Rosario decided to go on a hunger strike.” Rosario began the hunger strike September 27 in front of the Capitol building in San Juan.

On October 6 students at UPR Río Piedras held a protest led by the student organization Iniciativa Anti-militarista (Anti-Military Initiative). Flyers announcing the protest said the action would demand “The demilitarization of the Puerto Rican university campuses, and would show solidarity with professor Héctor Rosario.”

The protest began at the campus theater, which has been closed down for the past five years, and made its way down to the amphitheater in the College of General Studies, where the university president, Antonio García Padilla, and other administration officials were holding a ceremony. As the protestors got close, the president ran to the nearest parking lot where his chauffer was already waiting with his car. The students quickly followed Padilla to the parking lot and surrounded the car.

There the students demanded that Padilla have a dialogue with Rosario. After more than a half hour with no reply to their demands, the students decided to go on strike at 1:00 p.m. that day if there were still no response. Finally, the students allowed Padilla’s car to go.

At the designated time, about 100 students went through the classroom hallways with drums chanting “¡Únete, únete, a la huelga únete!” “¡No hay clases! ¡Padilla irresponsable!” (Join in the strike! There are no classes! Padilla is irresponsible!). The protesters began shutting down classes across the campus. The crowd swelled to 1,000 within two hours. Word came that students at the Mayagüez and Humacao UPR campuses had taken similar actions.

Although some professors told students to stay in class, others supported the strike and told their students to join the demonstration. “My professor just told us to go join in,” said one exchange student who did not wish to give his name.

The campus was shut down all day October 7. At 5:00 p.m. the students picketing the university drove down to a picket line of the water workers near the campus to show their solidarity with the UIA strikers. Classes resumed the next day with a plan to hold a student meeting the following Monday, October 11, to decide whether to resume the strike.

At the mass meeting flyers opposing a continuation of the strike were passed out. They echoed claims in the media that another strike would affect students’ academic progress and the prestige of the university—“They could cancel the semester,” the opponents of the strike warned. A majority of students voted not to resume the strike.  
 
 
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