Under heavy pressure from the government, the drivers agreed to go back to work with a promise of talks but without winning their demand of an increase in pay rates for independent truck drivers.

The strike, which began July 20, was organized by the Broad Truckers Front and the Teamsters union in response to the rising cost of living. This includes gasoline and diesel prices, which have gone up by more than 20 percent in recent months, and highway tolls, projected to increase by 30 to 40 percent in the next few months.

The truckers’ main demand was a 10 percent increase in rates now and 30 percent or more after public hearings by the government’s Public Service Commission, which sets rates paid to independent truckers.

The strike was solid, leaving virtually no trucks—either owner-operated or owned by trucking companies—on the roads.

On the second day, the Gasoline Retailers Association announced that if the strike continued for 24 hours more the country would run out of gasoline. This announcement set off a run on the gas pumps. Within hours every station on the island had ran out of gas or had long lines. The strike also affected deliveries to supermarkets.

“All day it was reported that the truckers were preventing gasoline from being loaded, but last night the governor’s chief of staff, Aníbal José Torres, confirmed that those who had ‘shut down the dispatch’ of gasoline were the companies themselves,” El Diario/La Prensa reported July 22.

Governor Acevedo Vilá of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which supports the current colonial status of Puerto Rico known as the commonwealth, suspended negotiations with the truckers. The government mobilized the police and 150 members of the National Guard to escort gas shipments. It also got a U.S. federal court order forbidding “coercion” of truckers and ordering strikers not to block access to the docks.

By the third day, the daily El Vocero reported, only 38 gasoline trucks went out. That day a number of unions held a press conference in support of the strikers. They called on the government to resume negotiations.

The big-business press and the government cranked up an intense propaganda campaign against the truckers, claiming the truckers were wreaking havoc with the economy.

Later that evening it was announced that the truckers had agreed to go back to work. They received a promise that the public hearings process would be expedited.  
 
 
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