In this U.S. colony, the Reagan offensive is being implemented by Governor Carlos Romero Barceló leader of the New Progressive Party (PNP), which favors making Puerto Rico a state.

The most decisive of the struggles taking place is that of the Puerto Rican electrical workers.

On August 20, the Union of Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers (UTIER)—6,700 strong, among the most combative of Puerto Rican workers—mounted the picket lines in a strike provoked by the state-run Electrical Energy Authority (AEE).

On another front, 5,000 students voted on September 3 to strike against a tripling of university tuition fees and other cuts in financial aid.

October 1, 1956
Approximately 25,000 Swift & Co. workers struck 42 Swift packing plants across the nation as all of the meatpacking companies refused to make any fair wage offers. Although contracts with all the meatpackers have expired, the leaders of the two big meat unions—the United Packinghouse Workers of America, AFL-CIO and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, AFL-CIO—have chosen to strike only the Swift chain.

Offers by the companies are all very similar. They are demanding a three-year contract with no wage reopeners. This will tie the hands of the union in the next period in which a drop in meat production is forecast and a rapid mechanization and job-eliminating will begin. The meat companies will certainly pay for this strike with a much increased class consciousness and militancy by the union membership.

October 10, 1931
The latest Hoover conference, this time with the bankers who dominate the financial and industrial life of the country; and then, formally, with representatives in Congress of both parties, has brought forth a new panacea for the curing of the ills which are eating into the vitals of American imperialism.

Only those who are permanently gullible will find it possible to believe that the new Hoover plan of action will succeed in liquidating the acute crisis through which the United States is passing. The principal problem for the American ruling class, and its governmental agent, Hoover, to solve, is that of setting the wheels of industry into motion on a scale which would at least approximate that of the late “prosperity” period. This problem Hoover has not even come close to solving by this numerous “conferences” in the past, and surely, not by his oracular pronouncements that the “depression” was but slight and temporary.  
 
 
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