Vol. 73/No. 39      October 12, 2009

Gov. Luis Fortuño claimed the layoffs, which will go into effect November 6, are needed to save $386 million as part of a plan to close a $3.2 billion budget gap. Some 500 workers will be rehired by the Treasury Department to help collect back taxes.

After taking office in January, Fortuño, a former Republican congressman and a leader of the New Progressive Party in Puerto Rico, instituted a strict hiring freeze and an across-the-board 10 percent spending cut.

At that time, the Puerto Rican government employed about 21 percent of the island’s workforce. In March, Fortuño signed the “Fiscal State of Emergency Law,” known as Law 7, in spite of protests and marches by tens of thousands of workers.

By August the government workforce was down to 201,300, about 11,200 less than August last year.

Unemployment in Puerto Rico, a U.S. colony with almost 4 million people, is now over 15 percent, higher than any state except for Michigan.

“With these layoffs, unemployment could go up to 18 percent,” Sandra Correa, vice president of the Puerto Rican Workers Union, affiliated to Service Employees International Union, told the Militant in a phone interview.

“The government said they were going to lay off all those with less than thirteen and a half years of seniority,” Correa said. “But we know of people who have worked for the government for 25 years who are being laid off.”

Many of those facing layoffs are among the lowest paid government workers, Correa said, including many school cleaners and cafeteria workers.

“In one agency, 132 out of 140 workers received layoff notices,” said Luis Pedraza Leduc, spokesperson for the Coordinadora Sindical, a coalition of independent unions.

José Rodríguez Báez, president of the Puerto Rican Workers Federation, affiliated to the AFL-CIO, told the Militant that “we have made many proposals to the government on how to deal with the fiscal crisis but at no time have they listened to us or even been willing to talk.”

He said that Law 7 also suspended union contracts and any union negotiations for two years for government workers. “They passed this law to carry out the wishes of the wealthy,” Rodríguez Báez said.

The Popular Democratic Party, the largest opposition party in the Puerto Rican Congress, has criticized the layoffs. Instead it proposes cutting the workweek of government employees to 35 hours, which would mean working people paying for the crisis through reduced wages.

The three main union federations are planning a series of protests, including civil disobedience, leading up to the October 15 work stoppage.

On September 30 students, professors, and workers from the University of Puerto Rico marched to demand that Law 7 not be applied to the university. That same day the Union of Electrical and Irrigation Workers (UTIER) held a march and 12-hour strike to protest cutbacks in health care for retirees.

UTIER president Angel Figueroa Jaramillo said in a statement that the one-day action was also taken to protest “the brutal assault that the government and businessmen are carrying out against the Puerto Rican working class.”
 
 
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