News Briefs
Public workers in Puerto Rico hold work stoppage over layoffs
Oct 29, 2009 12:04 PM
Teachers and other public sector workers in Puerto Rico held a 24-hour work stoppage on Oct. 15 after Republican Gov. Luis Fortuno laid off some 17,000 workers in an effort to shrink the island’s $3.2 billion budget deficit.
The island-wide strike to protest mass layoffs rocked Puerto Rico, closing schools and all state-owned enterprises.
Fortuno’s move followed the layoffs of 4,000 workers in June. Many of those who received pink slips were education and health care workers.
Some 100,000 rallied in San Juan’s Plaza Las Americas, the biggest shopping mall in the Caribbean, to decry the new round of layoffs and criticize the government for singling out lower-paid workers, leaving higher-paid administrators and management level titles relatively untouched.
Fortuno had threatened to bring protesters up on charges of terrorism if they joined in the work stoppage, but he didn’t act on his threat.
Puerto Rico’s official unemployment rate hit 15.8 percent in August, higher than any U.S. state, and the government layoffs could push the island’s unemployment rate to 17 percent. The island, which is mired in a nearly four-year recession, saw its economy shrink a record 5.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended June 30.
The public-sector layoffs are particularly devastating because Puerto Rico has little industry and stagnant tourism and one in every four workers on the island is a government employee.
The government can summarily lay off state workers courtesy of Law 7, enacted in March, which overrode previous labor-law job protections and union job-security contract clauses.
Reuters, Oct. 15
The New York Times, Oct. 16
Latin American Herald Tribune,
Oct. 16
