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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb.1, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Thousands of Filipinos marched in cities across the Philippines on Jan. 22 to protest new, repressive security legislation.
The bill, backed by President Fidel Ramos, would allow police to tap telephones, make arrests without warrants, and monitor bank accounts. Opponents of the bill, from across the political spectrum, denounced the move as an attempt to return to the days of martial law under dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Ramos has tried to justify the legislation on the grounds of guarding against "foreign terrorists." But the thousands who took to the streets say it is aimed not at some foreign threat but at the people's movement at home. Civil war still smolders in the Philippines, led by the communist New People's Army.
The security legislation will come up at the same time as a bill for a 10-percent value-added tax, which has also provoked mass opposition. The 2,000 protestors in Cebu linked opposition to the security measures with opposition to the tax, as did 1,000 in the southern city of Iligan.
And in the capital, Manila, 5,000 chanted, "Martial law no more!"
Ramos did find one supporter, though. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher endorsed the police-state measure, advising Ramos to confront terrorism directly and "not with kid gloves."
Public workers in El Salvador are locked in a battle with the pro-U.S. government over its layoff of 15,000 workers. Unionists charge that the government is carrying out an anti-union campaign under the cover of modernizing state services.
Twelve workers have been on a hunger strike since Jan. 4, when unions staged a mass rally in San Salvador. The workers are demanding that 1,000 laid-off workers be reinstated and the claims of another 551 be reviewed.
The unions say that while 9,000 of the 15,000 jobs were eliminated through voluntary retirement, the rest of the cuts have fallen disproportionately on union members and leaders. The unions have presented plans to reintegrate the laid-off workers into other areas of the public sector; the government has ignored these attempts at a negotiated settlement.
The workers who are on the hunger strike are occupying the cathedral in San Salvador, where the pope is scheduled to visit in February.
A fire in a refugee hostel provoked an anti-racist outpouring in the northern German town of Luebeck.
On Jan. 18, fire gutted a hostel housing refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Ten people were killed; 50 more were wounded. The authorities have not yet determined the cause of the blaze, but many believe it was a racist arson attack on immigrant workers.
The fire followed a series of attacks by neo-fascist gangs in Germany since the capitalist West absorbed the socialist East. Nearly 2,000 anti-immigrant crimes have been reported in Germany in the last three years.
Just two days after the fire in Luebeck, over 2,000 people rallied there against racism and fascist violence. The demonstrators, including many immigrants, fingered the German government for fostering anti-immigrant violence.
Some demonstrators blamed the government for the "racist and fascist massacre" at the Luebeck hostel. Others called for the government to grant asylum for all refugees.
The rally proceeded to the site of the fire, where people observed a moment of silence. Hundreds of African refugees sang traditional songs of mourning, and many wore white armbands to remember the victims.
Oil workers in Peru staged a one-day strike Jan. 16. They were protesting plans to sell the state oil company, Petroperu.
A statement by Fenpetrol, the oil union federation, reported that 10,000 private and state oil workers responded to the call for the strike, including virtually all the Petroperu workers. In the northern port city of Talara, over 3,500 workers and their supporters marched to protest the privatization plan, which would result in 1,500 layoffs.
In addition, 50 workers picketed the Petroperu headquarters in Peru's capital, Lima.
Petroperu operated during the strike on an "emergency plan." The Peruvian government had declared the strike illegal the day before.
President Alberto Fujimori has won praise on Wall Street for combining his privatization program with a brutal military campaign against the revolutionary movement in Peru.
A series of workers' struggles has spread across Ecuador.
On Jan. 18, electric workers seized seven power plants-- including one that supplies 75 percent of the country's electricity. They were protesting government plans to sell off the country's energy production.
After Ecuador's president declared a state of emergency, which allows the government to use the military against the workers, electrical workers across the country threatened to walk off the job.
The electric workers' struggle erupted just 10 days after teachers threatened to block roads throughout the country if the government does not agree to a monthly bonus. Teachers' starting salary in Ecuador is around $110 a month.
"We have decided to close down roads throughout the country. We will do this with the help of the workers of the Farmers' Social Security," said Stalin Vargas, president of the National Teachers' Union.
Indigenous groups in Ecuador blocked major roads in 1994, causing several million dollars damage to the agricultural economy.
Chile's ruling class prides itself on running the capitalist miracle in Latin America. But as surely as capitalism produces immense profits for a few owners, it also brings into being its enemy: a militant labor movement.
A Jan. 17 Wall Street Journal article with the subtitle "Foreign mining firms worry about their investments" described the wave of union organizing and worker struggles that has swept Chile in recent months.
For example, the construction workers' union Sinami occupied management offices and blocked work sites at Chilean subsidiaries of international corporations like Bechtel and Fluor, demanding better pay and working conditions.
The focus of Sinami's organizing drives has been contract workers at foreign-owned plants. They make a fourth of what salaried workers earn, working 12-hour days and living in makeshift work camps. Tens of thousands of these workers are engaged in building new mining complexes and power plants.
The labor struggles are not going unnoticed. The Chilean government, trying to ensure that these struggles stay within the bounds of bourgeois trade unionism, has proposed a series of labor reforms. The reforms would give workers the right to collective bargaining across company lines and would prohibit companies from hiring scabs.
During 20 years of brutal military dictatorship after the CIA-backed assassination of President Salvador Allende, Gen. Augusto Pinochet tried to wipe out the labor movement once and for all. But by its own self-destructive logic, capital gives birth to its grave digger: a militant working class.
Unionists at a pet food factory in France have added a fifth step to the grievance procedure: They took two managers hostage.
The 143 workers at the Spillers Petfood France factory have been on strike against the company's plan to close the plant. They want to force the owner to either retool the factory or build a new one nearby. After a meeting of the works council on Jan. 15, the strikers took the managing director and his human-resources director hostage, refusing to let them leave the plant.
Unions representing the workers attempted to find a mediator to resolve the conflict.
--Andy Mclnerney
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