Latin American labor unionists tour U.S.

Two union leaders from Latin America recently shared an impressive story of the gains for working and Indigenous people with workers and community activists across the U.S.

Left to right: tour organizer Ignacio Meneses, Fredy Franco, ILWU leader Clarence Thomas and Oscar Penagos during Oakland visit. WW photo: Cheryl LaBash

From Sept. 30 to Oct. 14 Fredy Franco, Sec.-Gen. of Nicaraguan University Professors, and Oscar Penagos, Sec.-Gen. of the telephone workers in Bogotá, Colombia, and a delegate to the Central Workers Union, met with service workers, students, rank-and-file fighters and elected officials.

The union/community collaboration in action organized in Boston (read Oct. 16 article at www.workers.org); New York; Raleigh, N.C.; Detroit; Oakland and Los Angeles, Calif.; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and Toledo, Ohio, corresponded with a declaration of Latin American unions that met in Quito, Ecuador, in May 2008.

New economic priorities that put the poorest and most marginalized first over profit mean that education, work and health care are guaranteed rights for all in a growing number of Latin American nations. However, a few countries—Colombia, Peru and Mexico—are still locked into the neoliberal imperialist economic order. Already in 2008 nearly fifty Colombian union leaders have been assassinated by paramilitaries paid by U.S. multinational corporations like Chiquita Brands, Drummond and Coca-Cola.

The snapshot of U.S. working-class issues and life explored during the tour included the history of struggles for the eight-hour workday at Haymarket Square in Chicago and against race and gender barriers at the Rosie the Riveter monument in Richmond, Calif.

That struggle is not just history but is still very much alive. On the Oakland docks, the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee and Million Worker March Movement leaders from the Longshore Workers Union pledged to oppose Plan Colombia.

These longshore workers reclaimed the May 1 holiday for U.S. workers in 2005 and shut down the West Coast docks in a “no peace, no work” 8-hour strike on May 1, 2008, against the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations. On May 1, 2006, and again in 2007 millions of immigrant workers, mostly from Latin America and especially Mexico, took to the streets demanding their full rights.

On strike for more than 80 days, Moncure Plywood workers outside of Raleigh are on the front lines of today’s fight to keep seniority rights and limit hours of work. They are the face of the neoliberal offensive against workers in the U.S., an offensive that workers in Latin America have also suffered but are now successfully pushing back. Franco and Penagos pledged to the strikers to tell their story throughout the U.S. and to their unions in Nicaragua and Colombia, as well as ask the World Federation of Trade Unions to support their struggle for justice and workers’ rights.

In every city, the touring union leaders met with immigrants forced to migrate to the U.S. due to unlivable conditions in their homelands created by “free trade” imperialist intervention that destroyed local economies and opportunities for work.

In Toledo the Farm Labor Organizing Committee served dinner at a meeting for Franco and Penagos where FLOC founder and president, Baldemar Velasquez, spoke of defending immigrant rights and gave updates on the struggle for justice for FLOC union organizer, Santiago Rafael, slain in Mexico.

The U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange will follow up this tour with the Dec. 5-7 International Labor Conference in Tijuana, Mexico, featuring families of the “Cuban Five” unjustly held in U.S. prisons. For online registration and information, visit laborexchange.blogspot.com.

The writer was on tour with the Latin American delegation.