U.S. Unions Join El Salvador Workers to Reject U.S. Privatization Push
by KC Bridges
From April 27th to May 4th, fourteen members of U.S. unions traveled to El Salvador to march alongside the Salvadoran workers on International Worker’s Day and denounce U.S. pressure on El Salvador to pass a highly controversial privatization measure. The delegation, run through the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), was made up of workers from airports, the health care sector, and education, among others. From Seattle were Kaeley Pruitt-Hamm, the Regional Director of Seattle CISPES and a coordinator of the WWFOR Peace Activist Training (PAT) Program; Socrates Bravo, an airport worker at Sea-Tac who is currently struggling with his coworkers for a union; and KC Bridges, a student at Seattle University, volunteer at Casa Latina, and former PAT.
A main theme of the delegation was opposition to a bill before the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly that could lead to the privatization of a broad array of economic sectors, including ports and airports, healthcare, education, and other government services. The Public-Private Partnership Law (Ley de Asocio Público Privado) was written with the assistance of the U.S. Treasury Department under the framework of the U.S. State Department’s Partnership for Growth initiative in El Salvador. The proposal, which creates lucrative incentives for large corporations to exploit the country’s resources, is widely recognized among Salvadoran social movements as a threat to wages and working conditions, as well as to the government’s ability to provide essential public services.
On May 1st, an estimated 80,000 Salvadorans representing a wide array of labor organizations, university students, women’s organizations and anti-mining activists, among others, as well as the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) political party, took to the streets for the largest May 1st march since the election of President Funes in 2009. The CISPES delegation proudly marched with the Frente Sindical Salvadoreño (Salvadoran Union Front), declaring that U.S. workers would continue the ongoing struggle against privatization.
Delegates also met with John Barrett, economic counselor at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador, to deliver letters from the AFL-CIO, the Utility Workers Union of America, United Electrical Workers and other U.S. labor organizations denouncing the U.S. pressure on the Salvadoran government to adopt the privatization law. U.S. Ambassador Mari Carmen Aponte has made multiple statements to the Salvadoran press indicating that private-public partnerships are a prerequisite for further U.S. investment in El Salvador through the Millennium Challenge Corporation. After the delegation held a press conference outside of the U.S. Embassy in which Kaeley, Socrates, and KC publicly demanded that the U.S. Embassy not hinge the funding of the Millennium Challenge Corporation on the passage of the Public-Private Partnership.
Throughout the experience, U.S. unionists noted that currently there are striking similarities between the attacks on Salvadoran and U.S. workers and their right to organize. For example, Socrates and a member of the airport workers union in San Francisco got a chance to meet with airport workers in El Salvador who are being fired in the hundreds for even considering unionization. The fourteen workers who participated in the delegation are committing to continue building networks of workers across borders, because as one of the coordinators of the Frente Sindical Salvadoreño, Vilma Vásquez, told the delegates, “Capitalism works transnationally against labor rights, so we as workers need to organize transnationally as well.” As the delegates were reminded throughout the trip, ¡Que viva la solidaridad internacional!