Workers Around the World: 11/20/97 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the November 20, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- WORKERS AROUND THE WORLD: NOVEMBER 20, 1997 DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: GENERAL STRIKE FACES REPRESSION Hundreds of thousands of Dominican workers responded to a call for a general strike on Nov. 11 and 12, facing off against U.S.-trained elite army troops. One 20-year-old was killed by police on the first day of the strike in a poor neighborhood of the capital Santo Domingo. Early accounts described massive support for the strike. Organizers reported that 85 to 95 percent of workers stayed home, schools were closed, and government offices were empty. The 48-hour action was organized by the Coordinating Committee of People's Organizations to protest President Lionel Fernandez's economic policies. Austerity measures have left millions of Dominicans without electricity for up to 14 hours each day, and prices of basic goods have been skyrocketing. On the eve of the strike, Fernandez called out 5,000 elite troops to patrol the country. These troops were trained by the United States and the United Nations, according to the Nov. 10 New York-based El Diario-La Prensa. Fernandez had also unleashed a wave of propaganda and repression to prevent the strike from taking hold. Daily press releases described supposed bomb plots by strike leaders. Catholic Church Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez warned that the strike would cause "social instability" and said that strikes like this one "sought to destroy the established order." On Nov. 7, secret police stormed the Catholic Pontific University in Santo Domingo to arrest Fernando Pea. Pea, one of the strike organizers and a leader of the socialist Force of the Revolution, was meeting with a mediator at the time. Journalists and professors prevented the cops from arresting him. --Andy McInerney CANADA: ONTARIO TEACHERS' STRIKE AGAINST BILL After 10 days of a walkout directed against Bill 160, some 126,000 Ontario teachers went back to work on Nov. 10 having won only a great deal of public and union support. The Ontario parliament is scheduled to vote on the bill before Christmas. Bill 160 is designed to cut $1 billion from the educational budget of Ontario, centralize control of the system by abolishing local school boards, reduce teachers' benefits and worsen their working conditions. This was the biggest teachers' strike ever in North America. Almost as many person-days were lost to strike action in this 10-day period as throughout all Canada in 1994. Some 1.6 million work days were lost then, according to Statistics Canada. The way the strike was called off left many union members feeling betrayed and angry. Despite a rally of 25,000 teachers, students and parents in Toronto on Nov. 7, the leaders of three of the unions-- representing elementary, French-language and women teachers- -late that night directed their members to go back to work on Monday, Nov. 10. About 60,000 out of the 126,000 Ontario teachers are in these unions. The leaders took this decision without consulting their membership or the other unions, according to a statement of the Toronto Teachers' Federation to the Toronto Star. The TTF is holding a vote Nov. 11 on whether it should return to work. Teachers in Thunder Bay voted to go back together or not at all. The night the first three unions decided to go back, Education Minister David Johnson told the Toronto Globe and Mail, "You want to believe it: I'm the happiest guy in the province." The next day, when teachers found he was visiting a school in eastern Toronto, he needed a police escort to leave. Catholic schools in Ontario are a separate, publicly funded system. Teachers there decided on Nov. 8 to go back and the Ontario Secondary Teachers announced at a press conference the next day that they would also return to work. The government got out of the teachers' strike without making any major concessions. But the teachers and the union movement in Canada gained a great deal of popular support and solidarity. POSTAL WORKERS PLAN STRIKE Canada Post, a government-owned corporation, has demanded that the Canadian Union of Postal Workers agree to at least 10,000 layoffs and other givebacks if it wants a contract. The Postal workers filed papers in Ottawa Nov. 7 of their intent to strike Nov. 14, whether or not the government gives its approval. According to David Tingley, the union president, that is the day the union can legally strike and that is the day it intends to strike. "If they want to hammer out a contract, they got time to do it," he said. HAITI: TRUCKERS BLOCK ROAD TO DOMINICAN REPUBLIC According to a report in Haiti Progress newspaper, the Haitian truckers who travel between Haiti and the Dominican Republic blocked the main route between the two countries from Oct. 26 through Oct. 30. They were protesting the brutality of custom agents toward Haitian drivers, the high cost of custom duties, and the discrimination of both country's customs against Haitians. Duclos Benisoit, president of the National Association of Truckers, said his association has been protesting for over three months with no results. That's why they set up blockades with the help of local residents. Joaquin Florian, a member of the Dominican truckers union, supported the Haitian drivers. He said citizens of both countries faced high duties, but that Haitians were targeted for heavier payments. FRANCE: TRUCKERS SETTLE, REMAIN ANGRY After five days of shutting France down, drying up gas stations, stopping deliveries and beating off physical attacks from masked commando groups, French truckers have ended their blockades. "For now," Marc Blondel, head of the militant Workers Force (FO), told France's Channel 2, "the action is over. But my members are still very angry. We will see." FO did not feel it could continue the blockades by itself, but it might strike selected trucking companies. This is the second year in a row that truckers have shut France down. They went to the barricades this time because the companies did not honor an agreement they signed last year and refused to sign a new one. The truckers get an immediate 3 to 6 percent raise, depending on their category, and a 22 percent raise by July 1, 2000. Then the best-paid truckers will be making around $1,800 a month. Their hours will still be long--200 a month or over 45 a week--and the trucking companies will still try to force them to work unpaid hours. Converted into hourly wages, this means long-distance drivers in France make about $7 an hour. Next century they'll still be making less than $9 and working 45 hours a week. It will still be next to impossible for a French trucker to get overtime pay. The drivers are demanding the government get serious about enforcing a new regulation on how to count waiting time, unloading and loading, and rest time. Regulations now say that drivers can't be forced to work more than 200 hours a month and must be paid for all the time they put in. But most work 250 or more, often putting in over 65 hours a week. The French government has a minuscule number of inspectors to cover 35,000 trucking companies and the bosses know they can get away with a lot. --G. Dunkel - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. 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