U.S. UNIONS IN PUERTO RICO
east, NACLA & Project, The Puerto Rican
Introduction At the end of the nineteenth century, the United States entered a phase of imperial expansion beyond its territorial borders. Among the first casualties of this expansion was...
...Thus, Dubinsky complained: "The presently unfair advantage enjoyed by Puerto Rican industrialists is becoming an even greater menace to certain mainland industries, especially in New York City...
...In October 1959, nine months after his arrival, Chavez boasted of a membership of 800 drivers and warehousemen, although the AFL-CIO claimed that the IBT's real strength stood at 200 to 250...
...Since nearly 85 percent of all industry in Puerto Rico is owned by the United States, the Taft-Hartley Law is widely applied in Puerto Rico...
...cit., p. 150, citing R. Neuberger...
...When the union protested the firings, GE sacked another 20 workers...
...By 1958, there were enough Internationals on the Island to justify the creation of the Federacibn del Trabajo de Puerto Rico (FTPR, Puerto Rican Federation of Labor) as an organization similar to those which exist at the state level in the United States...
...But the new laws which have been passed or are presently under the consideration of the Puerto Rican legislature do reflect a new level of struggle which requires a broader response by the capitalists...
...governor of Puerto Rico, soliciting his recognition of and cooperation with Iglesias in his new capacity as AFL representative...
...Other MOU leaders have been arrested, harrassed and threatened...
...And, when the rank-and-file members were recruited into the union, they entered into an undemocratic, top-down structure...
...By 1872, Artesans Clubs, Mutual Societies and Reading Rooms had begun to proliferate...
...investment in Puerto Rico meant more jobs for Puerto Rican workers, it meant precisely the opposite for American labor...
...Many progressive union leaders have emerged following strikes in their unions, periods which often become the acid test of a union leader's true colors...
...The economic context surrounding the demise of the CGT as a militant labor federation was provided, as we have seen, by the industrialization program tagged Operation Bootstrap...
...Indeed, the threat of moving to the Dominican Republic or Haiti was permanently on the tip of every investor's tongue...
...Many of the industries which set up shop in Puerto Rico during the 1950's and '60's were subsidiaries of U.S...
...The printers saw the paper as a vehicle for unifying and politicizing Puerto Rican artesans...
...But basically, they have been a result of a series of "accomodations" struck between big unionism and big business over the heads and, often, behind the backs of the workers themselves...
...The UNT was founded in 1970 and soon joined the MOU...
...It nevertheless remains critical to separate out the appearances (reputation, rhetoric and tactical maneuverings) from the reality of Teamster unionism, in order to assess its particular role in Puerto Rico...
...Ibid., May 29, 1964...
...The winning over of organized labor in Puerto Rico to the "American way" was seen as a means of isolating any "national" opposition to U.S...
...This, too, is not an easy question...
...By the 1920's, the Socialist Party was opting for alliances with bourgeois political parties...
...There are International unions which maintain a strong position within the trade union movement-there are few, but they exist.' 2 1 It is therefore more important to ask questions which apply to both the Internationals and the independent unions: do they represent the class interests of the workers, are their structures democratic, what has their practice been...
...Meany's rhetoric aside, however, what actually differentiated the Teamsters from many other AFL-CIO unions was not the fact of corruption, but rather the extent of it...
...To the extent that Puerto Rico has been more fully integrated into the capitalist world, providing a new and fertile field for industrial investment, Bootstrap has worked...
...Clearly the annexation of foreign territories as colonies was to be merely one form of U.S...
...And inter-state or "over-the-road" truckers became a dynamic new element to organize...
...Ferrd knew his actions were unacceptable to the workers, and it seems likely that he counted on a long strike to divide the workers from their union leadership...
...This time, by a vote of 309 to one, the striking GE workers rejected both the company and the union...
...flag, epjpys duty-fre access...
...Conflict of interest arises from the fact that the Teamsters also represent the workers at this hotel.29 Many revolutionary forces in Puerto Rico consider them to be quite "progressive" and point to their aggressive organizing and militant rhetoric...
...Organized labor, dominated by the AFL-affiliated FLT (Federaci6n Libre de Trabajadores), was faced with a downward pressure on wages due to high unemployment and with a political alliance that sought to crush labor entirely...
...Lipsitz, op...
...There was one major snag in this design, however...
...The IBT had representation for all but the casino workers there, approximately 600 members...
...2. Ibid., p. 44 3. M.E...
...The settlement called for U.S...
...Gaining momentum, the IBT was ready to extend its drive to the tourist hotels, by using their well-oiled machinery of gaining members without directly organizing, managing to penetrate three of San Juan's largest hotels...
...5 (February 1976), 6. 33...
...the island had to shut down for lack of electricity and the telephone system had broken down...
...June 20, 1970...
...Trucking quickly became an efficient and profitable way to ship inter-state freight, and began to challenge the hegemony of railroads...
...had he been born just a few miles away in Key West, instead of San Juan, might well have become the President of the United States ." 19 The history of the Seafarers International Union (SIU) in Puerto Rico goes back to the 1940's, but only in the 1950's did they actively increase their organizing drives...
...And, while the electrical workers soon returned to work on the basis of a new contract (the firemen were forced back by an injunction, its leaders going into hiding), the "Days of July" seriously challenged the old leaders of the UTIER and nearly provoked the ouster of the union's leadership which had agreed to end the strike...
...Is the solution to plunge the industry into bankruptcy...
...This is evident when we look at the results of multi-union elections held on the island in the last decade...
...8. Leiter, op...
...Before long, the UNT had become a very active organizer in the construction trades and related fields...
...A May Day 1975 demonstration organized by the MOU turned out more than 10,000 people in support of the strikers...
...For the Puerto Rican worker, on the other hand, the transformations of social and juridical relations brought about by the revolution in the relations of production were in large part welcome...
...invasion of Puerto Rico, the creation of a rural proletariat on sugar plantations, mostly owned by Puerto Rican landowners, had already begun...
...It should be noted that the creation of the Free Associated State had the active backing of the powerful U.S...
...On the other hand, they came to recognize that modernization required that the means of production, essentially land, be in the hands of U.S...
...On February 13, 1974, nearly 4,400 workers, the bulk of whom transported construction materials, went out on strike...
...Rapprochement came gradually...
...While the 7,000 member Electrical Workers Union (UTIER) had consistently refused to join the MOU or link itself to any pro-independence movement, the Firemen's Union had been an early supporter of the MOU...
...unions has created not only an obstacle to the development of class consciousness in Puerto Rico, but to an understanding of the socio-economic and political consequences of its colonial status as well...
...domination of the island...
...land in most cars, and in some induitrie many time* mor,e...
...47 Tobin linked public and private employees by arguing that salary scales for the private sector were raised by higher wages in the public sector...
...Election Returns...
...Even the AFL realized that "there is no industry today that can successfully carry on their business if the teamster lays down his reins...
...The MOU maintains that, while it could never allow itself to be controlled by a political party, it "recognizes the necessity to participate in the political programs of [Puerto Rico...
...And I am honored today to recognize in David Dubinsky a leader of great vision and in the union he heads one of the greatest labor unions of the world-not so much because of the number of its members as for the profound human quality of its objectives...
...If a bribe was not paid to an IBT official, and a little more muscle was not convincing, then a strike could easily eliminate one employer from an already crowded field...
...In 1963, the Teamsters were found in contempt of court for illegal pickets and alleged vandalism at the La Concha Hotel...
...All of this provoked the wrath of the colonial government which has singled out MOU leaders for attack...
...Yaou can t all the labor you need-at reasonable wae-e And ye can operate confidently in the only place in the world that is under the U.S...
...Hardship (!) committees were established to recommend lower increases in Puerto Rico if employers of more than half the workers in a given industry could show that increases would bring about a substantial loss of jobs...
...20 All this is supposed to convince workers that Teamster representation means that their local struggles will receive strong support, that members get better wages, working conditions and fringe benefits, and that the Teamsters can negociate successfully with big business...
...Essentially by16 floating bonds in the U.S...
...36 The Puerto Rican Trade Federation, which is allied with the AFL-CIO, joined in as well, adopting three resolutions opposing the strike and generally denouncing the Teamsters' history of organizing on the island...
...on the other hand, the establishment of business unionism has meant an increasing degree of collaboration between labor, business and government on the island...
...Had it not been for the food stamp program," says Puerto Rico's Secretary of Social Services, "our situation would have been far more serious...
...1976, however is not 1946, and one important factor in Bootstrap's construction is rapidly eroding: "industrial peace," the capitalist euphemism for a low level of class struggle which is assured by both capitalists and business unions...
...The Federation had to abandon the non-partisan role it had originally played in Puerto Rico and use its pull with the FLT to influence the course of local politics...
...This maneuver was needed in order to control the rank and file, and was one of the basic mechanisms used by Beck in his drive towards the centralization of the union...
...Ibid., p. 145...
...2 ' To give the local leadership some semblance of representation, Dubinsky appointed a Puerto Rican in 1964 to the post of vice-president of the union, representing Puerto Rico...
...The development of a plantation economy required the creation of a buffer between Puerto Rican landowners who were enraged over the loss of their land to U.S...
...That way they get to understand the employer's problem as well as the employee's problem...
...Second-class postage paid at New York...
...3 The SIU has excelled when challenging other unions for the right to represent workers...
...Party politics in Puerto Rico during the early years of the twentieth century reflected the turmoil of a society experiencing intensive social change...
...lower wages and benefits) for their Puerto Rican subsidiaries.14 ILGWU's practice of bypassing the rank-and-file in negotiations with management continues today...
...Workers' clubs became central to the organization of strikes and demonstrations in times of crisis...
...8. Miami Herald, September 29, 1975...
...At the base of this tax incentive plan is a program for tax exemptions which includes exemptions on: 1) business income tax (both of individuals and corporations) for ten years...
...The difficulties of establishing a centralized structure did not prevent local Teamster officials from quickly realizing the amount of power they could wield over the trucking industry...
...transportation facilities, communications...
...The negotiated contract won a 154 per hour raise for workers, to be followed by 54 every six months for three years...
...Trucking is therefore at the heart of the economy, and while the Teamsters organize in such diverse areas as tourism and construction as well, it is from truckers that the IBT gains its strength...
...Between 1928 and 1939, income from the export of agricultural products declined by 32.2 per cent...
...One answer is that the PPD appeared to incorporate many of the Federation's demands into its program, and was the only political party to present candidates from the Drivers Association on their slate...
...Much of the following information was taken from a NACLA interview conducted in Ponce in May 1975 and from Puerto Rico Libre!, June and August 1975, January and February 1976...
...i 0. Ibid., p. 24...
...According to one account, Mufioz Marin, in a meeting with CGT militants, bluntly stated, "Cooperate or I'll smash you like cockroaches...
...To save his own neck, Chavez took the "progressive" stand at this time, claiming that since Puerto Rico was severed from the United States as a Commonwealth "nation," U.S...
...C. The Tobin Report: Capitalist Crisis, Workers' Burden The Tobin Report, named after Yale University economist James Tobin, is the third prong of the bourgeoisie's attack on government employees...
...Once they start working for a company with an ILGWU contract, they automatically join the union and are bound by the existing agreements...
...Interview with Pedro Grant...
...Ferr6 had decided that it was time to seek the more active support of the Seafarers International Union (SIU...
...Meany was on the war path and reasoned that no AFL affiliate should cooperate with the Teamsters, anywhere, anyhow...
...For example, in 1969 the Union de Trabajadores Industriales (UTI), an independent union attempting to organize garment workers, was taken before the National Labor Relations Board by the ILGWU on charges of violating the TaftHartley Act's provision against unfair practices...
...The landowners had decided that unionism, if it remained in the craft sector, was not a threat to them...
...labor movement occurred within a few years of the U.S...
...September 12...
...corporations operating in Puerto Rico...
...The U.S...
...The Teamsters were also determined to continue their drive for expanding jurisdictions and increased membership...
...19 In absolute numbers, the Teamsters were the fastest growing union in the country, with an impact on more employers in more diverse fields than any other union...
...Puerto Rico IAbre, op...
...bourgeoisie in the form of the agricultural corporations...
...It was defeated in union elections at the CORCO (Commonwealth Oil Refining Company of Puerto Rico) refinery in Pefluelas, at the Carborundum plant in Mayaguez and at the Gulf refinery in Catano, as well as being decertified in Fiber's International in Guayama...
...We think they'll top try icher plan, rite...
...and Puerto Rican working classes joining hands against U.S...
...This section will focus on organized labor's response to this situation, specifically the challenge being posed to the hegemony of U.S...
...41 The Teamster local came out in support of the Aqueduct Workers' strike in 1974.42 And a Teamster official was even reported to have argued that while the economic crisis was taking its toll on the trucking companies, the workers could not be forced to assume this burden contrary to what the government was urging...
...In the first place, the colonial government had just passed an "industrial incentives act," which was designed to court U.S...
...They were followed almost immediately by wildcat and solidarity strikes by truck drivers of other commodities...
...There is no question however but that the AFL played a role in isolating radical sectors within the Puerto Rican labor movement by providing the ideology of busines unionism and class collaboration as an alternative to socialism and anarchism...
...2 5 The prime consideration was not the well-being of the American and least of all the Puerto Rican worker, but the vitality and profitability of U.S...
...Confronted by two exploiting classes, the Puerto Rican working class saw its primary contradiction with the local landowners who were attempting to liquidate the social institutions that allowed Puerto Rican labor to struggle...
...In that year the CGT split, primarily over the issue of independence, into two labor federations, one under the leadership of Ram6n Barreto Perez, a PPD Senator, and the other, the CGT Aut:ntica, under the leadership of independentista, Francisco Col6n Gordiany...
...A general slump in the garment industry had provoked a flight of homework to rural areas, where organizing was exceedingly difficult...
...Still, 25 years is a long time, and the economic crisis which is currently ravaging the island is proving that the Puerto Rican boots are nearly worn out...
...During this period of political struggle, the AFL made no moves to interfere openly in the internal decision-making process of the FLT...
...cities...
...Among other reasons, it reflected the nature of the trucking industry itself during this period...
...On May 30, 1960, the afternoon editorial staff of the newspaper set up picket lines demanding the reinstatement of several discharged workers...
...For a time Ferr6 gave in and negotiated, but on May 22, 1975 he broke off negotiations and announced that "the Puerto Rican Cement Co...
...In the long run, however, it signified the perpetuation of the colonial relationship and the ideological deformation of the labor movement within the craft unionist traditions of the AFL...
...Its program has always been based on two elements: low wages for workers and high profits for capitalists...
...While the Puerto Rican working class correctly identified bourgeois democratic institutions as an important vehicle of class struggle, the conflicts that this new vehicle provoked served to confuse the focus of that struggle...
...But if in spite of these legal barriers an independent union were able to organize workers in a company and win official representation, it would have to confront other obstacles that are beyond the power of any independent union in Puerto Rico to alter...
...Consider the following: ** Unemployment on the island is officially reported at 19 per cent of the work force 4 and unofficially recognized as 40 per cent...
...By 1872, both the government and the press in Puerto Rico had embarked on an official campaign to publicize the benefits of cooperative societies as the antidote to the "disruptive ideals of socialism...
...8 (April 15, 1975),9...
...Ibid., 1974...
...Still, most union leaders recognize that the goal of creating a single, strong trade union confederation, with a high degree of class consciousness, militancy and organizational capacity, may be years away...
...Hoffa's base salary was $100,000 plus expenses, which was paid to him even while he was in jail for defrauding the union...
...The only difference26 "UNIONS ARE BIG BUSINESS...
...labor taking such a sudden interest in their Latin brothers and sisters...
...it demonstrated that workers would defend their interests against both the capitalists and sell-out unions...
...And in the second place, the "good old days" were good in appearance only...
...Basically, the government's charge was undercut when Chavez was backed by Harold Gibbons, the IBT's Secretary-Treasurer...
...The established press backed up the government's position on the ideological front...
...Clearly there was room for debate and even struggle over wage levels-but the fundamental agreement between business, government and labor on the need for foreign investment in Puerto Rico as the only avenue to development created a firm basis for mutual cooperation...
...6 The number of unemployed workers increased by 42 per cent in the third quarter of 1975...
...the labor movement's only real road is that of sacrifice and struggle, standing up to the persecution of the government, police and the bosses...
...One of the most radical unions within the FLT was the Cigarmakers, an AFL affiliate...
...corporations...
...For the ILGWU, the two were completely synonymous...
...Decentralization in no way reflected a penchant for union democracy, however...
...The Teamsters, he said, would retaliate and call a strike at all hotels, airports and docks in Puerto Rico and in four U.S...
...Two further elections at the plant confirmed the original vote in favor of the IAM...
...The major difference was that he did not have quite as strong a stranglehold on the entire national apparatus as Hoffa did, so he was forced to "decentralize...
...yes...
...The last article in this Report, then, analyzes the specific content of Teamster tactics and ideology, as reflected by its mainland history and its penetration into Puerto Rico...
...Last year, for example, Federico Cintron, the current Executive Secretary, was arrested on trumped up bank robbery charges and held on $500,000 bail...
...Puerto Rican Union Wins Jury Trial," Labor Newsletter (National Lawyers Guild), No...
...While internal divisions continue to split the Puerto Rican labor movement, the colonial government has used the opportunity to step up its campaign of outright repression against labor leaders from the MOU, the PSP and other independence movements and radical labor unions...
...Tobin in 1953 received a salary of $30,000 plus a $45,000 house to live in rent free, world wide travel expenses and full pay pension...
...And when tobacco manufacture entered a period of decline in Puerto Rico, the labor movement lost what in fact had constituted the ideological vanguard against reformism...
...Another significant advance was the creation of pension and health and welfare funds over which the Teamster union, as opposed to the employers, had considerable control...
...29 His call was echoed by El Mundo, a U.S.-owned daily, in headlines that screamed out: "Hoffa Union Threatens to Use Millions to Dominate Puerto Rico...
...2 The International Brotherhood of Teamsters was finally formed inside the AFL in 1903, out of various fractionalized teamster organizations...
...In 1970, for example, 3,672 public employees were involved in 11 strikes...
...i s. Ibid...
...These industries were attracted by the government's offer of huge tax incentives and its willingness to welcome these highly polluting plants with open arms...
...The Big Ones Get Away but IBT Membership is Actually Growing," Fortune, Vol...
...At the time of the U.S...
...Get rid of it and organize an independent union...
...It is there that class struggle is molded and dramatized...
...Investment in this period was primarily being channelled into small and medium-scale manufacturing, requiring a relatively low level of investment in heavy machinery and infrastructure...
...By this time, however, the contradictions between the industrialization strategy conceived by the Popular Party and the demands articulated by the CGT had begun to sharpen...
...labor legislation, such as minimum wage, have been applied to Puerto Rico selectively at best and often not at all, the most repressive laws have been extended to the island in full force...
...To illustrate this point, the MOU cites the case of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW), an AFL-CIO union with a Puerto Rican affiliate...
...The -charges were corruption, fraud, illegal business, illegal union practices and connections with organized crime...
...One compromise is that the workers may receive pay increases, but at a high cost: giving up any rank-and-file control-in fact, any semblance of internal democracy-while the companies receive in return "labor peace...
...In these contests, two or more unions are vying for the affiliation of the workers...
...Stuart Chase, "Operation Bootstrap" in Puerto Rico Washington D.C.: National Planning Association, 1951), p. 15...
...The Spanish government's fear of socialist internationalism, further aggravated by the events of the Paris Commune, was reflected in the colony...
...5. Report on the Census of Puerto Rico (Washington D.C.: Govern- ment Printing Office, 1900...
...The first task of the OCWU was the renegotiation of20 their contract with Puerto Rico Cement which was due to expire in early 1975...
...Congress and the issue of minimum wage legislation for Puerto Rico...
...Helfeld Report...
...This beautiful plant, this concentrated effort, this planning, are all for them...
...See Chart II) Strikes in the private sector have seriously threatened major Puerto Rican industries, while public sector strikes left the island without phones, electricity, water and other essential services on more than one occasion...
...By 1960, the battle between the IBT and the AFL-CIO, via the SIU, had escalated into a mini-war...
...Not only was talk of self-government on the part of the Puerto Rican landowners worrisome, but ties with the AFL had by no means extinguished anarchist and socialist sentiments within the labor movement...
...While the ramifications of the island's status can be studied from a variety of perspectivesjuridical, economic, cultural, etc.-an examination of the class contradiction between the Puerto Rican working class and the U.S...
...Secondly, the formation of the UGT coincided with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Law...
...All of this contributed to the fact that the Teamsters were far from pleased when the AFL and the CIO began making noises about merging in the early 1950's...
...executive branch...
...Yet the ILGWU did accept the principle of wage differentials between the United States and Puerto Rico, terming it "a fair competitive advantage...
...9. Igualdad Iglesias, El Obrerismo en Puerto Rico Epoca de Santiago Iglesias (1898-1905) (Palencia de Castilla: Editorial Juan Ponce de Leon, 1973...
...Finally, on August 1, the UIET voted to end the 102-day strike-the longest in Telephone Company history...
...And the Guard had encountered significant resistance when it tried to take over the fire trucks of striking workers...
...In that year, the CGT formally affiliated with the CIO which had been purging its own radical elements since the end of World War II...
...30 Governor Rafael Hernandez Col6n used the occasion to mobilize over 3,000 members of the National Guard, the first time that the Guard had been called to the streets since the Nationalist uprising of 1950...
...Two of its leaders, Pedro Grant (Co-ordinator) and Federico Cintr6n (Executive Secretary) are members of Marxist-Leninist parties, the PSP and the MSP (Popular Socialist Movement), respectively...
...4 6 Such a return to the craft form of organizing would seriously limit a union's potential strength and effectiveness...
...And due to the nature of the trucking industry, the road was left wide and clear for a decentralized union, adept at collusion and extortion and frequently involved in violent jurisdictional disputes with other unions...
...If the AFL-CIO has any idea of issuing rival Teamster charters in the United States, all they have to do is look at Puerto Rico...
...Ibid., May 30, 1964...
...In Puerto Rico, the IBT endured a prolonged period of government opposition and persistent harassment...
...In fact, in 1974, an internal NLRB report cited the UNT as the second most active union on the island (after the Teamsters) in terms of organizing drives...
...Sir Harold Mitchell, Contemporary Politics and Economics in the Caribbean (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1968) p. 110, citing Hispanic American Report...
...sugar companies and its objectives as "land and bread for the unemployed" and "economic power to create industries...
...Now, Mr...
...New York Times, July 10, 1973...
...As we have seen, Bootstrap was founded on the dual premise of low wages for workers and tax incentives for business...
...34 Finally, in 1974, the union selected a new group of leaders who were able to direct a successful 102 day strike against the government-owned Puerto Rican Telephone Authority in 1975...
...Socialist Labor Party, but while the SLP had dis-5 cussed and tried to publicize the plight of the Puerto Rican worker, no concrete assistance had been forthcoming...
...The movement did not represent an attempt to harness a mass base within the context of a intra-ruling class struggle...
...In an agreement with the Telephone Authority, the union won reinstatement of all workers who had been charged with sabotage or suspended from their jobs if they were absolved in court...
...Indeed, with "friends" like the SIU and the NLRB, Puerto Rican workers don't need enemies...
...As we have seen, the SIU is noted for its history of corruption, lack of internal union democracy, class collaborationist philosophy and willingness to smash some of the most militant strikes on the island...
...companies holding ILGWU contracts on the mainland to adopt a modified version (i.e...
...According to the IBT, the government, the NLRB and the AFL-CIO were using their collective assortment of political and economic pressures to threaten to close down companies that allowed Teamster representation...
...Moreover, what really irritated Meany was that the IBT had become so powerful that it would no longer accept the discipline of its presumed parent, the AFL...
...gasoline distributors...
...s3 And in genuine strikes, Chavez was charged with padding the strike lists and asking for strike benefits for as long as six months after the conflict ended...
...5 (no date), 3-5...
...Far from passively accepting local trade union activity, the landowners reacted to the strikes unleashed between 1898 and 1900 with open persecution of the labor movement...
...labor has a long and militant history, much of it expressed through the organization and practice of labor unions...
...This structure had enabled the union's leadership to negotiate contracts favorable to business and highly detrimental to the workers...
...The OCWU had tried to reach an agreement with the company, owned by the powerful Ferr6 family since November 1974, but without success...
...In 1963, the local independent unions managed to win less than half of their face-to-face contests with the Internationals...
...The government (both in Puerto Rico and the United States) frequently used this provision of the Taft-Hartley Law to smash radical union leadership...
...government, however, support for the FLT's right to strike by no means represented a sacrifice...
...In the trucking industry, this meant concerted union and manage* A "sweetheart" contract is a sub-standard contract negotiated behind the backs of the workers between union officials and management...
...Lipsitz, op...
...But we Puerto Ricans must be very strong and work very hard...
...And the ILGWU position on minimum wage legislation, for example, was a recurrent source of friction with the ruling Popular Democratic Party...
...After this move, the company presented the OCWU with a new contract which took away many benefits workers had won in the past...
...That same day two members of the UIET's leadership were arrested for violation of the Federal Arms Law...
...4221 It is hardly surprising, then, that the colonial government would seize upon the public sector as the focus of some of its sharpest attacks against the labor movement as a whole...
...Their workers had voted to sever union ties, but the Teamsters, without consulting any of the workers, entered into a five year "mutual aid" pact with the ousted union which basically allowed the Teamsters to represent these workers as "trustees...
...Information on the Ponce Cement strike is taken from Susanne Jonas "Labor Ferment in Puerto Rico,' 'The Progressive (December 1975), 39-40 and Puerto Rico Libre...
...Strate was on trial with one Mr...
...In 1944, the PPD came to power with the overwhelming support of the Puerto Rican working class...
...NOTES I EARLY COURTSHIP 1. Ricardo Campos, Origenes del Cooperativismo en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Puertorriquena [CEREP], 1974...
...Motorized vehicles had come of age by this time, and an elaborate system of highways was constructed to accompany their growth...
...Almost as quickly, the Teamster union attempted unsuccessfully to end the wildcats and send the workers back to work...
...A few months ago we were babies here . . . now we are a going concern...
...From the start of the strike to the present, the SIU, the NLRB and Ferr6 have worked in harmony to crush the OCWU...
...See also: Walter Sheridan, The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa and the Ethical Practice Committee, "Interim Report on the IBT," AFL-CIO Proceedings 1957...
...unions in Puerto Rico...
...Thus, throughout the early period of industrialization in Puerto Rico, the gap which already existed between mainland and insular wages was allowed to continuously widen...
...The mainland boost would become effective almost immediately, while Puerto Rico would be granted a two-year grace period...
...Quintero Rivera, Bases Sociales de la transformaci6n ideo- 1ogica del PPD (San Juan: Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Puertor- riquena, 1975) pp...
...The government and the capitalists responded with a full range of counterattacks (which we examine below), including NLRB injunctions, local police, National Guard troops, the FBI and the use of collaborationist unions...
...unions which do not belong to the federation...
...a)12 In 1961, 1963 and 1966, mainland minimum wages were again increased and Puerto Rican wages were to rise proportionately...
...At the same time, the FLT was abandoning the anarchist and socialist visions of its early history and putting forth a line that resembled more and more the reformist politics of the AFL...
...The NLRB agreed to new elections...
...The Teamsters had been raiding other unions since the 1930's, in part because the limits of their jurisdiction were so vague, and because they were the only AFL union to organize increasingly along industrial lines...
...Workers throughout the island began to organize a number of meetings to discuss their response...
...Freedom of association and the right to strike were restored...
...The former, representing the interests of U.S...
...But it would be simplistic to attribute the FLT's failure to the AFL alone...
...These unions are challenging the premises of business unionism in Puerto Rico by restoring internal union democracy to their organizations, building labor unity, combatting collaboration with the capitalists and active.ly carving out a role in the political struggles of their nation...
...In the meantime, though, the hard task of struggling for greater unity and against class collaboration, complacency and corruption in all unions, both Internationals and local independents, continues to be the order of the day.23 TEAMSTERS IN HIGH GEAR The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) figures prominently in the labor movement in Puerto Rico, just as it has for decades in the United States...
...We have beat them in a dozen tests, and only lost one election which is under appeal...
...4o By the early 1970's, the Teamsters had rooted themselves firmly in Puerto Rico despite all the opposition they had encountered...
...By the turn of the century, however, the strategic, position of drivers within the economy became apparent...
...The difficulty of organizing the Puerto Rican working class was for the most part due to the specific make-up of that class...
...Initially, teamsters were considered unskilled workers to whom the AFL, with its craft union orientation, gave little serious consideration...
...Ibid...
...capital investments on the island...
...Besides shop closures, an independent union must surmount other legal and tactical obstacles erected by the ILGWU...
...Under these conditions it was little less than impossible to fight successfully to improve the living and working conditions of the workers and the few efforts working in that direction had provided little results...
...Although the situation remains unresolved, what is clear is the role the Teamsters willingly played-aspiring saboteurs of an independent union...
...In 1932, the Socialist Party entered into a coalition with a disaffected branch of the Republican Party against an alliance of the traditional parties...
...The MOU draws its strength from petrochemical workers, public employees and the construction trades...
...There, the necessary political and technical skills should be learned, to both improve the day-today conditions of the working class and to prepare the groundwork for the larger fight between capital and labor...
...Once again, according to Beck, what's good for business is good for labor...
...More specifically, the economic relations that proletarianized the peasant and artesan sectors were accompanied by a bourgeois democratic legality that permitted workers to organize and unionize in the metropolis...
...II, No...
...Supporters of the strike have organized special health clinics for the strikers and their families after the colonial government denied them health services...
...And, just like Hoffa, the Teamster tough guy was stopped dead in his tracks...
...3 (March 1970), p. 122...
...A great number of contracts were, in fact, signed even before the plant had opened its doors in Puerto Rico...
...At the same time, and basically for the same reasons as the truckers, gasoline station operators went out on strike, swiftly followed by a solidarity strike by public drivers of buses and taxis...
...the most extreme case of this sort, the so-called general strike...
...military invasion of the island, however, and the subsequent invasion of Puerto Rico by the large U.S...
...The Puerto Rican government refused to reissue a gambling permit to the Ponce de Leon Hotel, which was tantamount to foreclosure, since gambling was the hotel's biggest drawing card...
...Clearly, the Puerto Rican labor leader was familiar with the nature of AFL unionism...
...But the others followed, not so far behind...
...What is the Teamster Union," op...
...3o Puerto Rico had become a major arena for the Teamster's fight with the AFL-CIO...
...One company in the Foarte WD00 - amns re than 30 percent of in total oorte peoflt.frmn itr plant In Puerto Rico...
...2 Foreign investment in,Puerto Rico grew by 870 per cent between 1960 and 1975...
...4 (Third Quarter, 1975...
...These concerted maneuvers by the ILGWU and business make it almost impossible for an independent union to organize...
...In February 1972, the colonial government actually requested help from the man they had formerly labeled a gangster: James Hoffa...
...But then, rather than calling for rapid elections between the SIU and the OCWU, a standard NLRB practice, the NLRB postponed elections for seven months...
...But the role of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Puerto Rico can hardly be ignored, as one of the largest unions on the island and one of the most controversial...
...And the major architect of its destruction, Governor Muiioz Marin, repeatedly insisted that the installation of a "pro-labor" government in Puerto Rico, purportedly his own, had eliminated the need for workers to organize in their own defense...
...These were pyrrhic victories for American and Puerto Rican labor, however, since the legislation included elaborate escape clauses which left the door open to special treatment for Puerto Rican industrialists...
...the road of the law and that of the hoodlums...
...Three years later, 20,085 employees took part in 53 strikes in the public sector...
...In addition, the U.S...
...Subscriptions: $10 per year for individuals ($18 for two years), $16 per year for non-profit institutions ($30 for two years...
...3. Donald Garnel, The Rise of Teamster Power in the West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972) p. 68...
...Moreover, the Teamsters have supported many elements of the United Workers' Movement (MOU) platform, such as the right to strike and to resist compulsory arbitration...
...While this phenomena has been characterized as "yancophilia" or reformism, its origins are actually much more complex...
...The IBT, anxious to recoup their previous losses, were more than willing to help smash the UIET...
...1 After eight months on the picket line, the union reached a tentative agreement with General Electric...
...This has brought with it a rise in the number of government workers on the island...
...As of 1958 they set out to consolidate and expand by any means available in order to ensure their future viability as an "independent" union...
...The runaways were on the move again...
...In other words, the fringes of $22 a week, supposedly won instead of wage increases, rarely reach the workers themselves and are readily open to union and Mafia manipulation and control...
...Expansion and diversification were key as the IBT, gathering speed, shifted into fourth gear...
...46 CONCLUSION Not having regained the telephone workers, Teamster membership in Puerto Rico has remained at approximately 8,500,47 although other estimates are considerably lower...
...s Small towns like Jayuya reportan outrageous 96 per cent unemployment figure...
...pleelvy...
...Refusing to do it, he resigned in 1959...
...All the striking unions were local independent unions, but were far from being united politically...
...Louis," Liberation, Vol...
...cit., p. 77...
...In 1947, when a third labor federation, the General Workers Union (UGT) was organized by Saez and other militant unionists, Mufioz Marin accelerated his repressive measures...
...Claridad, November 14, 1971...
...31 Moreover, the hot cement ovens at Ponce-which normally produced 60% of Puerto Rico's grey cement-could not tolerate the shutdown and were cracking...
...2 1. Knowles, Unionism and Politics in Puerto Rico, p. 322...
...This is not an easy task...
...LESSONS OF THE GE STRIKE In 1969, General Electric operated 19 non-union plants in Puerto Rico...
...or financing-chancer ate you'll find it on this booming island...
...What was of primary importance to the AFL was that the Socialist Party limit itself to electoral politics and the FLT to economist reformism...
...In Puerto Rico, they may have wanted to press for higher wages to balance off inflation, but they were unprepared and uncomfortable with the acceleration of worker solidarity...
...September 24, 1972...
...In the first place, the economic crisis and high rate of unemployment have reduced the overall level of unionization from a high of 20% of the work force in 1970 to 14% in 1975, hitting hard many of the industries where the Internationals did much of their organizing (see Chart I...
...The Puerto Rican government also looked upon the Internationals as a valuable ally in organizing a stable and "realistic" labor movement on the island...
...The limits of the Senate bill were clear: It did not propose to raise Puerto Rican wages to the mainland level, nor to narrow the existing gap between mainland and insular wage levels...
...International Teamster, monthly union magazine of the IBT, July 6, 1960...
...To a much greater degree than the private sector," they wrote, in the public sector employees organizations, especially the large ones, have a real potential to extend their spheres of action, their radius of influence, to the political arena...
...This does not mean that the government is using less violence...
...I. The Public Sector: The Legal Assassination of Unionism Since the 1950's, the Puerto Rican government has taken over many critical sectors of the economy including electrical energy, transportation, communications, ports, shipping and waterworks...
...Productivity matches U.S...
...The Taft-Hartley Law, passed in 1946 during the period of9 reaction that marked the beginning of the Cold War, outlawed secondary boycotts, solidarity strikes and the closed shop...
...The direct roots of the MOU go back to 1969 when a number of union leaders discussed the formation of a labor central and even formed a committee called the Movimiento de Accibn Sindical (MAS, Labor Action Movement...
...The drafters of the Helfeld Bill-called together to advise the Governor on organized labor in the public sector-were fairly explicit about what they saw as the "dangers" of public employees unions...
...Three unions, in particular, the Packinghouse Workers, Teamsters and Seafarers, led the way in terms of their frenetic raiding of other unions...
...Thus while the new juridical structures threatened the landowning elites as a class, freedom of speech, the right to organize and the right to strike were seen by the Puerto Rican working class as guarantees of their organization as a social class with its own instutitions and ideology...
...During those years an estimated 75 to 80 percent of the organized labor movement was affiliated to the International unions...
...A docile, quiescent and divided labor movement is essential to the smooth functioning of Bootstrap...
...ReasonaNe labor .Wags re tasonabl...
...Finally, while the U.S...
...1" As the colonial government hysterically predicted that Operation Bootstrap would become "Operation Backslide" if wages were allowed to rise in Puerto Rico, the U.S.-based international unions stepped up their drive to organize workers in Puerto Rico for higher wages...
...Samuel Gompers, Discurso Sobre Puerto Rico (Federacion Libre de Trabajadores: 1904...
...In May 1964 this same Mr...
...This hierarchical decision-making process is also characteristic of the Puerto Rican locals' internal organization...
...ment action to minimize cut-throat competition through concentration and monopolization...
...Since little capital outlay was needed to enter the trucking business, the industry was generally characterized by a large and unstable number of employers, engaged in a "cut-throat competition" to force out their rivals.24 IBT leaders learned to use this competition to their own advantage...
...100% T axEnersalon Maniifactrens are iirmu-tically exermpt from federal taxes in Pu.rto Ric...
...Yet this has also meant that the island economy is even more intensely subject to the fluctuations and crises which are an integral part of capitalist development...
...Much of the SIU's history in Puerto Rico (and the United States as well) is tied up in their conflicts with the Teamsters...
...A year later, in October 1901, Samuel Gompers appointed Santiago Iglesias the AFL's general organizer for Cuba and Puerto Rico...
...As both salaried and independent drivers, they provided the only mode of transportation available to most Puerto Rican workers...
...Like a pair of shoes without laces, Bootstrap without a controlled labor movement would be nonfunctional...
...In the first place, leaders of the Socialist Party in Puerto Rico had long held internationalist principles and understood the particular needs of a colonial work force for an international perspective...
...In fact, a day before the union election, Pagan declared the strike to be "without purpose" and without producing any benefits for the workers...
...The North American invasion and the consequent tr ansformation in the Puerto Rican legal structure opened the way to the creation of a genuine craft union...
...cit 20...
...Until 1907, when the International Cigarmakers Union appointed a representative of its own, the AFL had only one paid organizer in Puerto Rico...
...Communist Party chose to ally with the New Deal Democrats, the Puerto Rican Communist Party backed the -reform pro.am of the PPD...
...The GE strike was also the first major strike supported by the Pro-Independence Movement (MPI, now the PSP...
...Victor Reisel, Daily News, May 20, 1964...
...But the bases for cooperation among business, government and AFL-style unionism still had to be negotiated in the specific context of Puerto Rico...
...This move, however, must be viewed in light of the conditions faced by organized labor in Puerto Rico: firstly that this occurred during a period of great social tension which found union leaders seriously threatened by the continued operation of an old legality which corresponded to outmoded relations of production...
...Yet the government was well aware that its development plans could only succeed if labor stayed cheap, past the initial stage of attracting foreign capital to the island...
...The last decade of the nineteenth century brought a severe economic crisis and the explosion of the national liberation struggle in Cuba...
...Eighty-two percent of the Puerto Rican work force was made up of agricultural migrant laborers and women employed as domestic servants...
...While the colonial government has always used violent methods of repression against the workers and independence movement, its new moves are designed to undercut the growth of the workers movement through legislative measures...
...Governor in Puerto Rico at the time of the rise of the PPD was Rexford G. Tugwell, a New Deal Democrat, who openly criticized the U.S...
...Thus, the reaction of a large sector of this class was a nostalgia for Spanish colonial rule which guaranteed their material base as a class...
...And the government will help you find and train the workers you need...
...Yet the capitalists never had any intention of paying the costs of their crisis...
...8. Santiago Iglesias, op...
...Third, a growing challenge to corrupt, sell-out or complacent leaders in the labor movement...
...Often, in fact, Fomento would rent out ready-made factory facilities to investors hesitant to "get in too deep...
...They range from the employment of goons and thugs to attack opposition union picket lines, as in the case of the 1960 newspaper strike at "El Imparcial," s to the recruitment of scabs to undercut striking workers, as in the Ponce Cement strike...
...LXI, No...
...With nearly $14 billion in investments going in, and nearly one-third of all its profits from Latin America coming out, the United States has turned the New Deal-inspired Operation Bootstrap into a Very Good Deal for capitalists doing business in Puerto Rico...
...27 The leadership of both locals 600 and 601 in Puerto Rico has been occupied by North Americans at all times...
...Well, if U.S...
...workers had to help maintain the profitability of mainland industries in order to preserve their own jobs...
...Previously he had journeyed to the United States to enlist the help of the U.S...
...The Teamster union was the largest affiliate in the AFL and the only one to refuse to agree to a conciliatory no-raiding pact signed in 1954 between the two federations...
...At that time, the "energy crisis" was hitting the Puerto Rican economy with a vengeance...
...began...
...II, No...
...Thus, the level of penetration by U.S...
...While the majority of CGT membership still centered in the sugar industry, a Packinghouse jurisdiction, the international union also incorporated workers from practically every other industrial sector...
...and secondly, that the Puerto Rican working class was still in formation and was not able to survive as an independent force within the colonial context...
...James Hoffa, on charges of misusing Teamster pension funds...
...For example, all the secretaries in the agencies...
...The contracts are negotiated to cover wider and wider areas (which may give the union better leverage in order to "extend the picket line" but removes the struggle from local control), to be enforced for longer and longer time periods (which screws the workers on cost-of-living increases) and the resolution of grievances move further and further from the shop floor to be settled by a remote committee on a regional basis...
...They were imprisoned on trumped up charges and held on exorbitant bails...
...The new appointee, Alberto Sanchez, had been in charge of management education for the Commonwealth's Department of Labor before joining the union...
...In 1975, out of a total of 184,127 unionized workers, 57% belonged to independent Puerto Rican unions while only 43% were in U.S.-based affiliates.'" The cause of the decline can most likely be found in two factors...
...Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Economic Development Admini- stration, Puerto Rico: Profit Island, USA, 1974, 7. 39...
...The armed work-camp atmosphere was justified by the government on the ostensible grounds of protecting the workers from acts of sabotage...
...The strength of the union leadership has always been intimidation...
...As independent drivers, they had waged a long and militant struggle against the large U.S...
...In Puerto Rico, U.S...
...Finally, in order to weaken the strikers still further, the government appealed to the Teamsters for help...
...The response of organized labor on the mainland was to launch an all-out campaign to combat the runaway shop syndrome, by intensifying their organizing drives in Puerto Rico and by demanding higher wages for Puerto Rican workers...
...The bill simply proposed to prevent a widening of the gap, by having both rise proportionately...
...A number of the militant trade unionists within the CGT were members of the Puerto Rican Communist Party, founded in 1934 partly in response to the direction taken by the Socialist Party...
...23 This is especially true in the notoriously badly handled Central Area and Southern States pension fund...
...Journal of Commerce, May 12, 1975...
...FLT leaders began to raise the demand of U.S...
...In good Teamster tradition, Dave Beck responded by extending and refining the sophisticated armory of "strong arm" tactics which have become the Teamsters' claim to fame as fighters for the working class...
...domestic agricultural producers...
...corporate interests...
...8 The elimination of "unfair" competition benefitted the union by allowing for the stablization and standardization of wages at a decent or better than average level...
...3 (May 1971), p. 28-43...
...On the international front, the Communist Parties had opted for a popular front strategy and in much the same way that the U.S...
...In August 1967 he was assassinated by one of his own body guards...
...Things Are Seldom as They Seem, Milk Masquerades as Cream All this sounds impressive, and the real gains for workers have been significant...
...and Eugene Burroughs, "An Inside Look at the Teamster's Pension Fund," Institutional Investor (May 1974), p. 95-6 and p. 99-100...
...Special industrial committees were appointed, composed of business, government and labor representatives, and were empowered to determine separate wage rates for the island on an industry-by-industry basis...
...by 1969 it had grown to approximately 1,900,000...
...While Ferrd lined up some formidable allies, the strikers were able to forge a solid base of support from the working class and independence movement...
...Open a plant that provides woruk ibr om people and we'll guarantee you no tames, federal or local" -Rated Hemindez-CsnGoenmor thu industry is booming in ArIa=e Rico, we are far fosm fali n employment...
...Rather, the fact that the ILGWU was able to gain hegemony within the garment sector must be explained in large part by the cordial relations it cultivated with both government and business on the island...
...Ibid...
...While labor unions unabashedly recorded their activities in public documents during the early period, they reacted to inter-union competition and raiding, to public awareness of union corruption, by attempting to keep their activities out of the public record...
...For its part, the company agreed to boost the workers pay by 12 cents an hour...
...8. William Knowles, Unionism and Politics in Puerto Rico, (United States-Puerto Rico Commission on the Status of Puerto Rico, 1966), p. 320.31 9 . Andreu Iglesias, p. 25...
...In short, the workers' practical experience gained through several sporadic strikes combined with the influence of European anarchist ideology to create a growing consciousness of the need for organizations of a syndicalist nature to confront the rising level of social struggle...
...So when faced with crisis, they tried to minimize costs by holding down wages...
...Radames Acosta, from the UNT and the MOU's director in Ponce, Osvaldo Romero, are also facing criminal charges for their labor activities, as are members of the Cement Workers Union...
...5 (May-June 1976) Published monthly, except May-June and July-August when it is published bi-monthly, at 160 Claremont Ave., New York, NY 10027...
...The third part of this analysis deals with the present period...
...GE was, in fact, a model of Bootstrap success which was often cited by the colonial government...
...Moreover, the blatantly anti-labor stance of the government-demanding that workers delay their demands to permit higher profits for business-lent little credence to the notion of government as the Great Protector...
...And in May 1964, a more complicated confrontation with the government took place over yet another hotel...
...As the workers' ability and desire to pull the plug out of "Profit Island, USA" increases, the capitalist response grows more repressive...
...No longer did they have the backing of the Federation and they were under sharp attack from the U.S...
...2. Robert D. Leiter, The Teamster Union: A Study of its Economic Impact (New York: Bookman Associates, Inc...
...Workers Struggles, Community Support: The Ponce Cement Strike The fourth element of the new workers movement in Puerto Rico is the linking of workers' struggles with larger political movements, in particular the independence struggle...
...The PPD, which in 1940 was presenting itself as pro-independence and anti-U.S...
...Because of Puerto Rico's status, U.S...
...Furthermore, the law grants job security only "to those employees who satisfy the criteria of productivity, efficiency, order and discipline...
...Chavez continued in office, running union drives that were often marked by violence, but that enlisted new workers for the IBT in breweries, bottling companies, dairies, etc...
...Contributors to the workers' press were arrested for "crimes of opinion" and union militants were assassinated...
...Just as significant, however, were the reactions provoked within the striking unions themselves...
...Puerto Rico is a direct colony of the United States and the form and direction of its socio-economic development is due in large part to that relationship...
...After the SIU filed for an election at the Ponce plant, the company could legally (according to "impartial" NLRB rules) stop bargaining with the OCWU's striking workers, which they quickly did...
...4. Cesar Andreu Iglesias, "Apuntes para la historia del movimiento obrero," El Proletario (Movimiento Pro-independencia Puertorriqueno, undated), p. I 7. 5. Ibid., p. 23...
...The growth of the new workers' movement has not been an easy process, nor is it free from many contradictions characteristic of its stage of development...
...capitalist class has gotten good mileage from its Puerto Rican Bootstraps: 25 years of soaring profits-in fact, the highest return on investment under the U.S...
...Paradoxically, the Teamsters have been portrayed as one of the more "progressive" international unions in Puerto Rico, while at the same time their racist, collusive attempts to break the United Farm Workers in the United States have come under sharp attack...
...It was not surprising that in a society experiencing the radical social and economic disruptions that characterized Puerto Rico in the 1930's and '40's, populism quickly gained a mass following...
...Although government repression and other factors have objectively created divisions in the working class movement, the desire for trade union unity seems to be growing both among rank-and-file workers and among union leaders...
...agricultural producers nor U.S...
...Truckers are not satisfied with the union leadership, but they're fearful of it...
...4(April 1960), p. 239...
...For example the Telephone Workers (UIET), a local independent, underwent a three year struggle to expell the "leeches" in their union who, according to the UIET's current president, "grab onto the union for their own benefit, those who live off the union and sell out the workers...
...Far from organizing the rising discontent of the Puerto Rican working class and the unemployed, both the FLT and the Socialist Party abandoned the field of union activity for a role in the government apparatus...
...The press and composer-room workers refused to cross the picket lines and, once again, the Teamsters and the SIU began viciously fighting each other in an attempt to become the bargaining agent for the non-editorial staff...
...A joint pact was signed in Miami between the Puerto Rican leaders of the IBT and the SIU, giving the Teamsters the right to organize all transport and cargo workers on the docks and elsewhere, while the SIU would concentrate on production and maintenance workers...
...Most workers finally returned to their jobs in mid-July, but the "Days of July" strikes had seriously shaken the island...
...Although they had organized only about 150 workers, the Teamsters announced with much fanfare a major organizing driving, backed by unlimited funding, to enlist 10,000 new members in Puerto Rico...
...Thus the opening of relations between the FLT and the AFL was initiated by the FLT...
...And partially due to monopolization, the yearly salaries of truck drivers and warehouse workers did substantially rise from $200 less than the average factory worker's wage in 1943 to approximately $800 more by 1955...
...Within this confusion, the FLT found itself opposed by the Republican Party, whose constituency was the professional sector, and courted by the Federal Party, the political representative of the landowners...
...The predominance of the AFL in Puerto Rico often tends to overshadow the role played by U.S...
...Puerto Rico Librel, Vol...
...While the SLP proposed annexing Puerto Rico as a state in the union, its plans for Puerto Rico's "Americanization" were extremely different from those of the AFL...
...The leading force in the formation of the CGT was the Drivers Association, made up primarily of independent and salaried drivers whose particular role in the growing service sector had given them an awareness of the need for a new form of unionism...
...Puerto Rico, Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment, Hours and Wages, 1963-1972...
...Yet the Drivers understood that one industrially organized and politically conscious union was rot enough...
...Ibid., p. 69...
...What is more, even the machinery set up by the AFL-CIO to direct the International's traffic on the island was not functioning...
...sugar plantations...
...Regardless of the particular mechanisms used, the results of this expansion have been devastating for the working class of third world countries...
...For its part, the MOU maintains that where it is not possible to change the political perspective or internal structures of a reactionary union, that union should be "thrown out the window...
...sugar companies through land reform and the eradication of corruption in government...
...The * The salaries of uniofi bureaucrats should be compared to factory executives and not factory workers...
...The AFL had already proven itself a trustworthy associate, through its decades-old devotion to preserving "free enterprise" and to demanding a larger share for labor only insofar as the system is capable of generating higher profits for business as well...
...And, while the old leadership did settle the strike, they were soon voted out of office...
...We're sure that this struggle will be won in the streets with the workers and not in the courts...
...Hampered by a craft union orientation that was unable to respond to an increasingly complex division of labor within the work-force and held no precedent for the organizing of the unemployed, the FLT and the Socialist Party turned to electoral politics and the government bureaucracy...
...III, No...
...An example of the dangers that are present is the idea of the sympathy strike, and...
...In addition, Teamster leaders were very hostile to, or at least cautious of, other more militant tactics such as sympathy and general strikes, which might build up real class solidarity and threaten the leadership's control...
...We recognize that there should be a differential-a gapbetween the minimum wage on the island and on the mainland...
...In addition, since labor costs were very high (often as much as 70 percent of total operating costs), 3 cut-throat competition often induced the employer to offer a kick-back and secure a "sweetheart" * contract from the Teamsters...
...Despite the fact that the strike was eventually settled with some concessions made to the workers, some other very important things had been expressed-only one of which was that truckers had defied the union's position and had entered into both wildcat and solidarity strikes...
...The first occurred in February 1974...
...Has Bootstrap really "worked...
...In the years that followed, the FLT won some local elections and in 1915 FLT leadership founded a new Socialist Party...
...All four are currently being held on exorbitant bail...
...2. Gervasio Garcia, La Primera Decada de la Federaci6n Ubre de Trabajadores de Puerto Rico (San Juan: CEREP, 1974...
...But the IBT has more going for it than its relative size...
...The existence of a trade union movement in Puerto Rico, while weak and fragmented by the late 1940's, was a potential threat to the construction of a lasting "labor peace...
...In 1957, under the auspices of John McClellan's Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor and Management Field (a misnomer, since the Committee was only empowered to investigate labor practices), a massive investigation was launched against the Teamsters...
...In fact, a high official of the government's Economic Development Administration (FOMENTO), Leo Suslow, helped coordinate the Commonwealth's support of the SIU and, reportedly, even worked out of the SIU's headquarters...
...For example, as of 1972, only 9 percent of the members of the Central States Area Conference would ever receive a pension while nearly $5 million a week was accumulating in the fund itself...
...Mufloz Marin had been advised that the Teamsters, with their image of "irresponsible" unionism, could threaten the labor peace required for the success of Operation Bootstrap...
...The second reason stemmed from the vulnerability of both the Socialist Party and the FLT...
...Its aim, however, was not to push for wage parity, but merely to narrow the gap between existing wage rates...
...Thus, the major outlays of capital went to pay low wages to a large work force...
...The Teamsters have never encouraged general strikes or sympathy strikes...
...corporate interests, the AFL was attempting to enlist worker support in laying the foundation for the economic penetration of Puerto Rico by the large U.S...
...The 1970's: Bootstrap's Legacy of Crisis A quarter century after its inception, Bootstrap has profoundly changed Puerto Rican social reality...
...In Puerto Rico, after an initial period of agreement between the SIU and the Teamsters, the SIU was tapped to oppose the Teamsters on all fronts...
...Congress...
...But as cement production fell off drastically and production costs skyrocketed, his losses rose above the $2 million level during the first quarter of 1975...
...A man named Zachary Strate built the hotel, investing $250,000, and held a 25 percent non-voting share of its stock...
...During the campaign, Chavez, believing that intimidation is a two-way street, challenged: "The SIU has two roads to follow...
...26 Whether these grievances and heterogeneous rank-and-file movements will amount to more than a pressure group on the national leadership remains to be seen...
...In light of the ambiguous tenets of populism and the subsequent betrayal of the CGT by the Popular Party, the question may well be asked of why the CGT collaborated with the PPD...
...But George Meany, supported by the AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Committee, was close behind with admonishing words for any labor leader who took the Fifth Amendment...
...We will begin by examining the union's growth from a narrow craft union to one of the most powerful industrial unions...
...5 The second was exemplified by the CGT's fraternal ties with labor federations throughout the Americas, including the CIO and the leftist-oriented CTAL (Confederacibn de Trabajadores de America Latina...
...Opposition has long existed, as a member of one such rank-and-file group explained: "The grievances are very, very deep with the Teamster Union...
...WOULD ANY CORPORATION ALLOW IT...
...In 1971 Terpe was accused and convicted of stealing the funds of SIU affiliates...
...Puerto Rican workers "adapt quickly to factory routine," the ads report, and "have become well-known for their high productivity, low absenteeism and low turnover rate...
...In the postWorld War II period, for example, Beck had 39 out of 43 locals in one Joint Council put under trusteeship...
...The issues raised by Lenin, for example, when he argued that progressives and communists should not pull out of reactionary trade unions are highly complex in the case of a colonial nation where union policies and structures are determined in the metropolitan country and not in the colony...
...5 (February 1976), 5. 35...
...By July 9, 118 factories on19 CART II: STRIKES IN PUERTO RICO 1961-1974 FISCAL YEARS) NO...
...By the early 1930's, the IBT was still a narrow craft union of approximately 75,000 members,4 who were primarily milk, bread and ice truckers...
...Simply put, the law aims to remove the threat of militant public sector unions by removing public sector unions...
...44 Thus, in one stroke of his pen, Governor Colon returned public employees to the nineteenth century, dismissing their rights to collective bargaining and job security, rights which they had won after decades of struggle...
...32 On June 9, the IBT claimed that 400 SIU goons, with the help of local police, charged Teamster picket lines, leaving one Teamster dead, many badly beaten and still more arrested...
...Furthermore, government agencies denied strikers food stamps and health services, and the established press, including Ferr6's El Nuevo Dia and the U.S.-owned El Mundo, launched an all out campaign against the OCWU and the strikers...
...39 By 1974, public workers accounted for nearly onethird of the island's work force...
...According to Popular Party designs, then, Puerto Rico was to become the hemisphere's "showcase of development" and its showcase of labor-capital harmony as well...
...The AFL not only had no interest in the expansion of the FLT into the agricultural sector...
...It had become clear, however, that given the structural weaknesses of the Puerto Rican labor movement, a workers' party could not mobilize enough sup- port to stand on its own...
...The AFLCIO had lost its largest and richest union, but the IBT drove on to bigger and better things...
...labor establishment, such as the Seafarers International Union's unwritten agreement not to unload any garment shipment from Puerto Rico unless it bears the ILGWU label...
...21 Thus, not only the SIU and the Teamsters, but almost all the Internationals were running into each other in Puerto Rico in the 1960's...
...4s But even after the election, there was still no contract and the union held out on strike...
...tourist hotels reported their lowest occupancy rates ever...
...The 1868 bourgeois revolution in Spain created the basis for the emergence of the first craft associations within the colony...
...XVIII, No...
...The union in question is the Operators and Cement Workers Union (OCWU), an independent, socialist-led body which had defeated a conservative AFL-CIO union in elections at the Ponce plant...
...8 (April 15, 1975), 5-6...
...labor unions on the island...
...unions are not only numerically dominant, but also control organized labor in the most important sectors of the economy...
...It is known that companies holding ILGWU contracts have closed up when management thought wages were too high, only to reopen after a few days-with a new name and lower wages...
...Teamsters were also in a unique position to "interfere" with deliveries to companies that did not "contribute" to the local officials' "well-being...
...In 1897 these currents culminated in the publication of "Ensayo Obrero," a newspaper produced under the direction of the most conscious elements within the artesan sector, mainly printers...
...As quickly as foreign firms could set up shop on the island, they could also abandon it...
...Much of this information was gathered from an interview held in December, 1975 with Pedro Grant, co-ordinator for the MOU and president of the Boilermakers' Union...
...labor unions on the island...
...Important to this process was the prohibition in Spain of all worker organizations affiliated to the First International and the nurturing of alternative worker associations that could be controlled by the government...
...These elites still controlled the island's judiciary process and still enforced the 1888 Law of Association, which essentially prohibited any seriousform of unionization...
...49 In fighting the NLRB rulings, the UNT argued that the Board as well as U.S...
...4 o0 Besides being a large percentage of the work force, government workers are among the most unionized sectors on the island...
...sugar companies...
...wealth need jobs and want to worh...
...One month later, the Teamsters were suspended from the Federation and by December 1957, they were formally expelled...
...To accomplish this task, however, the AFL did have to maintain a larger presence on the island than its organizing role demanded...
...Organizing would become more difficult with workers located in many different work places and the possibility for a successful strike would be very limited...
...Max D. Danish, The World of David Dubinsky (World Publishing Company: Cleveland, New York), 1957, p. 234...
...Some of the Finest Men I Know Are Employers" (Dave Beck) s Two local leaders began their rise to prominence within the union during this period...
...Following these suggestions, Iglesias submitted a declaration to the AFL Convention of December 1900 on behalf of the Puerto Rican Federation of Labor...
...Finally, facing opposition on all sides, the Teamsters backed down...
...6. Santiago Iglesias, Libros Emancipadores (San Juan: Cantero Fernan- dez & Co., 1929...
...Ibid., p. 103...
...Specifically, the work of the Committee guaranteed the passage of yet another piece of anti-labor legislation, the Landrum-Griffith Act...
...In April of 1900, AFL Secretary Frank Morrison introduced Santiago Iglesias to prominent officials of the U.S...
...Similar examples appear in terms of individual unions as well as union federations...
...Their answer was an emphatic "Yes...
...In the 1970's, militant unions headed by a new leadership, have emerged inside both the U.S.-based international unions and the local independent unions...
...workers, and the only way seen to combat that threat was to diminish the gap between mainland and insular wages...
...The information on the Teamsters in Puerto Rico is not extensive enough to reach a firm decision, but their role on the island does appear to be historically similar to the one they've played for decades in the United States...
...government officials...
...Since 1947, more than 2,000 manufacturing plants have sprouted on the island...
...By mid-February, all forms of transit were virtually at a stand-still...
...25 per year for profit-making and government organizations ($48 for two years...
...courts and U.S...
...And, finally, the development of solid links between labor struggles and the independence movement.17 I. Independents and Internationals: The Growth of Radical Unions As we have seen, the U.S.-based international unions controlled the majority of the organized labor force on the island throughout most of the 1950's and 1960's...
...Wih the threat manfac- t1ers fact these dayr-correnct flacioatiiec, inflaron, -onemic uncertainty...
...and it will without question require a terrific struggle to rid ourselves of this law...
...Organized and reorganized several times, they were often transitional in nature...
...10 (June 15, 1975), and Vol...
...39 By 1971, Teamster membership stood at 10,128 including workers in diverse and critical sectors of the economy...
...The Packinghouse Workers thus took over the CGT's position as the largest labor organization in Puerto Rico and a most willing collaborator with the PPD...
...The colonial government called in the police to occupy the schools and arrested union leaders as the teachers defied a court order to return to work...
...4 (January, 1976), p. 5 14...
...The coalition won the elections and leaders of the FLT were catapulted into government posts, with Santiago Iglesias as Resident Commissioner in Washington and Prudencia Rivera Martinez as Commissioner of Labor...
...By the so-called "Days of July" in 1973, labor struggles on the island had reached a critical phase...
...But the AFL was a powerful organization and seeking its protection was seen as the only way to ensure the survival of the FLT...
...Yet while the new colonial relationship was accompanied by basic 'superstructural changes on both the institutional and ideological levels, these changes provoked different reactions depending on the particular class affected...
...It was not a "responsible" union, rather more of a free-wheeling entity, playing the same game but making up its own rules...
...Barnes, 1961) p. 13...
...The Helfeld Bill would institute horizontal organizing...
...In other words, all workers in the Puerto Rican Telephone Authority, for example, belong to one union...
...1957) p. 18...
...standards...
...Both Governors Mufloz Marin and Luis Ferr6 actively supported the SIl's attack on the truckers' union...
...8 But Hoffa was also under serious pressure from the AFLCIO and the U.S...
...24 The situation had already begun to change in 1971 when President Nixon ordered a wage freeze which took effect in the United States and Puerto Rico in August...
...While the low wages have been guaranteed by the selective application of "IJn Ptsrmt Rico, we have an abundance " brit, energetic witera...
...The top company officials would pick out the best man they could get their hands on and they'd put him in there as manager...
...This includes an.eon soposste iacone...
...4 s Helfeld's recommendations, written up in the form of the "Unionization Law," are currently up for consideration before the Puerto Rican legislature...
...Herbert Weissberg, principal owner of the hotel, claimed that no Teamster money had been used in construction and that he was in the process of buying Mr...
...The pact, however, never went into effect...
...Claridad, January 8, 1975...
...The success of the ILGWU's organizing drive did not, however, reflect the fruits of massive campaigns at the base level...
...Chavez responded that the government was attempting to prevent union growth...
...This brought them into direct jurisdictional conflict with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, also actively organizing on the island (see article on Teamsters...
...For many years diviCHART I: PEACEN OFP WOR FORCE UNIONIZED BY INDUSTRY, 1965-1975 INDUSTRY 1965 1970 1973 1974 1975 All Industry 19% 20% 19% 16% 14% Agriculture 33 29 21 17 16 Non-Agricultural Sectors 16 20 18 16 14 Construction 14 17 17 11 9 Manufacture 32 30 34 29 24 Commerce 4 6 5 5 4 Transport, Communica- tion, Public Utility 41 61 56 54 54 Services 3 7 6 7 7 Public Administration 10 20 16 13 11 Other Services * * * * * *Saawle too small Source: Puerto Rico, Departmeat of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Work Force, 1975.18 sion and factionalism had been the outstanding characteristic of the Puerto Rican labor movement," a MOU document states...
...Miami Herald, September 29, 1975...
...Fitzsimmons earned $125,000 as of 1971 plus the usual additions.25 James R. Hoffa and Dove Beck in 1953 stockholders wouldn't hold an election to see who the hell was going in if they open up a new plant...
...This ideology combined the nationalism of the moribund Puerto Rican landholding class with the New Deal bourgeois liberalism that had so impressed many of the PPD leaders, particularly Muiloz Marin...
...The strike proved to be an important turning point in the workers' movement, highlighting a number of issues which would become key elements in the labor struggles of the 1970's...
...no date...
...The union had won more NLRB-supervised elections than any other union, operated with a net worth of S110 million in its International treasury and combined assets of all its affiliates totaling several billion dollars (much of which is in pension or health and welfare funds) and had fewer strikes than any other union even though they negotiate over 50,000 agreements every year...
...But, as Pedro Grant, the MOU's Coordinator, affirms, underlying the militancy of the new workers' movement...
...penetration into the Third World and the exceptional form at that...
...The parameters of debate in the Congress were defined by the desire to strike an acceptable balance between the need to protect mainland industries from "unfair competition" from Puerto Rican plants, with much lower wage bills, and the need to stimulate the growth of the island economy by ensuring a cheap supply of labor...
...In practice, these committees consistently decided in favor ofI1 special wage rates for Puerto Rico which fell far below the standards established by the federal statutes...
...Helfeld Report...
...government charged that Chavez had used "ghost strikes" 21 times (i.e., had entered fake applications for strike relief to pay non-existent strikers out on non-existent strikes...
...The Tobin Report mimics the banks' solution to New York's fiscal crisis by proposing a three-year wage freeze for all government employees, cut backs on all government spending and no price controls...
...After the Teamsters left the AFL-CIO, the SIU often was used to wrest workers away from the "renegade" truckers union...
...13 But Beck surpassed himself when it came to the creation of "paper locals...
...At the same time, the AFL would push reformism and business unionism as one of the primary principles of "American unionism...
...32 And, on more than one occasion, workers found their union "leaders" lining up with the bosses...
...31 The Teamsters roundly attacked the AFL-CIO for colluding with the colonial government's plan to keep wages and working conditions on a sub-standard level...
...A showdown was in the making for 1975 when the contract expired...
...To qualify a worker must prove 20 years of service which often presents several problems...
...Not only AFL-CIO unions, but others as well, competed to organize the Puerto Rican working class...
...Congress adopted the National Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage of 25 to 40 cents an hour, and set the same standards for Puerto Rico...
...From the evidence, seen in light of their history, the Teamster performance in Puerto Rico does not seem at variance with their U.S...
...At present, the MOU is a coalition of more than 40 unions with over 100 locals, and represents approximately 40,000 workers...
...They know where I live, they know where I work and where I am at...
...Furthermore, unions which do not recognize the essential contradiction between capital and labor also ignore the contradictions inherent in Puerto Rico's colonial relationship with the United States...
...Especially in Puerto Rico, where approximately 85-90 per cent of all shipping to the-island is containerized, 1 the economy is highly vulnerable to strikes or slowdowns by truckers who move all goods inland from the-docks...
...Wall Street Journal, April 24, 1975...
...The artesan sector also contained many independent unsalaried workers who were less than enthusiastic about unionization...
...industry...
...minimum wage laws and to establish separate procedures for the island...
...After a short stay in jail, he was released, only to be charged with misuse of union funds again...
...In Puerto Rico, for example, UGT-organizer Juan Saez Corales and other UGT members refused to submit affidavits...
...Ibid...
...It was for these reasons that the AFL, in conjunction with the executive branch of the U.S...
...we shall all have new hope...
...Union leaders and strikers were kidnapped, beaten, threatened and arrested by the FBI and the CIC...
...At that time, the government refused to negotiate a new agreement until union elections were held, and fired several workers for alleged violation of "company discipline...
...has replaced with new workers the strikers who have not returned to their jobs...
...Operation Bootstrap is administered by the Puerto Rican Economic Development Administration, or FOMENTO...
...An exhaustive amount of material exists which goes into all the gory detail about Teamster corruption, written predomi- nantly by Kennedy fans, including The Enemy Within by Robert Kennedy himself...
...or WORKERS an-DAYS YEARS STRIKES INVOLVED LOST 1961-62 50 8,543 64,942 1962-63 47 14,365 85,196 1963-64 54 7,886 58,756 1964-65 40 9,638 98,261 1965-66 64 12,511 136,151 1966-67 52 7,022 48,382 1967-68 49 9,012 54,729 1968-69 73 12,270 114,644 1969-70 93 19,454 191,293 1970-71 77 14,296 232,106 1971-72 107 23,779 222,624 1972-73 84 18,297 140,703 1973-74 95 22,109 289,397 Source: Puerto Rico, Department of Labor, Bureau of Coaciliatioa and Arbitration, "Coaflictos obrezo-patronales y numero de trabajadores envueltos durante los anon flscales de 1949-50 a 1973-74...
...Thus the CGT was founded with a committment to union and political struggle, not to partisan politics and the resolution of labor conflicts "through the bureaucratic machinery of the Department of Labor...
...By 1945, this strategy had born fruit...
...The struggle to establish effective, militant leaders in the unions is being waged in both the local independent unions and the Internationals...
...Governor Ferre wanted him to act as a mediator in a trucking strike because Hoffa's participation was agreeable to both the Teamsters and the trucking companies...
...Much of the sabotage, however, was allegedly government initiated...
...Over the last 20 years in particular, much attention has been paid to the corrupt nature of the Teamster leadership and lately we are led to believe that "rotten apples" like Jimmy Hoffa deserve whatever fate awaits them...
...Rafael Alonso Jones, Cuarenta Anos de Lucha Proletario (San Juan: Imprenta Boldrich, 1939...
...Tugwell was to work closely with the PPD leadership becoming one of the major architects of the PPD's development strategy...
...In 1938, the U.S...
...On the one hand, the instability of many firms gave the union a degree of leverage to selectively isolate certain companies and exert pressure for higher wages...
...firms in search of cheap labor abroad...
...This period represents the highest level of activity by U.S...
...Among the first casualties of this expansion was the island of Puerto Rico which became a colony of the United States in 1898 and remains a colony to this day...
...Perhaps there is some truth to this projected image...
...4 As important as its size was the political consciousness articulated by the CGT within the Puerto Rican working class, a consciousness that went beyond economic demands to include a militant independentista stance on the status question and an awareness of workers' struggles internationally...
...It has pitted the strikers against major economic and political interests in Puerto Rico and the United States who have gathered around them their allies and agents, from business unions to the police and the established media...
...When they had signed up nearly every worker in the plant, they (and the workers) were informed that the plant was already represented by the SIU...
...Furthermore, many of the craft unions that had already been organized on the island had a somewhat precarious existence...
...Studs Terkel, "Truck Power," New Times (1973), p. 27...
...For the first several decades of the twentieth century the Puerto Rican working class not only eagerly affiliated itself with collaborationist U.S...
...they were undiscouraged by wage levels since labor requirements in these sectors are very low...
...According to Radames Acosta...
...invasion through the Second World War...
...American labor leaders, on the other hand, demanded minimum wage increases for Puerto Rico proportional to those in the United States...
...6 As a movement which tried to mitigate class distinctions by purporting to lead the "people", which saw the enemy not in political or economic but in moral terms, and which disseminated a utopian vision of development with no visible development strategy, the Popular Democratic Party bore a close resemblance to many movements that were gaining a following in Latin America in the post-war period...
...down or halt the powerful machinery of the IBT...
...They insist on greater participation of the membership in discussions and more effective and regular communication between the leadership and the base of the union.' 331 The internal struggles in the UTIER are still continuing...
...organized labor, we must first understand the broad social and economic context within which this relationship originated...
...Not only did Puerto Rico's trade union leaders face the difficulties arising from the composition of the working class They also faced legal and extra legal attacks by the local ruling class...
...Regional inter-state organizing, with multi-local and multi-employer bargaining, became the new trend in Teamster strategy...
...As one observer noted: "It is the employers, rather than the employees, whom [Beck] impresses with the wisdom and advantage of 'signing up.' " 11 Union democracy was clearly left out of the Teamster strategy for rapid growth and power brokerage...
...As the switch from labor to capital-intensive industries was accelerating, another root of the capitalist crisis was sinking deeper into Puerto Rican soil...
...Its membership combined 378 unions including hotel and restaurant workers, construction and dock workers, workers from the incipient manufacturing sector (mostly textiles) and the vast majority of sugar workers...
...industries from the mainland-and precisely those which employed the greatest number of laborers...
...The government mobilized for an all-out attack...
...This concern was apparent in the AFL's role in the debate over the Foraker Law at the turn of the century...
...Thus strong anarchist and revolutionary elements continued to flourish within the labor movement throughout this period...
...4 (April 1976), 11-13...
...43 Subsequently the government bought out ITT and was not at all pleased with the independent union...
...And yet it is clear that the only "hope" that Operation Bootstrap has offered is the capitalists' hope for higher profits, and that the only people who are paying the price for that in their hard work are the Puerto Rican working class...
...By 1975 the IBT claimed 2,230,000 members (one out of every nine members of organized labor), of whom only approximately 25 percent are truckers...
...Garnel, op...
...In 1953, the ILGWU Executive Board decided to reinitiate its campaign to organize workers in Puerto Rico, and the ILGWU became one of the first Internationals to establish a major presence on the island...
...The company dismissed nine more workers...
...The subsequent 1955 merger of the AFL and the CIO threatened to take the steam out of the Teamsters' expanding membership drive (fewer members were tantamount to much less money and power), and was the basis of many of the antagonisms that developed between George Meany and the Teamster leadership...
...Ibid., and Edwin Melendez, "El nuevo sindicalismo en Puerto Rico: problemas y perspectivas," November 1975, 10...
...TEAMSTERS 1. New York Times, February 19, 1972...
...Wages stay close to the $1.15 minimum...
...The largest was in the form of a loan from the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund to the Isla Verde Hotel Corporation, which owns the Holiday Inn of San Juan...
...Before the major invasion of the Internationals to Puerto Rico in the mid-1950's, inter-union conflicts on the island often were no more than a carry-over of disputes which had originated on the mainland...
...MOU, "Qui es el Movimiento Obrero Unido...
...As important as these structural constraints on labor were the explicitly political constraints imposed by the law...
...Harking back to the Bootstrap days of yore, Tobin argues that for Puerto Rico to attract U.S...
...on Monday morning, in this light and sunshine, and begin to have new hope...
...Department of Justice because it violated the terms of Hoffa's parole, it clearly signified a departure from the government's past attitude...
...In this way, the local union was totally indebted to the International...
...In the beginning...
...If anything, recent attacks on the PSP prove that violent repression is increasing...
...The AFL's traditional and unquestioning acceptance of the capitalist system as best for both workers and capitalists logically led to its unqualified support for the Bootstrap ideology...
...you are exempt frane Purt Rican taxea...
...2 What is more, the artesan sector began looking beyond its own activities to the activities of labor in Europe and Latin America...
...flag...
...As a result of these measures, the FLT was reinstated as the legitimate representative of the Puerto Rican worker...
...sugar companies and banks, the small landowners and rural workers who had been uprooted from their traditional social milieu to find jobs in the growing service and nascent manufacturing sectors, or to join the growing army of the urban unemployed, and the oppressed rural work force that remained in the countryside, supplementing their income through the burgeoning home garment industry-all could fit under the giant umbrella of populism...
...Backed by large sources of funds in the United States, years of aggressive organizing experience and often, the support of the political apparatus, collaborationist unions have actively combatted the growth of militant unions in Puerto Rico...
...New York Times, February 21, 1959...
...Tobin, an arch-opponent of industrial unionism, was still in power, giving local leaders free reign to develop their fiefdoms only in so far as his personal power remained unchallenged...
...Laborers could now look to the Legislature, he argued, and not to a weakened union structure for protection against the abuses of capitalist development...
...The two most powerful lobbying groups were the colonial government and organized labor in the United States...
...In short, the allure that Puerto Rico's working class held for foreign capital had to be heightened and preserved at any cost...
...This was particularly noticeable in construction and manufacturing...
...22 . Galvin, Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector, p. 211...
...As will be remembered, the Teamsters were entangled in the McClellan Com-27 mittee investigations, Dave Beck was soon to be replaced by James Hoffa and the union was about to be expelled from the AFL-CIO...
...Their politically and economically powerful leadership is remote from the rank and file, and hence open to both corruption and collaboration...
...But it appeared that the union was concerned with more than the workers' interests...
...Yet, as one union leader put it, "strikes are a great school for workers...
...penetration has taken in specific circumstances...
...It maintains a strike fund which is at the disposal of any member union...
...26 The union's lack of success in winning legislative wage increases for Puerto Rican workers was compounded by an increase in runaway shops in the heyday of Operation Bootstrap...
...For while the Teamsters may appear to employ different strategies and conceptions for their work in Puerto Rico, it's all the same big union...
...s 6 The FUT, which also concentrates its organizing in the public sector, also seems to be a fairly weak federation...
...Finally, they saw political support from the urban working class as furthering their goal of achieving a higher degree of self-government for the colony under the leadership of the Federal Party...
...Workers are intimidated into not asking for too much, accepting the old Muftoz Marin saying that lower wages are better than no wages at all...
...22 By the mid-1960's, 27 Internationals, approximately 91 independents and 7 federations of independents were actively pursuing dues-paying members in Puerto Rico with little or no regard for the concept of jurisdictional boundaries...
...Socialist Labor Party (SLP) at the initiative of the U.S...
...The union's collaborationist ideology was not inconsistent, however, with the purpose of its original entry into Puerto Rico: to organize Puerto Rican workers and demand higher wages...
...The SIU took on its mission with a vengeance, entering into countless head-on battles with the Teamsters...
...In 1973 alone, for example, the SIU was involved in nearly 40 percent of all multi-union elections held on the island...
...Moreover, the ILGWU itself had just emerged from an internal struggle between left and right-wing forces, which depleted the union's membership and most of its financial resources...
...All of which sounds fairly good...
...Often, however, the IBT simply intimidated workers into joining, either because it was working in concert with employers to smash more radical unions, or because there were lucrative personal pay-offs involved in expanding the union membership...
...According to Pablo Rivera, the MOU's former Secretary for Education and Propaganda, ". . . the labor movement of this country has a lot to say about the political situation...
...31 Bitter strikes continued to spread throughout the island...
...6 Or more graphically put, "you can't take from business what it does not have...
...market...
...A week later most workers struck, basically over the government's attempt to destroy their union...
...In addition, the goal of the Committee was to slow...
...Insurgents in the union have charged the current union president, Felix Rodriguez, with inept leadership and partisan politicking...
...The Foraker Law passed, however, in spite of the protectionist lobby and the AFL was finally convinced by free trade exponents in the U.S...
...Moreover, by this time, the AFL-CIO had eliminated the rival truckers union and although its affiliates still actively disputed jurisdictions with the Teamsters, the viciousness of the 1960's was gone...
...stacsess stony The happy experience of other manufacturers in Puerto Rice can be repeated by you...
...In general, the Teamsters in Puerto Rico, as in the United States, have fundamentally no argument with capitalism, even though they may at times fight hard for a piece of the action...
...Whereas in 1939, the differential between Puerto Rican average hourly wages in manufacturing and the corresponding mainland earnings was 44 cents an hour, in 1950 it was 98 cents an hour...
...Intially, the IBT wanted to engage in a joint organizing drive in Puerto Rico with the Seafarers International Union (SIU), an AFL-CIO affiliate...
...2 As a rank-and-filer explains: "The union tries to avoid strikes because when you're out hitting the bricks [on a picket line] the union doesn't have any cash coming in from the company...
...It amounted to a full-blown, anti-labor crusade, masked by Meany's support and complicated by the fact that the extensive dirt they uncovered about the Teamsters was largely accurate and explosive...
...Much of the growing hostility between the AFL and the IBT was attributed to corruption within the Teamster union, to which George Meany reacted with righteous indignation...
...The information about the pension funds is highly secret and many loopholes are written into the rules...
...Yet, also in the agreement were stipulations that GE would not rehire workers fired for strike activity, pay for the workers' medical plan, or even recognize the IAM in future negotiations...
...Leaving aside the political bias of the Board, the mere complexity of the administrative rules exacted by the NLRB put independent Puerto Rican unions at a disadvantage in relation to the U.S.-based Internationals...
...International Teamster, December 1968...
...3 5 Chavez, however, charged that the government was attempting to punish the hotel because its owners had allowed Teamster representation...
...For it is through this understanding that the particularities of each country can be analyzed and strategies for liberation formulated...
...54 We have already seen some of its tactics in these inter-union disputes...
...The new CGT-CIO now considered that they had bargained a "successful" contract when "wage gains averaging only two or three cents an hour were negotiated...
...of a given unit] would be included in that same appropriate unit...
...2 6. Justice, July 15, 1955...
...The expose of union corruption was used as a wedge to weaken the trade union movement and as a base to attack the working class in general...
...The SIU had negotiated a "sweetheart" contract with the union in 1968 and had not been to the plant since then...
...The other side of the coin was that U.S...
...s ' The SIU's Puerto Rican president, Keith Terpe, has been charged with corruption on more than one occasion...
...The 1940's, however, presented a different set of choices than the 1930's, both within Puerto Rico and internationally...
...ISBN No...
...More importantly, they did not see the FLT as a threat to U.S...
...sugar companies...
...Senate passed a bill (No...
...In 1898, the Regional Workers Federation was founded...
...The configuration of political forces in Puerto Rico not only confused but also began to worry interests in the metropolis who had a stake in the colony...
...nret, and -rs manufacturers timt taz iemprikn...
...The new technicians were paid two to three times as much as the ousted strikers...
...Puerto Rico Libre!, Vol...
...The Helfeld Bill proposes a complete change in the organizational structure of public employee unions...
...And, what little ability the FTPR had to discipline and unify the Internationals was further undercut when the SI's director in Puerto Rico, Keith Terpe, formed his own "Central Labor Council for San Juan" in 1963...
...And, after 25 years, the laces on thi pair of Puerto Rican Bootstraps are about to break...
...They apparently had tapped a large amount of worker dissatisfaction with the Teamsters, for in 1971 the UIET won the election, not to mention what seems to be a better contract: 874 total raise during a three year period...
...20 While the growth of local independent unions on the island is indicative of an anti-colonial trend among organized workers, in and of itself it does not speak to the political changes which are taking place inside the unions...
...The political impact of Roosevelt's and Gompers' actions convinced Puerto Rican workers within the FLT that they were on the right track...
...The PSP and other pro-independence movements have mobilized support for the strikers and raised thousands of dollars for the strike fund both in Puerto Rico and the United States...
...But given the craft character from which the FLT arose, given the difficulty in permanently organizing the island's agricultural workers and given the absence of a strong industrial proletariat, these elements were unable to shed their utopian visions to form a strong united working class movement.II.Tying the Knot I The world capitalist crisis of the 1930's had a devastating effect on the Puerto Rican economy, the Puerto Rican worker and the Puerto Rican labor movement...
...As if to underline this point, in January 1975 the colonial government opened a new phase of Bootstrap, extending tax exemptions for new industries for up to thirty years...
...Within Latin America, the case of Puerto Rico is unique...
...These attempts provoked a serious internal struggle within the Federation and in 1899 a dissident sector which opposed the subordination of the workers' organization to the traditional political parties, broke off to found the Free Federation of Workers (FLT...
...In 1906 and 1908 the FLT went to the elections as a political party but without measurable success...
...Thus by 1955, when minimum wage legislation was again pending in the U.S...
...3 IV...
...II, No...
...separate this country's labor movement from this country's political situation...
...But Governor Munoz Marin was unconvinced, and refused to reissue the gambling permit to assure that casinos were "not controlled by undesirable gangsters as [they] have been elsewhere...
...T Within months of its formation, the Puerto Rican Socialist Labor Party was incorporated as a "state branch" of the U.S...
...0 What happened to the "good old days" of rapid industrialization and soaring GNP figures...
...3. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Junta de Planificacion, Balanza de Pagos, 1975...
...As Hoffa himself put it, "I don't object to my men having business outside of the union...
...In 1957, when Hoff, came in, the Teamster membership stood at 1,393,164...
...Before long, 45 of Puerto Rico's 78 towns were left partially or totally without electricity or water...
...Most of the U.S...
...bourgeoisie was to extend beyond the economic question of ownership of the land to the political and ideological conflict between the political system imposed by Spanish colonial rule and bourgeois democracy...
...Also see: Jonathan Kwitny, "The Billion-Dollar Reason for Hoffa's Disappearance," Village Voice, September 8, 1975, p. 6-7...
...According to Sanchez Villela,former governor of Puerto Rico, the colonial government offered the AFL a free hand in organizing on the island if the AFL would use its political power in Washington to support this new solution to the status question...
...For this reason, the contradiction between the Puerto Rican elite and the U.S...
...George Lipsitz, "Beyond the Fringe Benefits: Rank and File Teamsters in St...
...2 While this falls short of the Teamsters' high (85 elections), it is almost three times greater than the number of elections into which the Boilermakers, another active union and AFL-affiliate, entered...
...Even the CGT worked closely with the PPD, particularly in the area of New Deal reforms...
...However, Hoffa himself came to the island to help lead the battle and called for a new election, charging the SIU with intimidation of the workers...
...Statistical Analysis Branch, National Labor Relations Board Divi- sion of Administration, The United States National Labor Relations Board Election Returns (Washington, D.C.: General Printing Office), 1974...
...The Unionization Law also establishes a Work Relations Board for Public Service, an elaborate attempt to sidestep the Puerto Rican Constitution which guarantees the right of organizing, collective bargaining and picketing to workers of "agencies and instrumentalities of the government which function as private enterprises or businesses...
...NACLA-East and the Puerto Rico Project3 I. Early Courtship The first contacts between the Puerto Rican labor movement and the U.S...
...Whenever workers have complained that the ILGWU was not truly representing them, and turned to independent unions for help in organizing a strike, management has retaliated by threatening to close the firm and fire the entire work force...
...The police were recruited next, moving in to occupy phone company offices...
...Clearly, the imposition of a social and political superstructure that corresponded to a developed capitalist country on a society that was just emerging from pre-capitalist relations of production, had an enormous impact on all sectors within Puerto Rico...
...Robert Kennedy, an aspiring young star serving as counsel and investigator for the Committee, spearheaded the attack...
...The landowning elites who had lost their land to the U.S...
...Today, the dependent capitalist colony of Puerto Rico is suffering the effects of its most severe economic crisis since Bootstrap...
...Throughout the strike the NLRB, not Werl, took the offensive...
...8 The PPD was not, however, satisfied with merely splitting the CGT...
...sugar companies, not only accelerated this process, but also changed the social context in which it was developing...
...Within this context, worker associations began to be transformed from mutual aid societies to centers of resistance...
...GE responded by appealing the union election to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and firing eight workers for good measure...
...Labor in Puerto Rico, however, was not about to swallow the rhetoric of Mufioz Marin nor abandon a trade unionist tradition dating back more than 50 years...
...By examining each, we can come to a better understanding of the movement as a whole...
...Thus for the Puerto Rican worker, acceptance of this new legality was absolutely necessary as an instrument of class struggle not only against the Puerto Rican landholding class but also against the U.S...
...investment, was dependent upon a large cheap labor pool and clearly would not tolerate a large and militant labor federation...
...Far more could be gained, he argued, by accepting the credo that lower pay means more jobs, and more membership for the AFL...
...stance...
...While some of these organizations limited themselves to recreational activities, others served as schools where workers learned to read and write, and studied the classics of the French Revolution...
...Gompers arrived on the island to find the Federal Party changing its name to the Unionist Party and calling for the unity of the great "Puerto Rican family...
...Likewise, a struggle is shaping up in the AFL-CIO affiliated Teachers Federation over upcoming union elections...
...And, as the 10-20 year free status of many factories in Puerto Rico ran out in the late 1960's and early '70's, investors simply gathered up their moneybags and left...
...Thus, according to one source, "to keep busy and to justify operational expenses, many internationals started organizing outside their jurisdictions...
...12 At this, the banks began to feel it was time to put the pinch on their colonial clients...
...And finally, to add icing to the capitalists' cake, the Report calls for a variety of tax breaks for U.S...
...Basically, this meant that a local was put in "trust" under the direct control of the International and thereby lost absolutely all its autonomy...
...In 1972 newspapers reported that Terpe was a major shareholder in a tourist development project in the Dominican Republic known as the Compania de Desarrollo Turistica, Residencial e Industrial (CODDETREISA), and that his $25,000 share most likely came from union funds.* s52 *Terpe was among good company in the Dominican adventure...
...XI, No...
...It was thus within the context of heated repression of the working class by government bureaucrats, politicians and the police, that labor leaders began to look for protection from a new source, from within the metropolis...
...While large amounts of information are available on the AFL's activities in this early period, for reasons of space and balance it has been necessary to synthesize this material and point to only the most important areas and periods of AFL activity...
...In 1969 the IBT loaned the hotel $4 million-only a small portion of which was repaid by 1972 (statistics provided by the staff of Overdrive...
...1975...
...plea...
...According to Lausell, Victor Guillermo Fernandez, the union's current president, has recently been criticized by the union for arguing that the union should not use the strike as a weapon to achieve their collective bargaining ends...
...4. "Hoffa: No Fighter for the Proletariat," Revolution editorial, September, 1975...
...The traditional political parties, claiming adherents within the artesan sector, immediately initiated attempts to coopt the Federation...
...7 Yet, this theory did not lead to the advocacy of a meek union posture...
...It is important, however, to point out the particular forms that U.S...
...A "paper local" is a union with no members which has been granted a charter on the basis of the "union leader's" friendship with the Teamster leadership...
...Rather, they are appointed from above, starting with the locals' executives, who are appointed by the national office, down to the shop delegates who are selected, in turn, by the executives of the locals...
...Other labor actions affected truck and bus drivers, waterworks employees, telephone and newspaper workers and dockers...
...Or is it proper for us to see what is necessary to make the industry economically sound...
...A Tax Prqogram to Encourage Puerto Rico's Economic Growth (Washington D.C.: National Planning Association, 1958), p. 17...
...Although the Puerto Rican government may not actually have been concerned with what they called the "protection of public honesty," 37 the Teamsters provided them with sufficient ammunition to support such a stance...
...Government employees were forbidden to strike, and injunctions and restraining orders for unions charged with "unfair labor practices" were reinstituted...
...The Federation was determined to break the power of its rival and, since the Teamsters took a lot of members with them at their expulsion, to replenish their ranks...
...7 ** Over 70 percent of the island's residents depend on the Federal Food Stamp Program and nearly 90 percent meet eligibility requirements...
...military administration on the island...
...The SIU's methods and leaders are highly suspect at best, and out-and-out corrupt at worst...
...Ibid., 7. 49...
...For this reason, most of the description of events during the fifties and sixties relies heavily on interviews and secondary sources...
...government, and urgently needed to strengthen the union...
...and manufacturing industries reduced employment by over 23,000 workers in fiscal 1975...
...Ibid...
...The picket lines at the Palmer plant were maintained twenty-four hours a day by members of the community, students, professionals and other union members as well as by the striking GE workers...
...17, 50...
...indictments had no jurisdiction on the island...
...This hegemony was generally extended by means of economic penetration, often mediated by capitalist sectors within third world countries, and indirect political control through mechanisms that extended from direct military intervention to the use of multilateral institutions...
...At that time the UNT was carrying out an organizing drive among the workers of the Swiss Precision Co...
...While these associations were organized under the tutelage of the government, they carried with them the seeds of class recognition and class consciousness...
...4 (November 15, 1975), 9. 44...
...In March 1962, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union was in trouble...
...17 In essence, then, the GE strike contained four elements' which, while not fully developed at the time, have come to characterize the new workers' movement...
...B. Unionization Law: The End of Public Sector Unions The "Unionization Law" (or Helfeld Bill) is a fitting complement to the Personnel Law, taking up where the first left off...
...49,000 workers were employed in the needle trades-9,000 in garment factories and 40,000 at home.23Thus, Puerto Rico was seen as a dangerous threat to the jobs of U.S...
...During the first two weeks of July 1973, Puerto Rican sanitation, electrical and water workers and firemen walked off their jobs...
...III, No...
...After only a year in office, Pagan won an important contract for 600 workers at the Puerto Rican Telephone Company, making the Teamsters the largest union on the island at that time...
...LXXXI, No...
...The purchasing power of this minimum wage, then, had actually declined by 29 percent.16 American labor was also suffering the consequences, as mainland industries accelerated their exodus to the paradise of cheap labor in the Caribbean...
...Thus, better to sit at a bargaining table in New York City with a David Dubinsky, for example, than haggle out the issues with an unpredictable, unknown and autonomous union structure in Puerto Rico...
...They fight for unity in the trade union movement which has been rejected by the old leadership...
...Agosto, "El movimiento obrero en la etapa actual," 11...
...While the SLP saw the U.S...
...Although its leadership espoused the ethics of business unionism, the union remained unpredictable and independent...
...UNITY AND THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT Trade union unity still remains a serious problem for Puerto Rican workers, one which is exacerbated by the actions of collaborationist unions like the SIU...
...Within a very short period of time, it had become the dominant force in the garment industry, establishing a virtual monopoly on all labor contracts...
...The Teamsters might be somewhat "unreliable," but in comparison to the developing new trade union movement, they also might be more responsible than previously imagined...
...The workers' consequent disaffection with the FLT and the Socialist Party had important ramifications, not only in the field of labor organizing but in the field of electoral politics as well...
...cit., p. 11...
...This was the case even though Puefto Rico is one of the largest oil refining nations in the world...
...investors, consistently argued for the island's total exemption from all minimum wage legislation...
...What the probing potential investor won't find in the borchures, however, is the fact that Puerto Rican workers are becoming known for their militancy, growing level of consciousness and increasingly solid organization...
...Puerto Rico Libre!, June, 1975...
...In 1907, Daniel Tobin took over the union presidency and held on to it for the next 45 years...
...Ibid., p. 141...
...Ibid...
...0095-5930 NACLA'S LATIN AMERICA & EMPIRE REPORT Vol...
...a While the U.S...
...While the FLT had not previously been able to mobilize the rural proletariat, the class enemies of the landowners, they had not in fact given up this objective...
...Army as a result of government manipulation...
...6. Quintero Rivera, p. 80...
...THE IBT DRIVES INTO PUERTO RICO Teamster local 901 was quietly established in Puerto Rico in 1956, but did little organizing at first...
...Thus, while the PPD formally supported independence, its practice by no means generated major contradictions with the U.S...
...Claridad, October 31, 1972...
...4s The UNT began to tangle with the NLRB in mid-1973 over the issue of a strike at Construcciones Werl, Inc., a construction sight where the UNT was organizing...
...1 1. Charles F. Phillips...
...While the more progressive aspects of U.S...
...6 Iglesias' declaration was a desperate call for intervention in the internal affairs of the colony to protect the Puerto Rican workers' rights to freedom of assembly, association and expression...
...3) property tax, for five to ten years...
...These unions, however, do not dominate the organized labor movement in the United States today nor have they played a major role in Puerto Rico...
...Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Report to Industry on Productivity and Profit Potential,no date...
...This new development strategy had to be actively promoted, propagandized both at home and abroad...
...Moody's (an investor rating service) dropped Puerto Rico's bond ratings a few nothces and the banks raised interest rates a few percentage points...
...organized labor were courting the FLT and offering legal and material concessions to Puerto Rican workers, the insular elites were continuing their repression of the Puerto Rican labor movement...
...Secondly, while the IBT is an "international" union, its history, ideology and organization can only be understood by studying its original development inside the United States...
...2) personal income tax on dividends or profits for seven years...
...When the elections were finally held in January 1976, the SIU eaked out a victory precisely because the votes of 90 OCWU strikers were thrown out...
...To a much larger degree, it was due to the relationships which the AFL unions established with both American businesses moving to the island and the Puerto Rican government...
...It has been a major force in organizing solidarity for striking workers throughout the island...
...all International unions.' Because there are differences among them...
...But the nature of the trucking industry was changing abruptly, and it became apparent that the union would soon have to shift gears as well...
...It laid to rest government claims of a docile work force...
...In 1949, when mainland minimum wage rates again increased from 40 to 75 cents an hour, Puerto Rico's minimum stayed constant...
...police agency...
...Within a few years of its formation, the CGT became the largest and most important labor federation in Puerto Rico...
...camp...
...And the third stage, starting in the mid-1960's, was concerned with the development of heavy industry...
...Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Directory of National Unions and Employee Associations, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office), 1972...
...At the 1934 convention of the ILGWU, union president David Dubinsky told the delegates that a major organizing drive was needed in Puerto Rico to make runaway shops less profitable for business...
...The 1970's have been characterized by the definitive failure of the Bootstrap approach to unemployment, by the shift from light industry to capital-intensive investment, and by attempts to mitigate Puerto Rico's precarious economic situation by renegotiating the terms of the island's colonial status...
...A prime feature of these contracts is the clause forbidding slow-downs, work stoppages, wildcat strikes, or any other form of protest initiated by the workers in Puerto Rico in response to local conditions...
...It should also be noted that this declaration referred to the organization of "skilled workers" in the colony...
...22 But perhaps the biggest union manipulation of all has been in reference to the celebrated pension funds which eventually led Hoffa to the Lewisburg Penitentiary and led a rank-and-file worker to state: "Fringe benefits don't really come from the company to the worker...
...They are, first, the growth, on the one hand, of new unions not linked to the U.S.-based international unions and, on the other, the development of militant unions inside the AFL-CIO structures...
...In the first place, little information about the Teamsters in Puerto Rico has been collected and an in-depth analysis of its role remains to be written...
...invasion of the island in 1898...
...7 (May-June 1974), 12...
...7. Banco Popular, Progress in Puerto Rico...
...As David Dubinsky explained, "We believe that Puerto Rican industry, to grow and develop, is entitled to a fair competitive advantage over the continental United States, but we do not believe Puerto Rico should have an unfair competitive advantage...
...Remaining unions would be highly bureaucratic, union democracy would be destroyed and white and blue collar employees divided...
...While the final outcome of the conflict is still in doubt-the OCWU is currently challenging the NLRB election of January-the Ponce strike has become a symbol of militant resistance to the colonial government...
...1 (July/August 1973), p. 31-45...
...they come from the worker to the union...
...By 1955, San Juan was more expensive to live in than any American city, and real wages were steadily declining...
...In Puerto Rico there was no identifiable bourgeoisie and the petit-bourgeois leadership of the PPD ultimately responded not to the historical interests of a class that currently existed in Puerto Rico, but to an ideology with diverse class roots...
...Ibid., p. 165...
...A primary target was the largely unorganized labor force in Puerto Rico...
...SLP left the Puerto Rican workers' party and the FLT alone to confront what was truly an overwhelming task...
...0-916024-17-2 ISSN No...
...The Puerto Rican Senate led an investigation, criticizitig" the Teamsters for intimidation of the Hotel Workers and general malpractices...
...Nevertheless, by the 1970's, while wages were still between one-half and one-third of those in the United States, they could not compare with the wages of misery paid in Taiwan, the Dominican Republic or Haiti...
...Ibid., Vol III No...
...If trade unionism could not be eradicated in Puerto Rico, Mufioz Marin and the colonial government were intent on shaping it to suit the needs of Bootstrap...
...so B. The Collaborationist Unions: All in the Family While the NLRB serves as a referee who ties the workers' hands before the fight, the collaborationist business union is often the opponent called upon to deliver the coup de grace to the shackled fighter...
...Within the Puerto Rican landholding class these transformations provoked a dual reaction...
...The Foraker Law dissolved all trade and tariff barriers between the United States and Puerto Rico, apparently posing a threat to U.S...
...Neither could the colonial government argue that lower living costs in Puerto Rico created a margin for less pay than mainland wages...
...The decision to incorporate was made for a number of reasons...
...Puerto Rico Librea!, Vol...
...It was within this context that the first labor union organized on the island sought relations with the American Federation of Labor (AFL...
...Organized labor in the United States complained that the composition of these committees was heavily weighted in favor of business interests in Puerto Rico...
...The Teamsters do have investments in Puerto Rico, which they reported as totaling $4,300,540 in 1972...
...The CUTE, a federation of six public unions (teachers, waterworkers, electrical workers, nurses, university workers and employees at the Banco de la Vivienda), aroused the anger of some sectors of the labor movement for not fully supporting its workers in opposing the Personnel Law and for being an organization of leaders rather than rank-and-file workers...
...I o In 1952, the PPD dropped its pro-independence rhetoric and opted for the so-called Free Associated State status...
...In other words, for the Puerto Rican worker, ties to the AFL were not only a matter of declarations but signified active support...
...Hereafter cited as NLRB Election Returns...
...Second, an increase in worker militancy and combativity as a product of a higher level of consciousness, better organization and leadership and the objective economic situation on the island...
...Yet, it is one thing to argue that point and another to win it...
...Iglesias was even granted an audience with President McKinley to brief the President on the needs and expectations of the Puerto Rican worker within the new colonial relationship...
...Workers do not elect any of the union representatives...
...To top it off, the Teamsters have exported to the island an image they have cultivated for decades in the United States: that of a militant, "rough and ready" union that despite all odds, including government harrassment and interference, fights for its membership and organizes the unorganized...
...With this in mind, two very important strikes should be examined...
...laws and government agencies that govern Puerto Rico but are beyond the power of Puerto Rico's people to alter, or through collaboration with U.S.-based firms and unions, that the ILGWU has managed to resist the challenge of the independent labor movement in Puerto Rico.15 III.Marriage on the Rocks, Militancy on the Rise...
...He was Hoffa's man in Puerto Rico, operating in much the same way as his mentor, and, out of loyalty to Hoffa, had even threatened to pull the Puerto Rican Local 901 out of the International when there was talk of re-merger with the AFL-CIO...
...7 (March 1976),9...
...Galvin, Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector in Puerto Rico (unpublished PhD dissertation, 1972), p. 319...
...From the downwardly mobile former elites to the uprooted arrivals to the urban areas, to the working class and the unemployed, populist reformism was widely embraced...
...All union officials were forced to file affidavits swearing that they were not communists...
...Slowly, the Teamsters were being accepted as a non-threatening union, even by the colonial administration...
...workers...
...By May 27, five days after Ferr6 announced that he was firing all striking workers, the SIU had signed up enough scabs in the plant to petition a very willing and eager NLRB for new union elections...
...Throughout the long strike, Ferrd could count on the support of no less than four "law enforcement" agencies: the local police, FBI, Criminal Investigations Corps (CIC-a special police task force), and Security Associates, a private U.S...
...In the manufacturing industries, the AFL-CIO organized 857 workers in 1974 compared with 2,245 workers the previous year...
...Such contradictory images can only be deciphered within a more general historical context...
...In the best of circumstances, in addition to fighting for "bread and butter" demands, a trade union should serve as a school for the working class...
...Puerto Rico to New York: The Profit Shuttle," NACLA's Latin America & Empire Report, Vol...
...Wall Street Journal, February 25, 1959...
...Sidney Lens, op...
...It is too early to argue that the Teamsters' base of strength is eroding since many other unions have also lost membership in recent years due to the economic crisis...
...When local conditions no longer suited the needs of these labor-intensive industries, foreign investors could transfer their operations with relative ease and embark on an island-hopping tour of the Caribbean...
...If it Breathes, Organize it," Fortune, Vol...
...practice...
...The Teamsters could little afford a jurisdictional free-for-all in their new organizing campaign, and were willing to work out a bilateral, no-raiding pact with the SIU...
...In October 1969, most of the workers at GE's Palmer plant voted to recognize the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), an AFL-CIO affiliate, as their union...
...Beneath the froth and glitter of economic boom lay the structural roots of the present crisis...
...22 Faced with an intense organizing drive against it, the OCAW has been forced off the island in the last few years...
...9. Wall Street Journal, September 5, 1975...
...But it could be that much of the appearance has been confused with the reality, violence with militance, anticolonial posture with anti-capitalism, price-fixing with "good contracts...
...Nevertheless, Chavez confidently proclaimed, "The rival truck union chartered by the AFL-CIO was state-sponsored, state-owned, state-dominated, state-controlled...
...Operation Bootstrap provoked a significant exodus of U.S...
...The effects of this massive penetration on the colony have been, on the one hand, the extension of some of the benefits enjoyed by organized labor on the mainland to sectors of the Puerto Rican working class...
...All in all, it is clear that the capitalists have found a friend in the SIU and will employ it as they would any other weapon...
...Rather, it provoked a resurgence of interest in organizing activities on the island for reasons to be examined below...
...In most cases, they had had ample experience with AFL unions on the mainland and preferred to negotiate with these known entities in their new Caribbean ventures...
...Colonial government officials have admitted the safety valve nature of these federal transfer programs...
...corporate interests, would in 1948 deem U.S...
...He was peronally involved in the SIU-IBT conflict in 1958 as Executive Secretary of the SIU and was given the task of leading the attack on the Teamsters...
...This was true in the case of the CIO-affiliated CGT's challenges to the AFL-affiliated FLT...
...Nevertheless, corruption was the first apparent issue in the AFL-CIO vs...
...2. New York Times, February 15, 1976...
...The ILGWU has repeatedly ignored abuses and contract violations by management...
...4 (January 1976), 9. 48...
...From the GE strike of 1969-70 to the Ponce Cement Workers' strike of 1975-76, Puerto Rican workers have challenged the bourgeois premise that the capitalist crisis is the workers' burden...
...He is not a representative of the rank-and-file but rather a liaison between ILGWU leadership and the Puerto Rican government...
...Released in December 1975, at the height of the economic crisis, the Tobin Report suggests that the burden of Puerto Rico's crisis be shifted to the workers...
...The Popular Party administration which masterminded the growth strategy of the 1940's and 1950's was equally adept at planning the containment of the working class...
...all statements submitted to the NLRB and all of the Board's findings must be issued in English...
...At the time of the "Ponce de Leon" confrontation, Frank Chavez, just as Jimmy Hoffa, was under indictment, charged with stealing $150,000 from the International treasury...
...And, as important as these points, the GE strike proved how critical broad political support was to the labor movement...
...One major field of battle was the U.S...
...Yet Puerto Rico's colonial status and structure were important elements which distinguished the configuration of Puerto Rican populism...
...With my bare fists I will be waiting...
...While a number of trade union federations have been formed recently, many have been accused of dividing the labor movement rather than uniting it...
...At present, .unions are vertically organized...
...GE reports plenty of screened workers," Commonwealth promotionals gushed...
...These firms hold ILGWU contracts and are part of the Puerto Rico Corset and Brassiere Association, all of whose 80 member companies hold similar contracts...
...Operation Bootstrap, the PPD's plan for industrialization based on U.S...
...organization...
...real and persoal property municipal taxes...
...27 The MOU's active support of trade union unity has determined its constant presence on picket lines, at demonstrations and at workers' meetings...
...By examining the role of the IBT in the United States and Puerto Rico, it hopefully will become apparent that the Teamsters' school teaches primarily by negative example...
...The formation of the UGT coincided with a new phase of repression in the workers' movement which stemmed from two sources...
...New York Times, January 10, 1956...
...Ibid., 164...
...There the lines are drawn, with the bosses and their allies lined up on one side...
...Finally, on January 31, 1975, the company provoked a strike by refusing to give sick pay to several employees and halving the pension payments to retired workers, negating stipulations of the existing contract...
...8 (April 15, 1975), 6. 22...
...11 (October 1974), 1-2, 20-22...
...and 4) business taxes including license fees and exise taxes for ten years...
...To understand the destruction of the CGT by these political forces, and to understand the present period in Puerto Rico, we must first briefly examine the development of populism on the island as embodied in the rise of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD...
...While the SLP called for socialist internationalism in the struggle against capital, the AFL emphasized the negotiation of working class complaints within the capitalist system...
...Socialist Party claimed the right to organize on the island along with Puerto Rican workers, they saw Puerto Rican trade union leaders as the true representatives of the working class in the colony, with the understanding that they should enjoy the same rights as North American citizens...
...19 Secondly, the workers are rejecting the U.S.-based unions in favor of Puerto Rican unions...
...It was precisely this type of militance on both political and economic issues that eventually made the CGT highly threatening to the political forces that were trying to shape Puerto Rico's future in the 1940's and '50's...
...It also had little interest in the expansion of the craft sector on the island...
...Secretary Treasurer of the UNT currently facing criminal contempt charges for his role in the union's activities, the struggle to oust the NLRB from the island will be a difficult one: "The Taft-Hartley Law [and the NLRB] are imposed upon us by the colonial structure...
...The Work Relations Board would be empowered to determine which public corporations operate as private enterprises and which function as public agencies...
...New York Times, July 12, 1973 and Chispa, September 1973, 20...
...Department of Organizing, IBT, "What is the Teamster Union," 1975, p. 1.21...
...On May 28, five striking workers were arrested on charges of sabotage, based on information obtained from an employee who was severely beaten at police headquarters...
...A decentralized union was no longer adequate when faced with an increasingly inter-state industry...
...Business unionism denotes a particular ideological and organizational conception of labor's role within the capitalist system...
...1 (August 15, 1975), and 4 (January 1976...
...Throughout the 1940's and '50's, the union lobbied extensively for the application of U.S...
...f f- i P-Re' ,e- sslon t panics already in Puerto Rico...
...Essentially, this meant that he simply had to share power with the area conference heads who had often been by-passed by Hoffa, but it clearly did not mean greater democratization within the union...
...The history of the Knights of Labor, the IWW and the early CIO clearly demonstrates the progressive role of some labor unions in the North American class struggle...
...bourgeoisie...
...Edwin Melendez, head of the PSP's labor division and a member of that party's central committee, was recently arrested and jailed with three other PSP members...
...But within four days, in the heat of the struggle, the UTIER turned to pro-independence and socialist organizations for support, for the first time in that union's history...
...And the warning that business must not be scared off by "unrealistic" wage demands became the incessant chant of the colonial authorities...
...In this contest between the IBT and the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters have often been labelled as mavericks, as "unreliable" partners for business and as a model of "irresponsible" unionism...
...In fact, productivity increases in Puerto Rico were keeping pace with the mainland in comparable industries...
...The major thrust of these efforts was directed toward the newly established industrial plants of Puerto Rico...
...Congress that production of sugar and tobacco in the colony was a threat to neither U.S...
...The second stage, beginning at the end of the 1940's, concentrated on the development of light, privately owned industry...
...New York Times, October 15, 1975 and April 30, 1975...
...and foreign investment, it must "hold the dollar increases in labor costs below the trend in the mainland...
...In 1934, sugar workers struck throughout the island, demonstrating their outrage against sugar producers whose ability to maintain high profits despite a drop in world sugar prices was a direct result of wages that provided less than 65 per cent of the food needs of a Puerto Rican family...
...The IBT lost the first election 106-64, leading the SIU's international president, Paul Hall, to boast that the Teamsters were no match for the Seafarers...
...With the implementation of Operation Bootstrap and the high priority set on keeping labor cheap, wage disparities continued to rise...
...The serious conflicts on the San Juan docks in the mid-1950's, for example, were a direct result of the fragmentation of waterfront and maritime workers in the United States, and of the 1954 expulsion of the International Longshoremen's Association from the AFL...
...With the blessings of the union and many of the trucking companies, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was created in 1935 as a mechanism to curb competition...
...This is not to imply that the AFL's interest in the Puerto Rican labor movement was based on the same premises as the FLT's interests in the AFL...
...In response, the telephone workers called a 24-hour work stoppage on April 11, and 2,000 marched on the capitol...
...The systematic destruction of the CGT was a necessary preliminary step toward breaking the back of labor militancy on the island...
...According to Luis Lausell, current president of UTIER's 3,000 member San Juan local, "These leaders had a new focus, new methods of work...
...Moreover, the original form that industrialization assumed in Puerto Rico-small and medium-scale manufacturing employing large amounts of cheap labor-has increasingly given way to capital-intensive installations such as petrochemicals, exacerbating the already high levels of unemployment...
...According to the MOU, the OCAW in Puerto Rico was a tremendously reactionary union, a union that merrily sold out its workers without the slightest twinge of remorse, and, of course with a structure that didn't permit the slightest argument-internal democracy in the OCAW was a big zero...
...In the late 1940's, the Puerto Rican government confidently promised investors a labor force tamed by high unemployment, a working class eager and willing to take any job at virtually any pay...
...So the SIU was abruptly persuaded to switch sides, joining hands with the colonial government and the AFL-CIO leadership, to clobber the Teamsters...
...government, decided to incorporate the FLT into its ranks...
...And the PPD proceeded to do so...
...to the US...
...The AFL organized skilled workers and only a small sector of the Puerto Rican labor force had specialized skills...
...Nevertheless, the dominance of the International unions has slipped markedly in the 1970's...
...In 1945, Juan Saez Corales, former General Secretary of the CGT and a militant trade unionist and independentista, was drafted into the U.S...
...Ill, no...
...If a trucking company folds leaving no records, if a trucker changes locals that do not have reciprocal pension fund agreements, or if a worker has a "break-inservice" of more than three years, all pension credits are eliminated...
...Yet its very own propaganda, which praised the skills and efficiency of Puerto Rican labor in patronizing tones, precluded an argument for lower wages based on lower productivity...
...Mufioz Marin personally took upon himself the task, of convincing the U.S...
...Mail ettien far the full story...
...Striking While the Iron's Hot To an increasing extent, the history of the organized labor movement in Puerto Rico in the 1970's has been written in a series of prolonged, bitter, militant strikes...
...Charges and counter-charges flew back and forth as the confrontation mounted over what the government claimed was "patently not a labor issue," but rather "irresponsible and gangster-like" tactics...
...In the first place, the "good old days" were good only if you happened to be a capitalist...
...And in 1974 they walked away with 23 of the 30 contests...
...On June 2, the hotel closed down and discharged the hotel employees with two days severance pay...
...More prominent among the Teamster leadership's organizing techniques was an emphasis on "organizing the employer," through "sweetheart" contracts, "backdoor deals," etc...
...In the interim, however, living costs rose by 97 percent...
...NY.4 Origins of the Organization of the Puerto Rican Working Class The first worker organizations emerged in Puerto Rico toward the end of the nineteenth century...
...Address all correspondence to Box 57, Cathedral Station, New York, NY 10025, or Box 226, Berkeley, CA 94701...
...In fact, the SIU and the Teamsters have been the two most consistently active unions in Puerto Rico in the last decade...
...While the study undertaken in this Report by no means pretends to be either a class analysis of Puerto Rico or an analysis of the Puerto Rican working class, it represents an attempt to describe one of the major forces that has shaped this contradiction, the U.S...
...All three are designed to disarm public sector unions and destroy their ability to further working class struggles...
...and lsensae fiao,-for up t 25 yeast Cm.y manskhn tesre pK&W in the chemical industry, the prmfitr-sales nrio aneraets 40.9 percent lx Psento Rico aas, 5.9 percent on the main'lanad In electrical machine, 26.1 peeent in Puerto Rico against 3.3 "petrent on the mainland...
...Secondly, the PPD and the CGT, on the surface at least, shared many broad political objectives including independence from the United States, a curbing of the power of U.S...
...2 s The MOU's fundamental objective is the promotion of unity within the trade union movement...
...X, No...
...It led 67 strikes, including a general strike of sugar workers which resulted in CGT contracts for all workers in sugar processing plants...
...You'll find hundreds mose aor.s the nearly o1000 US...
...Whether the intended benefits ever reach the workers is another question, to be explored below, but their right to such guarantees was at least a hopeful beginning...
...Ibid., pp...
...Meany joined the clamor at a public meeting with Mufloz and Hip6lito Marcano, stating that "the AFL-CIO is confident that workers of Puerto Rico will not be hoodwinked by rash promises of discredited organizations that seek power over workers, not by workers organizations that are dominated by racketeering influences instead of being inspired by humanitarian reasons...
...More often than not, such support was not forthcoming...
...government and U.S...
...1 3. Puerto Rico Libre, Vol...
...5. Garnel, op...
...Ibid., February, 1976...
...The first skirmish involved a trucking company, Valencia Baxt Express, where both the Teamsters and the SIU were competing for worker representation...
...A vast propaganda campaign was mounted, aimed at instilling a "patriotic sense of duty" in every worker's heart...
...Having tired of simply ruling that the capitalists always negotiate in good faith and the workers are always hopelessly malicious, the NLRB has gone a step further in Puerto Rico by actually outlawing those unions which commit the crime of supporting their workers...
...The National Labor Relations Board found UTI guilty as charged, for trying to sabotage relations between the ILGWU and the manufacturers' group, comprising four plants owned by the Bali Company...
...16 Dave Beck being that Hoffa surpassed even Beck's past record, leading the Senate Rackets Committee to write: "[Hoffa] runs a hoodlum empire, the members of which are steeped in iniquity and dedicated to the proposition that no thug need starve if there is a Teamster payroll handy...
...Their families were harrassed and threatened...
...2 8 Governor Mufloz Marin panicked at such predictions and called for "racketeer unions [to be] driven from the country...
...Bootstrap was initiated in 1942 with a program of light, government owned industry...
...Jim Drinkhall, "Central State Pension Fund-Bankroll for the Mafia," Overdrive, Part I (July 1972), p. 41ff and Part III (August 1972), p. 75ff...
...7. Lyman Gould, La Ley Foraker: Raices de la Politica Colonial de los Estados Unidos (Editorial Universitaria, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1975...
...The new political leadership of this movement, made up mainly of the professional sons of former landowners, sought to harness the frustrations of the so-called Puerto Rican "people" in a current that defined its enemy as the corporate greed and corruption of the U.S...
...During this period, affiliation to the AFL appeared to guarantee a role for organized labor in the class struggle...
...unions organizing in Puerto Rico during this period belonged to the AFL, which played an important role economically and politically as well, with regard to the question of Puerto Rico's colonial status...
...Socialist Parties did not prove fruitful...
...29 These strategic and legal arrangements underscore how the ILGWU's domination of labor in Puerto Rico's garment industry rests upon the existing colonial structure...
...The internal organization of the Drivers Association reflected this new political awareness...
...While this may be true, it should be remembered that leaders like Hoffa don't drop from the sky...
...The 1938 law was amended to exempt Puerto Rico from U.S...
...LOW PAY IS BETTER THAN NO PAY The launching of Operation Bootstrap meant much more than just throwing the doors of Puerto Rico open to foreign capital...
...Their rise in the union hierarchy was linked to specific historical conditions...
...By 1899, the U.S...
...For example, all NLRB hearings (including oral arguments by the unions) are conducted in English...
...Finally, as we have seen, the SIU-Teamster antagonism in Puerto Rico was a logical extension of mainland battles arising from the truckers' expulsion from the AFL-CIO in 1957.13 Yet other elements besides the transference of mainland disputes underlie the high level of inter-union rivalry in Puerto Rico, particularly in the 1960's...
...Under his direction, the IBT began to emerge as a powerful and growing organization...
...We did just exactly what business would do...
...This appointee, the Chief of Personnel, would have the final say on hiring and firing, promotions, job training, salary levels, grievances and benefits...
...THE ILGWU: THREADBARE UNIONISM The history of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in Puerto Rico, and its rapid rise to a dominant position within the island's burgeoning garment sector, is an illustrative example of collaboration between labor, government and business...
...4a As more and more workers in Puerto Rico realize that it is only through their hard work that wealth is created, and not by some mythical goose, they will decisively throw Teamster philosophy out the window and continue the long struggle of overthrowing capitalism, putting their eggs in an altogether different basket...
...This was the reaction of a colonial work force, that was in the process of becoming a social class, to worker institutions that corresponded to a developed capitalist society...
...I don't think you can afioed to everlook Puerto Rico when cosidering any plans fit expansion...
...NACLA Interview, Joseph Konowe, Secretary-Treasurer, IBT, Local 210, New York, January, 1976...
...cit, p. 68...
...9. Sidney Lens, The Crisis of American Labor (New York: A.S...
...Therefore, the SLP could not fulfill its promises to defend Puerto Rican workers' economic rights and to assist in their organizing drives...
...This reactionary offensive on the public sector is currently embodied in three measures: the Personnel Law, the Unionization Law (or Helfeld Bill) and the Tobin Report...
...As we have seen, many of the electrical workers were dissatisfied with their union's (UTIER) settlement of the July 1973 strike...
...it accepted without question the colonial status of Puerto Rico...
...Unfortunately, the amount of information available is inversely proportional to the level of labor organizing that occurred...
...And, in 1964, Hoffa negotiated the first national contract for overthe-road truckers...
...29 Garbage began piling up on the streets...
...Copyright @ 1976 by the North American Congress on Latin America, Inc...
...Lo In spite of Gompers' intervention in Puerto Rican party politics, the alliance between the FLT and the Unionist Party was short-lived...
...We tOfer lwnfactren acombina...
...To prove his point, Ferr6 suspended negotiations for as long as 46 consecutive days...
...An important ally was in the offing, which would aid the government in its endeavor to create a harmonious atmosphere for development...
...Armed with a list of all workers and their addresses, provided by the company and denied to the independent union, the Teamsters exerted massive energy to gain back the workers...
...As former members of the small landholding class and rural proletariat, they were aware of the harsh exploitation of Puerto Rico's agricultural workers at the hands of U.S...
...As a representative of the United Workers Movement (MOU), currently the leading progressive union coalition, put it: "We cannot speak of 'all independent unions," [or...
...Rapidly, the repression increased...
...and most fundamentally, it accepted the need to promote capitalist development as beneficial to workers and capitalists alike...
...At the same time, Puerto Rican union leaders often looked to the AFL only in times of crisis when they needed material support...
...The implementation of Operation Bootstrap had not gone unnoticed by the mainland unions...
...3 Sound good...
...Courts (where all arguments must be in English) have no jurisdiction in Puerto Rico and, therefore, their rulings are meaningless...
...41 They are also among the most combative, as shown by their increasing participation in strikes...
...And in the process, it has convinced many workers that the interests of the working class are inexorably linked to an independent, socialist Puerto Rico...
...This was done through rate-fixing, restricting "freedom of entry" by small new companies or operator-owners and by pushing for government regulation and control...
...Alliances between sectors evolved and dissolved as the material bases of different elements within the society were transformed...
...cit., p. 33...
...In recent years, the Teamsters have become one of the largest Puerto Rican unions and have engaged in more NLRB elections for union representation than any other union on the island...
...citizenship for the Puerto Rican people, seeing this status as the only guarantee of democratic rights for the working class...
...Traine-s and instructors can he paid through government grants...
...And, while it represented no one, it could cast votes in regional council elections to tip the scale against any opposition candidates...
...The first head to roll as a result of the investigation was Dave Beck's, who was investigated for defrauding the union treasury of $370,000 s and was finally sentenced to five years for tax evasion and larceny...
...But what can be said is that their credibility has been severely shaken...
...Those public agencies not subject to the Unionization Law would still be subject to the Personnel Law...
...By 1954, hourly wages in Puerto Rico were $1.31 lower than U.S...
...Nuevo Dia, December 11, 1974...
...7. Ibid., p. 92...
...9 * "I Run the Union Just Like a Business...
...wages for equivalent jobs...
...Thus, a situation was created in which the employment capacity of capitalist enterprises as structured in colonial Puerto Rico had no where to go but down...
...MAS, however, was more a reflection of the union leaders' desire for unity than an objective expression of the state of the trade union movement, and as a consequence it never got off the ground...
...44 Nevertheless, on May 23, the independent won a landslide victory over the Teamsters, tallying 2,430 votes to 250...
...The MOU gradually took shape during these meetings under the leadership of Pedro Grant of the Boilermakers, Peter Huegel of the Meat Cutters and Bob Alpert of the Food Workers, among others...
...It was the NLRB, not the construction company, which uncovered technical errors in the union's procedures, filed for an injunction to force an end to the strike, hauled the UNT into court on "unfair labor practice" charges when the union refused to honor the injunction, filed civil and then criminal contempt charges against union leaders, offered NLRB lawyers to prosecute UNT leaders, and, finally, totally banned all organizing activities by the UNT in Puerto Rico...
...Puerto Rico Libre!, Vol...
...unions but was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of U.S...
...It also recommends the reduction of federal minimum wage standards for all workers, especially those under 20 years old, and a "thorough review" of the workers' hard-earned fringe benefits...
...And the NLRB's record in Puerto Rico would make Taft, Hartley and the rest of the capitalist class very happy...
...By the mid-1950's, they controlled more than 75 percent of the organized labor movement in Puerto Rico...
...The government is determined to keep sub-stand- ard wages, hours and conditions of employment for Puerto28 Rican workers-and the Teamster Union is just as determined to fight for decent wages and living conditions for its island members...
...On either one I will respond...
...In Minneapolis, James Riddle Hoffa was brought in from Detroit to smash the regional strength of a radical local, and to' consolidate his own power-base...
...Away with Runaways While the AFL had been present in Puerto Rico since 1901, it was not until the industrialization drive of the 1940's and '50's that the American Internationals began a veritable invasion of the island...
...Puerto Rico Libre!, Vol...
...sugar companies and strongly supported the CGT over the AFL-supported FLT...
...Thus, the rise in petroleum import costs in 1973 may have acted like an ill wind by blowing away Bootstrap's cover, but it was not the cause of the Puerto Rican economic crisis, as many economists have claimed...
...E4 Cl) 0J 4J 4. q) 4. Q, .4...
...There is considerable evidence that, although the Teamsters did not always employ traditional or legal means in order to increase their membership, they were never worthy of emulation...
...Claridad, November 14, 1971...
...The eradication of Spanish legality was already an irreversible process...
...elements organizing in the colony had any substance to them...
...Roosevelt intervened directly and the AFL initiated a campaign in defense of the FLT...
...Yet Tobin never attempted to consolidate the Teamsters nationally...
...Organizationally, business unions are characterized by hierarchical and undemocratic structures...
...And by the 1930's, needle trades already constituted the second largest manufacturing sector in Pierto Rico...
...The Challenge to Union Leeches The struggle against trade union bureaucrats, autocrats and those who have grown complacent or corrupt at the head of the workers' movement is a constant feature of any militant union movement...
...For example, the AFL-CIO affiliated unions in Puerto Rico organized only 107 workers in the construction trades in all of 1974 as compared to 763 two years earlier...
...unions that fighting the runaway shop and demanding higher wages for Puerto Rico was a deadend strategy...
...2 Beck's rationale...
...As a 50-year old worker put it, "We are out here to save our union...
...The following articles represent an attempt to examine the history of U.S...
...Hoffa readily rolled in to take his place as president in September 1957...
...Not only was he able to assure his friends in the United States that Puerto Rican elite sectors were not anti-American...
...Strate out...
...Yet while these strike actions succeeded in organizing unions in the rural areas, these unions were neither deeply rooted nor experienced enough to withstand the heavy repression or to maintain themselves after the strikes had failed...
...Statistical Analysis Branch, National Labor Relations Board Divison of Administration, The United States National Labor Relations Board Election Returns (Washington, D.C.: General Printing Office), 1974...
...job market...
...El Mundo, in particular, launched an extensive, red-baiting campaign that was sponsored by the Association in Defense of Free Enterprise...
...Ibid., Vol III, No...
...In essence, business unionism provides a mediating force between labor and capital, a force that ultimately responds to capital and furnishes the discipline over labor so necessary to capital accumulation...
...The original strategy used by the PPD against the CGT, to coopt those receptive and to isolate those who were not by placing of CGT leaders in the government bureaucracy and PPD leaders in the union structure, tried to rid the Federation's objectives of their political content...
...federal laws apply to the island at the discretion of the U.S...
...in Pserto Rico you can make good profirs-and keep there...
...III MARRIAGE ON ROCKS 1. Journal of Commerce...
...To a large extent this was due to the fact that a great number of fish and cannery plants abandoned California at this time for Puerto Rico and other low wage areas...
...s J L~.6 U.S...
...Between 1950 and 1955, for example, employment in the corset and brassiere industry of Puerto Rico rose by 560 per cent...
...Whatever your requirements -power, services...
...But the MOU's creation and current role in the labor movement is very characteristic of the radicalization process occuring in the trade union movement in the 1970's and therefore deserves further discussion...
...36 The striking cement workers were always clear on the importance of the conflict at Ponce Cement...
...WHY SHOULD TRUCK DRIVERS AND BOTTLE WASHERS BE ALLOWED TO MAKE BIG DECISIONS AFFECTING UNION POLICY...
...They stopped far short, however, of demanding wage parity for Puerto Rican workers...
...Besides seriously straining the strikers, who were living on $10 a week in strike funds, the long delay jeopardized the votes of many workers because of a legal technality involving the votes of workers who had been out of work for a certain number of months...
...Few unions can match the Seafarers International Union (SIU) in this respect...
...Chavez reported: It is all too clear that the government here has ordered the police to take sides in our labor disputes and has employed SIU scabs to assist them...
...From the time of its formation, the Regional Federation was seen as an immediate threat by the Puerto Rican landowners and their political representatives...
...All personnel decisions were divorced from the collective bargaining process and placed in the hands of a newly created Central Office of Personnel Administration headed by an appointee of the Governor...
...But such legitimate tactics as the "whip saw" technique (selective strikes against an anti-union employer), secondary boycotts and the refusal to transport "hot" cargos (i.e., cargos of companies producing with scab labor), were often employed for the personal benefit of the union leadership...
...it remained a confederation in which the local unions had a large degree of autonomy...
...Only three unions in the coalition have more than 4,000 members and 70% have less than 1,000 workers...
...II At the opening of a new Puerto Rican sweatshop in 1950, Governor Mufioz Marin's wife gushed on about the significance of Bootstrap...
...Angel M. Agosto, "Trazando los nuevos rumbos de la clase obrera," Ediciones El Proletario, No...
...Part I of this Report covers the period from the time of the U.S...
...With Hoffa at the wheel, the IBT became even more centralized than it was under Beck, by-passing the area conference heads and locating all power in either Hoffa's own hands or in those of his loyal lieutenants...
...Workers in New York City and other garment centers in the United States began to fear for their livelihood...
...In other words, the very capitalists whose incessant drive is to increase profits at the expense of the working class would be allowed to determine whether higher wages would induce them to close up shop on the island...
...THE DEFENSE OF PROFIT ISLAND In numerous glossy advertisements such as the recent 20-page brochure, "Puerto Rico: Profit Island, USA," the colonial government paints Puerto Rico's workers as docile cogs in the great profit machine...
...U.S...
...This was an increase of 36 percent, while the growth rate for the entire labor movement in the same period was only 12 percent...
...2 6 While the MOU is a labor coalition and not a political party, its actions obviously have a political impact in Puerto Rico...
...Claridad...
...3. Jose Ferrer y Ferrer, Los Ideales del Sigio XX (San Juan: Tipografia La Correspondencia, 1932...
...This did in fact prove to be true in the short run, for the rupture created between the economic structure and the social and political superstructure did allow the working class some social victories...
...The MOU's program stresses the importance of resolving inter-union conflicts, heightening the consciousness of the working class and organizing the unorganized...
...Far from seeing the Unionists as a threat to U.S...
...After all, the Teamster philosophy maintains that: "It is of benefit to nobody to perform a hysterectomy on the goose that lays the golden egg...
...cit., p. 139...
...p. 53, and George Sullivan, "Rank and File Upsurge in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters," Liberation, Vol...
...I a. Interview with Pedro Grant, Puerto Rico, December, 1975...
...The weakness of the U.S...
...This was Iglesias' second trip to New York that year...
...Part II of the Report examines the period of Puerto Rico's early industrialization and the institutionalization of Operation Bootstrap through the 1960's...
...The U.S...
...This time Iglesias met with members of the American Federation of Labor who advised him to seek AFL endorsement for immediate reforms on the island...
...This unbalanced ethnic representation is just as pronounced on the mainland, where 85 per cent of the union's members are women, mostly black and Puerto Rican, but the leadership is overwhelmingly white and male...
...I9 The Populist Alternative While the CGT was seeking to redefine the parameters of class struggle in Puerto Rico, a new political leadership in government was defining the struggle as one which incorporated all disaffected sectors, regardless of class...
...Without an abundant supply of cheap labor,10 Operation Bootstrap would remain a capitalist's dream and nothing more...
...The SIU's tangle with the Teamsters highlights one of the most characteristic elements of the Internationals' operations in Puerto Rico in the late 1950's and 1960's: inter-union conflicts and rivalry...
...4. Banco Popular, Progress in Puerto Rico, Vol...
...When it was all over, the Teamsters had turned the tables on the SIU, winning a 103-84 victory...
...9 (May 15, 1975) and No...
...For the AFL and the U.S...
...n Puertoi "Re...
...The garment industry in New York City was among the hardest hit by the exodus of U.S...
...Based in the artesan sector, the FLT had been unable to provide leadership for the rural proletariat on the large U.S...
...As Beck explained, "If an employer agrees that his men are ill paid and work too long hours, but tells us conditions are such that he will be ruined if he betters their conditions, what should we do...
...government...
...2 Thus the Teamsters were left to go it alone...
...Such charges have been brought against the Central Unica de Trabajadores del Estado (CUTE, Central Union of State Workers) and the Frente Unido de Trabajadores (FUT, United Workers Front...
...In February 1974 a strike by teachers closed public schools for nearly three weeks...
...In fact, much of what is often perceived as militancy in the Teamster union is rather a mask for a combination of business "ethics," sell-out policies and gangsterism...
...International Teamster, July 1960...
...El Diario-La Prensa, July 10, 1973...
...Daily World, March 7, 1970...
...28 II...
...The AFL's original concern with Puerto Rican workers stemmed from its fear of the effects of cheap labor in the colony on the U.S...
...bourgeoisie...
...Other major shareholders in CODDETREISA include Theodore Kheel, long- time New York labor mediator, and Lane Kirkland, the AFL-CIO's Secretary-Treasurer...
...1 " Yet it was the bitter nine-month long strike at GE's Palmer plant in Rio Grande that shattered Bootstrap's sugarplum visions of "industrial peace...
...Thus to analyze the development of the relationship between the Puerto Rican labor movement and U.S...
...firms...
...While this relationship appeared favorable for the building of a strong trade union movement and socialist party, the links between the Puerto Rican and U.S...
...The union was organized along industrial lines, including not only drivers but mechanics and other salaried workers from the transport industry as well...
...The Puerto Rican labor movement did not realize, however, that this new legality was threatening to the local landowners precisely because it represented their approaching extinction at the hands of the U.S...
...Thus, on many occasions, U.S...
...Thus it is useful to examine its growth in some detail as well as describing the nature of the attack which it currently faces...
...You can retain thete pJits -coe...
...On the contrary, Beck's theory dictated that Big Labor and Big Business must combine forces to stabilize the industry and provide a larger share for each...
...industries from leaving the mainland clearly contradicted the major tenets of Operation Bootstrap...
...Thus after receiving the endorsement of the President of the United States, Santiago Iglesias returned to Puerto Rico to be arrested along with other leaders of the FLT...
...They tried to exacerbate the internal divisions within the independent union and in general propagandized against the strike...
...Organizing from above" thus became one of the distinguishing features of Teamster organizing drives...
...s The agricultural workers' dispersion throughout the countryside and the seasonal nature of their employment made organizing agricultural unions extremely difficult...
...These a not isolated eam...
...For two years, the island saw militant and often violent confrontations between agricultural workers and the repressive apparatus of the insular government...
...While we cannot enter into a full discussion of the economic crisis here, we can point out some of its elements which have become objective factors in the radicalization of the labor movement in the 1970's...
...What is more, these links were seen as a means for obtaining badly needed material assistance...
...The PPD seized all available means to prevent the UGT from getting in the way of this courtship...
...The fierce competition that arose between the IBT and the AFL-CIO, which led to the Teamster s'expulsion from the Federation in 1958 and had important ramifications in Puerto Rico, will be contrasted to the fundamental adherence by both to the tenets of business unionism...
...The trucking companies, suffering under inflated gasoline prices and the introduction of gas rationing, were particularly affected...
...And the wives of striking workers set up a support committee to raise funds to provide other services to the strikers...
...In 1905, drives by FLT militants in the countryside successfully led thousands of Puerto Rican workers out on strike...
...With Bootstrap industries paying no Commonwealth taxes, no exise or local taxes (not to mention federal tax on corporate profits), how did the colonial administrators raise tax revenues...
...Within this context, urban workers, mainly artesans, began to establish various "class" associations...
...13 At the same time, they further shifted the burden to workers, laying off employees in the public sector, freezing wages, raising prices and general exise taxes, and arguing for wholesale wage cuts and a reduction in workers' benefits...
...These obstacles rest on the ILGWU connections in the U.S...
...They thought that we would accept the agreement because we're tired of the strike," one worker commented, adding "we'll never go back to work unless the plant takes back our coworkers who were fired and we receive better working conditions and fair salaries...
...6 While one strike does not make a new workers movement the GE strike of 1969-70 was a symbolic turning point...
...It was nearly impossible to establish national norms or a wage-rate system which could accomodate local variations...
...In the midst of harsh anti-labor repression following a series of island-wide strikes in 1900, Santiago Iglesias, one of the FLT's most important leaders, left Puerto Rico for New York...
...43 The decisions of the Chief of Personnel would supercede any agreement reached through collective bargaining...
...But that struggle was only a build-up for the strike at El Imparcial, an important newspaper on the island...
...His presence at the Convention also cemented the relationship between the Unionist Party and the FLT to keep the FLT out of the sugar fields and safely within the fold of electoral politics...
...By pressing for equal pay for equal work, Beck's strategy also helped to force out the under-capitalized, marginal firms that had previously cut costs by cutting wages...
...Some of these tactics have been employed to win real victories for Teamster members...
...In December, 1958 both George Meany and Governor Muftoz Marin allegedly put the heat on Paul Hall and Keith Terpe, leaders of the SIU, to break the pact...
...They had also come to recognize that as their economic power declined, they could only hope to gain political power through alliances with other sectors...
...Reflecting the increased consciousness of Puerto Rican workers and the worsening economic situation, strikes on the island have multiplied many times over the level of the 1960's...
...Justice, July 15, 1955...
...The first decades of the twentieth century saw the creation of a workers' press, the production of workers' theater and literature that enriched the best radical traditions...
...In representational elections at the VCA plant in Caguas, for example, an examination of the ballots cast in the SIU's favor revealed the names of a number of dead workers, not to mention some who had lost their jobs months before the election...
...XVI, No...
...New York Times, October 25, 1959...
...You have to remove that union . . That's what happened with the OCAW...
...In 1963, ten out of the eleven affected industries, employing one third of the island's entire work force, were partially or totally exempted from the legislated wage increases...
...minimum wage laws to Puerto Rico...
...In 1968 the Teamsters had been voted in to represent the workers at the ITT-owned company...
...In the eyes of investors and government authorities in Puerto Rico, the American Internationals were a far more likeable alternative than the CGT of the early forties...
...On an island with high unemployment, such threats are devastatingly effective...
...The day following his appointment, Iglesias was introduced to President Roosevelt, who took it upon himself to send a letter to the U.S...
...In June, many unions voted to increase their concrete support of the strikers...
...corporate interests...
...The U.S...
...The well-being of every worker, this propaganda assured, was tied to the profitability of business on the island-and the latter was inexorably tied to low wages...
...A primarily agricultural island in 1930, Puerto Rico is now a highly industrialized region with virtually no space left to grow food for its own population...
...The Teamsters' leader in Puerto Rico was a man named Frank Chavez, a Mexican-American from Los Angeles who had been groomed by Hoffa for a big future in the union...
...The government called upon the pro-government wing of the CGT to break UGT strikes, while red-baiting and the harrassment of communists and political dissidents became common...
...Congress, American and Puerto Rican labor alike were ready to do battle against the efforts of business and government to block the extension of these laws to Puerto Rico...
...2 Yet while Puerto Rican agricultural workers were recognizing not only the degree but also the basis of their exploitation in the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States, the FLT was signing peace pacts with the Sugar Producers Association and the Socialist Party was maintaining a pro-U.S...
...All directions must come from the national office...
...Thus, for example, by defining a government agency (such as shipping or the telephone company) as a public agency and not an "agency of the government which functions as a private business," workers in that firm would lose their rights to organize freely and would be subject to the organizing procedures established under the Helfeld Bill...
...P.S.P., "Inventario de uniones principales de Puerto Rico," 1975...
...We are doing this for the people," she said, referring to the opening of the new Beacon Textiles plant...
...Ibid., May 31, 1960...
...Puerto Rico Libre!, Vol...
...can eam higher profit...
...Prominent among these methods are the application of the Taft-Hartley Law and National Labor Relations Board rulings, and the employment of collaborationist unions to help raid and smash militant trade unions...
...The other significant strike occurred at the Telephone Company in May 1975...
...The Teamsters had lost a round, but, by flexing their muscles, had demonstrated how critical their claimed membership of 7,000 was to the entire economy...
...American Federation of Labor...
...The first was extensive and exceptionally corrupt union practices, and the second was massive and escalating jurisdictional disputes with both AFL and CIO affiliates...
...Basically, given the low level of unionization and the small size and number of plants on the island, the Internationals soon found that they could gain few adherents if they respected jurisdictional agreements signed in the United States...
...union leaders such as David Dubinsky (ILGWU) and Paul Hall (SIU) could be seen leaving the Governor's mansion at La Fortaleza to jointly announce the economic plans for the development of Puerto Rico.'s And in 1959, Paul Hall praised the Governor as "a man whom I think is the greatest man who has ever come out of the Latin American countries, a man who...
...I T a I L .a...
...9 ** Bankruptcy filings reached a record high in 1974...
...control over the island, however, Gompers participated in its founding convention, thus killing two birds with one stone...
...The union's determination to discourage U.S...
...But the NLRB has also broken new ground on the island...
...That struggle is even more important in Puerto Rico, where the heads of the International unions are in the United States and even the leaders of many locals are appointed from headquarters in the United States...
...A. The NLRB: The Referee Sits in the Businessman's Corner Since its emergence from the 1946 Taft-Hartley Act (see above), the National Labor Relations Board has been noted for one thing, its consistency: it consistently emits rulings which suggest that the fight between labor and capital is only fair when labor has both hands tied behind its back...
...For example, the strikers have had the full support of the MOU and its member unions...
...NLRB...
...And in Seattle, Dave Beck began to build the Western Conference of Teamsters, becoming an ideologue of Teamster unionism in his own right...
...labor leaders negotiated these contracts with the parent firm on the mainland, and Puerto Rican workers had no choice but to join that union or look for work elsewhere...
...6. Ibid., October 15, 1976...
...At the same time, it had to sell the Bootstrap ideology of rapid growth and eventual prosperity for all to the Puerto Rican working class...
...Ideologically, it sees no contradiction between capitalists and workers...
...A. Personnel Law: The End of Collective Bargaining The "Personnel Law" was signed by Governor Rafael Hernandez Colon in October 1975 in spite of a one day protest strike by more than 80 percent of all public employees and a massive march to the Capitol building...
...2168) which would raise the minimum wage on the mainland from 75 cents to one dollar, and increase the island minimum by the same amount...
...The following years saw numerous outbursts of spontaneous labor activity, directed as much against the traditional representatives of the labor movement as against the bosses...
...In the former, this rift set the basis for the rise of a new and militant labor federation and, in the latter, left the field open to a Puerto Rican brand of the populism sweeping Latin America in the 1940's and '50's...
...2 When Fitzsimmons came to replace Hoffa officially and decisively in 1971, he was essentially a chip off the same block...
...You cannot take something out of a bucket if it is not first in the bucket...
...5. New York Times, February 15, 1976...
...They will come here to work...
...Michael Myerson, "The ILGWU: Fighting for Lower Wages," New England Free Press (Boston, Mass...
...III, No...
...Beck made $50,000, lived in a $162,000 house he sold to the union and then lived in free, and received unlimited travel expenses and full pay pension...
...The level of militant strikes began to increase in 1971 and 1972 with the conflicts at National Packing, New York Department Stores, the Telephone Company and the seven month strike at the U.S.-owned newspaper, El Mundo...
...The SIU began to grow under the aggressive leadership of Keith Terpe, head of their Puerto Rican affiliate, organizing the docks, fish and canning plants, restaurant and hotel workers and even truck drivers...
...Ibid., p. 10...
...Finally, a third reason points to the political leadership of the CGT...
...One of the AFL's first tactical moves within the "Americanization" strategy was the introduction of FLT leaders to U.S...
...Thus what basically concerned the AFL was not the serious organization of craft unions on the island but the maintenance of the working class within the capitalist system and within the pro-U.S...
...The workers faced a different reality, one in which unemployment never sank below 10 percent of the work force, in which exceptionally high prices (25 percent higher than in the expensive Eastern United States ' ) and low wages combined to force a third of the Puerto Rican people off their island and into the sweatshops and menial jobs of U.S...
...and competition that can devehoeernight -yaIhoild carefully consider the advantages Pueit...
...And, the MOU has been able to help some of its member unions negotiate good contracts with business...
...Only two years later, however, pressures from employers in Puerto Rico's needlework and tobacco industries, both laborintensive, bore fruit...
...The MOU is the latest in a long series of attempts to unify the Puerto Rican labor movement which go back to the beginning of the century...
...I 5 The Puerto Rican government continued to lobby for keeping wages down in Puerto Rico...
...We Deal in One Commodity-Labor" (Dave Beck) 10 Despite the cordial relationship between labor and capital inherent in Teamster ideology, there remained considerable anti-union sentiment among employers...
...Chavez was replaced by Luis Pagan who since that time has remained as head of the union in Puerto Rico...
...34 Eventually, the Teamsters were able to claim worker representation at seven of the island's largest hotels...
...The CGT saw the government bureaucracy not only as an obstacle to the absolute necessity of union democracy, but as an obstacle to its political task of struggling for radical economic change and against the domination of U.S...
...X, No...
...During the twentieth century and particularly after World War II, North American capitalism eroded the power of European capital and incorporated country after country into its political and economic domain...
...However, two other characteristics of the union were simultaneously unfolding, both of which contributed to the Teamsters' notoriety and reputation...
...Angel M. Agosto, "El movimiento obrero en la etapa actual," Nueva Lucha, No...
...the critical construction industry spun into a nose dive with a drastic decline in construction permits...
...Unemployment soared and per capita income fell sharply...
...The FLT's failure to provide lasting leadership for the rural work force led to the decline of the Federation...
...Gross domestic production has skyrocketed from $500 million in 1947 to nearly $8 billion in 1974...
...minimum wage standards on the island and the crushing of a militant labor movement, high profits are guaranteed through liberal tax incentives for businesses operating in Puerto Rico...
...6. Ibid., p. 68 7. Ibid., p. 67...
...In the ten year period from 1963-1972, the number of government employees increased on an average of 7.6% per year, higher than nearly any other sector...
...capital a "friend" in the "people's program" for development...
...In fact, in the late 1960's and 1970's, several significant, if neither stable nor revolutionary, rank-and-file movements have arisen that are beginning to crack the veneer of the one big happy, militant brotherhood the Teamsters have fairly successfully managed to project over the years...
...While the Federation was limited to urban artesans who constituted a tiny minority compared to the masses of agricultural workers, it provided the basis for the first serious attempts to organize trade unions on the island...
...But opposition to Hoffa was rolling along as well, and after Hoffa's uncooperative appearance before the McClellan Committee, Meany and the AFL-CIO had the ammunition they needed...
...cit., p. 33...
...The 500 workers at the Puerto Rican Cement Company in Ponce have spent more than a year in their "strike school," a year filled with notable advances in terms of the growing solidarity between unions and the pro-independence movement, and more than a few disappointments and hardships...
...New York Times, May 29, 1964...
...Studs Terkel, op...
...Daily World...
...II TYING THE KNOT 1. A.G...
...Claridad, December 16, 1974...
...Essentially, it appears that the Teamsters have tried to ride the fence, evolving a role of being all things to all people...
...The first was demonstrated by the words of Juan Saez Corales, General Secretary of the CGT, when he said: "We Puerto Ricans cannot speak of economic emancipation without working to obtain our political liberty at the same time...
...The Teamsters urgently needed to increase their membership...
...cit., p. 27...
...Organized labor in the present period finds its organizational and ideological base not in the practice of its militant predecessors, but in the trade union policy first articulated by Gompers and the AFL, in other words, in the tenets of business unionism...
...Thus, to lower wages overall, first lower public sector wages...
...In that year, the U.S...
...Yet an analysis of the actual content of Teamster unionism can begin to explain why the IBT can appear to be progressive in one moment and reactionary in the next...
...For example, prior to the AFL-CIO merger in 1955, many of the AFL's conflicts with the CIO were reflected in Puerto Rico...
...9 The U.S...
...and, P.S.P., "La politica obrera y sindical del PSP," Chispa, Edici6n Especial (September 1973)1, 21...
...4 The ILGWU had to resort to more indirect measures to discourage the runaways...
...Miami Herald, February 10, 1975...
...A niche was being carved out for them and their reputation as a militant, hard-hitting union proved to be no disadvantage...
...The SIU's decision to form a parallel union, recruiting strike breakers from the massive reserve army of the unemployed in and around Ponce convinced Ferr6 that he could still smash the union...
...The law's basic aim was to centralize decision making power over public employees outside of the unions...
...It not only accepts but actively supports the "free enterprise system," positing a one-to-one correspondence between the health of capitalism and the benefits for labor...
...Thus, the colonial government hawked its wares-tax breaks, easy credit and other enticing incentives-to potential investors...
...Interview with Pedro Grant...
...But the contract was very poorly administered, and an independent30 union, the Independent Union of Telephone Employees (UIET), began preparing to contest Teamster representation when the contract expired...
...While this was not the first journal published by the craft sector, it was the first to base itself in a socialist and internationalist conceptualization of the class struggle...
...Recent moves on the part of the government in Puerto Rico and the United States visibly demonstrate that they are gearing up for battle...
...But the FTPR, headed by Hip6lito Marcano, seemed to be more concerned with tying up a solid relationship between the Popular Democratic Party and labor than in untangling jurisdictional disputes among the Internationals...
...a ** Puerto Rico's real gross product fell by 3.5 percent for fiscal 1975, the second straight year of decline...
...All told, more than 320 factories had closed for lack of electricity...
...A common vehicle employed by Beck "in the name of efficiency" was the highly undemocratic use of trusteeships...
...Technicians from Bell Telephone were hired to replace the striking technicians who had been among the most militant workers at the phone company...
...Edwin Melendez, "El nuevo sindicalismo...
...The Private Sector: The Attack on Radical Unions While the offensive against public sector unions is fundamentally based on new legislative measures, the capitalist attack on radical unions in the private sector makes use of much older methods...
...Between 1969 and 1974, for example, the SIU participated in 59 union elections (including elections for unorganized workers and elections in already organized plants, or raids...
...And, once the workers answer these questions, they are faced with adopting a course of action in regard to those unions which do not represent their interests...
...That ally was the leadership of the American Federation of Labor, with its long history of collaboration with business and government, and its all-out struggle against progressive tendencies within the labor movement both at home and abroad...
...On the one hand, this sector and its political representatives were initially attracted by the "modernization" ideology of the United States...
...and furthermore, the local independent Puerto Rican unions often lack the trained personnel who are crucial to the management of contracts with the employers and who must be knowledgeable in NLRB methods, By 1949, what remained of the CGT was no longer a militant proponent of workers' rights and radical political change but was instead a decaying economist federation which answered more to the government than to Puerto Rican workers...
...cities where goods are loaded for Puerto Rico...
...And, while the trade unionists in the MOU support a variety of political positions from pro-statehood to proindependence, the latter position predominates...
...When the expulsion did come, it gave the union a kick in the pants and propelled them full force into Puerto Rico, among other places...
...This means," according to the Helfeld Report, "that for negotiating purposes, the collective bargaining unit be structured on the basis of similar or closely linked occupations and professions throughout the different agencies...
...Founded on socialist principles at the turn of the century, the ILGWU had long since shed any semblance of militancy by the time it entered Puerto Rico...
...S. New York Times, March 14, 1966...
...No case is so illu-22 strative of this point as that of the National Workers Union's (UNT) dispute with the NLRB...
...Typsetting by O.B.U...
...If passed, public employee unions would find themselves isolated from the rest of the trade union movement...
...Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the Ponce Cement strike of 1975-76...
...G-Ho.irvoCva cu .e...
...tnon o amx iecentioca, plentiful lat, and biaenle aensne that has led to remarkable profits in mnduary after indiuty-double the comparable profits out the main...
...Yen pr ,ro corpore er peseal san And A; Cen- enwelth law...
...Only by lessening the disparity between wage levels on the island and inside the United States could business be discouraged from fleeing its home base...
...It is only by recourse to U.S...
...The SIU's defense of its members' rights was amply demonstrated in 1971...
...By 1952, he was powerful enough to replace the aging Tobin as Teamster president...
...companies and the U.S...
...An examination of the particular development of the trucking industry, paralleling the growth of the IBT, can provide some insight into the roots of corruption and their growth in Puerto Rico...
...More specifically, the FLT sought a new ally within the metropolis, North American organized labor...
...Between 1970-74, however, the Puerto Rican unions won an average of two-thirds of the elections...
...The AFL counted itself among those concerned with colonial politics and in 1904 Samuel Gompers traveled to Puerto Rico to see if rumors about anti-U.S...
...It is also apparent that their leadership was repudiated by the phone workers themselves who, as recently as January 1976, reelected the independent union leadership...
...Claridad, April 12, 1976...
...By 1975, Puerto Rico had amassed a whopping public debt of $5.6 billion, which required nearly $200 million in debt service annually...
...3 Why was U.S...
...In January 1976, more than 50 trade unions met for the "Second Conference on the Economic Crisis and Trade Union Unity" in Puerto Rico, and many union members favor forming a trade union federation more comprehensive than the MOU...
...SLP had entered a stage of decline and was in no position to bargain with the dominant political institutions within the metropolis...
...In the meantime, it rid itself of the nuisance it had originally nourished, the CGT...
...However, harassment and arrests still continue, the company still has refused to negotiate and the workers still have no contract...
...In exchange for labor accepting realistic wage limits, the colonial government was eager and willing to actively collaborate with the AFL drive to establish a dominant position within the Puerto Rican labor movement...
...On the other hand, it laid the basis for increasing corruption within the leadership...
...Dave Beck gave birth to the famous "bucket theory" of working class prerogatives, or how to water down class antagonisms and tie workers' interests to those of the capitalists...
...Much of this article, therefore, will focus on the IBT's development within the United States, on its past and present practice, not as a definitive history but as a guide to evaluating the union's particular role in Puerto Rico...
...In March of 1940, the constituting assembly of the Confederacibn General de Trabaiadores (CGT) was held, attended by 112 delegates from 42 unions...
...And, although the government had extensive evidence, Chavez was eventually acquitted in December 1965...
...The ILGWU winks at these tricks and usually grants the new company a contract at the lower wage...
...You can never...
...Their success, however, was not primarily due to the Internationals' acknowledged expertise in the intricacies of union electioneering and collective bargaining procedures imported from the mainland...
...The Federal Party thus ran two FLT members on its slate and promised to push through pro-worker reforms...
...One of the most important features of the new workers movement is pre- cisely the emergence of a new generation of labor leaders who stress a militant defense of labor's rights, a more active participation in political struggles and a recognition of the need for internal union democracy...
...But government harassment was a constant factor in virtually every situation...
...To cite only one industrial example, the minimum wage in silk underwear had risen from 15 to 21 cents an hour between 1940 and 1955...
...unions by the rise of independent unions and federations, and by the increasing militance of the Puerto Rican working class as a whole...
...47-49...
...When the ILGWU signed its first contract in Puerto Rico, covering 3,000 workers in the brassiere and corset industries, Governor Mufioz Marin sent David Dubinsky his most effusive compliments: "It is an honor to honor," he said...
...Rather, a policy of cooperation between labor and management had become the union's hallmark, epitomized by the phrase, "Don't ask too much of business or it will go away and leave us with nothing...
...The Teamsters' Organizing Claims...
...it established a tone of worker militancy on the picket lines...
...III, No...
...As the strike began, the UTIER maintained its distance from any other organization...
...This was not a case of "yancophilia" on the part of the Puerto Rican working class...
...These interests joined with the AFL to block what they both saw as competition from low-cost production based on low wages in the colony...
...Consequently, the AFL-CIO set up a rival truckers union as a SIU affiliate...
...If workers demanded too much, they would be left jobless as business moved on to greener pastures...
...And, more than at any other time in Puerto Rico's history, growing sectors of this new union movement accept the tasks of the independence and socialist struggles as their own...
...1 Trouble Brewing Under Beck's tenure as president, the increasingly centralized union won many critical victories including a minimum wage rate for truckers and a 40-hour week in the local cartage industry...
...2 3 Still, the MOU itself is composed of both U.S.-based Internationals, such as the Meat Cutters and Boilermakers, and local independents, underlying the fact that the problem facing the Puerto Rican trade union movement is not one of simply replacing U.S.-based unions with Puerto Rican unions...
...Coming in contact with all sectors of the population, they became one of the most consistent vehicles of communication in areas ranging from political commentary to local gossip...
...By the 1930's, the FLT had almost completely lost its base within the Puerto Rican working class...
...Both organizations were new, both were under attack by the landholding class, and both saw the need for an outside impulse that would guarantee their effective development...
...Although the request was denied by the U.S...
...The Taft-Hartley Law also put labor disputes on the island under the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB...
...says Goveroar Hesiande -Colnn "The people o rhe Common...
...3 3 Despite the attack, the picket line held...
...bourgeoisie, as mediated by the colonial government of Puerto Rico, must be central to any analysis...
...In the Association'q fifth congress, the union leadership took on the task of analyzing the recent history of the Puerto Rican labor movement to pave the way for the formation of a new federation...
...Most unions in the MOU coalition, however, are fairly small...
...Rice elern...
...The 1930's, however, did not present propitious conditions for a successful organizing drive in Puerto Rico...
...His ties to organized crime were complemented by Hoffa's willingness to invest union money in anti-union companies, to retain union officers who were convicted of either price-fixing or bribe-taking, to advise employers on how to handle "labor problems," and even to set up his own trucking company under his wife's maiden name...
...In the same year, all unions remaining in the CGT were affiliated with the United Packinghouse Workers, a CIO union...
...While the Regional Federation remained under the ideological tutelage of the Puerto Rican Republican Party, FLT workers formed the Puerto Rican Socialist Labor Party as the inde endent political instrument of the Puerto Rican worker...
...colonial rule...
...In the first two decades of the twentieth century, trucking primarily consisted of intracity deliveries and pick-ups, and wages and rates were correspondingly determined by local conditions...
...Ibid...
...Nearly 35 percent of all public workers are in unions...
...The winning of this contract was not due to extensive organizing efforts, but to a settlement reached directly with the employers through simultaneous negotiations with the parent offices in New York and their subsidiaries in Puerto Rico...
...As labor-intensive industries abandoned the island, they were replaced by more capital-intensive industries such as petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals...
...IBT affair...
...executive and the AFL reacted immediately to Iglesias' arrest...
...Workers have little if anything to say about what goes in these settlements...
Vol. 10 • May 1976 • No. 5
