Workplace Blog

Washington Post: In Mexico’s ‘Misery Belt,’ an Annual Strike Becomes Much More

OAXACA DE JUAREZ, Mexico — Gonzalo Toledo Cruz tries to teach math in a dark, sweltering classroom that has no electricity. During morning flag-raising ceremonies, he said, some of his students pass out from lack of nutrition, “like trees dropping in a forest.” Others saunter into class with loaded pistols.

Toledo Cruz’s classroom in Juchitan de Zaragoza, a small, rugged town in what is known as “the Misery Belt” east of Oaxaca de Juarez, has become his private hell. But he knows that to curry favor with his bosses and get the transfer he so desperately wants, he must make a big show of union support.

So each May, Toledo Cruz joins nearly 70,000 teachers, administrators, school doctors, food-service workers and janitors in this picturesque colonial city. Their gathering — now in its 26th year — has become one of Mexico’s longest-running serial protests and a forum for complaints about low wages, poorly equipped schools and unfair treatment of indigenous peoples.

Most years, the school workers peacefully chant and march for a week or two, win some minor concessions and pack up. But this year, the protest has turned into a tense, occasionally bloody standoff that has scared off tourists and is now stretching into its third month, with no end in sight.

The stalemate illustrates the remarkable reach and influence of unions in Mexico, where workers’ organizations play a huge role in defining the political and social lives of their members. None is more powerful than the teachers union, which has 1.3 million members nationwide and is the largest union in Latin America.

The York Dispatch: Teachers might call for strike

The York City School District’s teachers union is contemplating calling a strike because of a disagreement over when teachers will receive their last paychecks for the 2005-2006 school year.

Montgomery Newspapers: Law would end teachers’ strikes

Pennsylvania teachers will no longer be able to go on strike if new legislation passes. The bill would prohibit public school teacher strikes and extend the arbitration process.

“The process we have right now allows for teacher strikes at the end of a bargaining process … which puts kids on the street,” said Rep. David Steil, R-31, who sponsored the bill. The bill was in response to the 21-day strike in the Pennsbury School District last fall. Parents were very upset, Steil said, and many signed up to be actively involved in working to ban school strikes.

Parents formed a group called Keep Students First and created the bill with the goal of eliminating school strikes. Steil introduced it in the General Assembly.

The bill would prohibit school employees from going on strike, in favor of an extended arbitration process that could end with binding arbitration. In arbitration, a third party attempts to resolve disputes between the school board and the teachers’ union. In binding arbitration the decision is official, while in the current nonbinding arbitration, either side can reject the ruling.

Both the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and the Pennsylvania State Education Association, which represents the interests of teachers’ unions, oppose the bill. Both are against binding arbitration and banning teacher strikes.

Houston Chronicle: Oaxaca turmoil seen as warning to Mexico

For more than two months, leftist protesters have laid siege to the heart of Oaxaca, among the hemisphere’s prettier old cities and one of this country’s premier tourist destinations.

The militants have pitched tents and plastic tarps across the once-charming central plaza and in the breezeways of its adjoining colonial buildings. They’ve hung photos of Marx, Lenin and Stalin, built makeshift barricades on the streets leading into the square and spray-painted promises of rebellion on walls and windows throughout downtown.

“Long live the popular struggle!” one sign growls.

Initial demands of a moderate salary bump for Oaxaca’s teachers have been replaced by calls for the state governor’s resignation and sweeping economic and social changes in Mexico. Protesters have hitched their movement to the dispute over Mexico’s July 2 presidential elections, which many leftists consider fraudulent.