Striking farmers demand emergency measures in Peru

Farmers holding vegetables protest in front of the government palace in Lima, on May 22, 2001.

By Abraham Lama

Lima, Peru, May 22 (IPS)— Peasant farmers in Peru launched a nationwide strike Tuesday, demanding greater access to credits and more measures to protect agricultural products, and protesting government moves to privatize water distribution systems for crop irrigation.

The strike spilled beyond the peaceful limits promised by organizers, with roadblocks erected at several points throughout the country erupting into clashes with the police.

The peasant farmers assert that “the agrarian crisis cannot wait’’ until July 28. That is the day either Alan García or Alejendro Toledo will take office as president, depending on the result of the run-off vote June 3.

"We engaged in eight agrarian strikes against the authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), because it abandoned agriculture and because its policies forced farmers to subsidize urban consumers,’’ stated Julio Cantalicio, president of the National Agrarian Confederation (CNA).

"We do not expect the provisional government of Valentín Paniagua to adopt decisions for the long or middle term, but it must resolve the immediate problems,’’ he said.

Pedro Morales, media spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture, responded that “the peasant organizations are trying to take advantage of the current electoral climate to force President Paniagua into taking measures that compromise the next government.’’

Rural leaders reported Tuesday that there are”1.7 million producers associated with grassroots organizations’’ taking part in the strike, though there are still no official reports on the number of protesters who have gathered in Peru’s larger cities and at the numerous roadblocks.

In Huancayo, a city of the central sierra, a protesters’ roadblock meant the members of the National Elections Panel had to travel by helicopter to the Jauja airport to catch their flight back to Lima.

Coca producers in San Martín, in the central northern jungle, farmers in the coastal zones of Casma and Trujillo, and in Arequipa, in the southern sierra, also set up roadblocks and burned tires.

The strike -- which organizers say will last indefinitely -- had been announced last March as a protest of farmers in the department of Lima against Paniagua’s decree to give the state-run water and sewerage service, Sedapal, authority to set prices and collect payment for water from the Rimac River used in irrigating farmland.

The agrarian leaders from the Rimac River area see the move as the last step before privatizing the system, which currently operates as common property controlled by farmer councils.

Sedapal is among the public enterprises that the government is considering transferring to the private sector.

Following the original call for protest, other labor and agrarian groups added their demands, complicating the negotiations begun with Agriculture Minister Carlos Amat y León.

Reynaldo Trinidad, editor of ‘Agro Noticias’ magazine, accuses the government official of ‘’favoring importers with a policy that is detrimental to the producers of rice, sugar, maize, dairy products, and meats.’’

Trinidad also points out that Amat y León did not enact the agreement reached in January between Paniagua and farmers, which establishes that Peru’s armed forces, prisons and public hospitals would be supplied exclusively with domestically produced foods.

The CNA is demanding the finalization of the process to grant titles to the lands handed over to peasant farmers as part of the agrarian reforms initiated in 1969 by the leftist military government of Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado.

CNA president Cantalicio maintains that ‘’former landowners affected by the agrarian reform, or their descendants, are preparing a legal offensive to reverse the distribution of those lands,’’ and he exhorts the government to resolve the situation by granting immediate and definitive ownership titles.

The CNA, the Livestock Society and the Association of Dairy Producers are also calling for a ‘’financial rescue program’’ to help peasant farmers who cannot make payments on their bank loans.

On May 18, negotiations between the Association of Banks and CNA leaders ended in failure. The talks were intended to halt the repossession of machinery or foreclosure on lands belonging to farmers who have defaulted on loans.

"The previous government (of Fujimori) and the current administration have done nothing to help the 5,380 peasant farmers who have been unable to pay their debts to the banks, institutions that have already put some lands up for auction. Fortunately, no investor has been willing -- so far -- to try to buy them,’’ Cantalicio said.

The associations of rice and cotton growers have thrown their support behind the strike, adding their demands for tariff protections “against the import of these crops at ‘dumping’ prices,” referring to goods from abroad sold at less than cost.

“The Paniagua government is upholding the dreadful policy of its predecessor, the fugitive Fujimori (removed from office last November by Congress), who opened our national market to unrestricted imports and at ‘dumping’ prices,’’ asserts Jaime Rendón, a rice farmer from the Camaná Valley, on Peru’s southern coast.

César Aza, head of a produce wholesaler enterprise, said Tuesday on a local radio station that the beginning of the strike had not caused any immediate price hikes on agricultural products.

But he warned that “if the highway blockades are maintained for even a few more days, the prices will skyrocket because of the disparity between supply and demand.’’

NLR Board ruling favors Wal-Mart

By Chuck Bartels

Little Rock, Arkansas, May 24— A federal labor panel on Tuesday dismissed a union complaint that would have ensured access by union organizers to workers inside Wal-Mart stores.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union accused Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of an unfair labor practice when the company sought to keep union organizers out of its Supercenter stores during an organizing effort in 1999.

The union and the company went back and forth in court, with Wal-Mart winning a temporary restraining order to bar union organizers. The order was lifted by a chancellor last year and the matter went before the National Labor Relations Board, which Tuesday ruled in favor of the world’s largest retailer.

Further, Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., introduced a bill to amend the National Labor Relations Act so it would allow charities inside retail stores while not allowing equal access to non-charitable groups, including union organizers.

Union spokesman Greg Denier was at a UFCW event in Las Vegas and did not immediately return a message forwarded to him by the union’s Washington office.

The union had argued that charitable groups are allowed to solicit inside Wal-Mart and other stores and that union organizers should have equal access. Wal-Mart denied the groups were allowed inside the stores, though the groups -- such as the Salvation Army and the Girl Scouts -- were allowed on company property.

“We have a charitable program that we are proud of and one that is consistently applied among all groups,” Wal-Mart spokesman Jay Allen said. “Clearly the NLRB agrees.”

Allen said the company wants to be able to invite charities inside in bad weather, particularly during the holidays, and that Hutchinson’s bill would make the practice legal within NLRB regulations.

“It doesn’t make sense to classify charitable giving and union activity as one and the same thing,” Allen said.

In September 1999, the UFCW went to about 300 Supercenters across the United States. The union accused Wal-Mart of improperly trying to deny organizers access to workers. Wal-Mart claimed organizers were trespassing, harassing workers and violating meat safety procedures by going into meat departments.

Hutchinson’s office said the legislation introduced Tuesday would draw a clear line between union activity and solicitations by charities.

“If a retailer wants to allow charities to raise money on their premises, they must also give unions access to the premises for the purpose of organizing and coordinating unfair labor practice charges,” said Hutchinson spokesman D.J. O’Brien.

Source: Associated Press

Living wage ordinance passed in Santa Monica

By Barbara Whitaker

Santa Monica, California, May 25— To Celia Talavera, a housekeeper at an oceanfront hotel here, the passage of an ordinance raising the minimum wage to $10.50 in coastal sections of the city means the chance to save a little money to send her children to college.

But Jeremiah Zinger, an actor working the lunch shift at Ocean Avenue Seafood, says the ordinance could cost him his day job because the restaurant’s general manager is considering closing for lunch rather than paying the higher wage.

On Wednesday, the Santa Monica City Council passed one of the country’s most extensive “living wage” laws, requiring that businesses with annual gross revenues of $5 million or more in the city’s coastal and downtown tourism areas pay workers at least $10.50 an hour beginning in July 2002. (The state minimum wage is $6.25 and is to increase to $6.75 in January 2002.)

Advocates of the ordinance contend that hotels and restaurants along Santa Monica’s two-mile coastline and adjacent business districts have benefited from public-improvement projects but failed to share the wealth with service workers.

The ordinance also requires that workers receive an additional $1.75 an hour for health insurance the first year, increasing to $2.50 in July 2003. Part of the law, which protects workers from retaliation by employers, could go into effect this summer. About 40 businesses will be affected.

Although about 50 cities have passed living wage ordinances, until now the laws have been applied only to city contractors, companies leasing city land or those receiving economic development money.

“This is the first ordinance that covers a zone that has nothing to do directly with the city property or money,” said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, an advocate for the working poor. “It’s one of the biggest victories the living wage movement has ever had.”

But legal challenges, led by the hotel industry, are expected. Tom Larmore, a lawyer who heads the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce Living Wage Committee, said opponents of the ordinance would most likely argue that the law denies equal protection to businesses.

“Here you have businesses who are on different sides of the street operating under different rules,” Mr. Larmore said.

At hearings on the ordinance, some business owners said they would have to lay off workers and feared losing employees to businesses paying the higher wages.

“Smaller businesses are very concerned they’ll have to match these salaries or start losing their better employees,” Mr. Larmore said.

But Joseph Lawrence, assistant city attorney, said city officials believed the law would be upheld.

Ms. Janis-Aparicio said the ordinance provided another way to raise wages in a city where union-organizing drives among service employees have failed. She estimated that about 2,000 families would benefit.

Many of those who stand to gain under the new ordinance are new immigrants and longtime Latino residents who take buses from outlying areas to work in the hotels in Santa Monica, whose expansive beaches, pier and high-end shops and restaurants make it a premier tourist destination in the Los Angeles area.

Ms. Talavera, who has fought for unionization and the living wage bill, rides a bus two hours each way to get to and from her job at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. She makes $9.88 an hour and cleans 14 rooms in her eight-hour workday.

Though a raise to $10.50 an hour might not be much, Ms. Talavera, 42 and a mother of four, said at least it would provide a small amount for savings, it was guaranteed, and it included money for benefits.

“I am fighting for a living wage because I want to work there for a long time,” she said. Source: New York Times

Turkish police seize protesters

Ankara, Turkey, May 26-- Thousands of public sector workers are descending on Turkey’s capital despite television footage showing hundreds of their colleagues being dragged away by police into buses.

CNN Turk television showed footage of Public Sector Workers Union (KESK) members taking part in a sit-down protest in Ankara’s main square before riot police bundled them on to the vehicles on Saturday.

Witnesses said hundreds of police were involved in the action in Kizilay Square, including some police on horseback.

The workers, who police say had gathered illegally, were demonstrating against a proposed law which they say will limit their rights to join unions and take future industrial action.

Police had set up roadblocks on the main roads into Ankara early on Saturday, denying entry to the estimated 3,000 people taking part in the initial wave of demonstrations, the Associated Press said.

Ankara police headquarters said about 500 people had been detained after they resisted efforts at being turned back, AP added.

But later Ankara authorities ruled the demonstration, which was gathering momentum with up to 10,000 workers arriving from around the country, could go ahead, the state-run Anatolian news agency said.

Busloads of workers were allowed to proceed towards the city center, but it was not clear whether those who had been detained were allowed to join them, AP said.

“The public workers who are marching to Ankara from all sides of the country are now marching to Kizilay despite the numerous detentions,” the teachers’ union Egitim-Sen, which is part of KESK, said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Public sector workers have been hit by the recent financial crisis which has left the lira currency 40 percent weaker.

An agreement between the government and workers earlier this week to halt a proposal to impose a pay freeze has left workers unhappy. They say it falls short of demands for pay rises to match inflation.

They are also angry at the harsh economic program requested by economy minister Kemal Dervis to secure a $15.7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as a result of the financial crash.