Peru strikers face troops
Armored vehicles took up positions in Peru’s capital, Lima, after the government declared a 30-day state of emergency across the country to contain a wave of strikes and protests.

Announcing the state of emergency on the night of May 27, President Alejandro Toledo said he was taking action to protect the public’s fundamental right to lead a normal life.

The protesters, who include teachers, health workers, and farmers, say they will not be deterred from pressing their demands for higher pay and lower taxes.

Troops re-opened roads across Peru that had been blocked by protesters, some using rocks and burning tires.

The state of emergency suspends civil liberties and gives police the authority to detain protesters and enter private residences to round up suspected leaders without warrants.

Freedom of movement and rights to assembly are also prohibited.

This is the second time Toledo has resorted to emergency powers.

Last June he imposed a state of emergency in parts of the country after at least one protester was killed and several hundred injured during street protests at government plans to privatize two regional electricity firms. (BBC)

Rumsfeld labor proposal draws fire
A proposal to overhaul the Pentagon’s civilian work force is drawing fire from both parties on Capitol Hill.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is pushing Congress to include a far-reaching plan he unveiled a month ago to build a new personnel structure for the roughly 700,000 civilian workers at the Pentagon.

The proposal would divorce Defense Department workers from the civil service statutes that have protected federal employees for decades, giving Rumsfeld and future defense secretaries wide latitude on hiring, firing, pay, promotion and labor disputes.

That flexibility, Rumsfeld says, is critical to building a more innovative, agile civilian work force. Doing so “is nothing less than a national security requirement, because it goes straight to how well we will be able to defend our country in the years to come,” Rumsfeld told the House Government Reform Committee this year.

Democrats and federal employee unions vehemently oppose the plan, which they say strips federal employees of important labor rights and threatens to set a dangerous precedent that could allow politics to creep into personnel decisions at all government agencies, leaving workers unprotected.

Bitterly recalling last year’s debate over labor protections at the new Homeland Security Department, Democrats paint the Pentagon reforms as part of a pattern by the Bush administration to roll back federal worker protections and justify it on the grounds of national security.

The changes in question would free the Pentagon from a number of civil service rules, allowing the secretary of defense to write entirely new personnel regulations without involvement by the Office of Personnel Management, the agency that oversees the federal work force.

Traditional salary scales for federal employees would be scrapped in favor of a performance-based pay system, and hiring and firing would be accomplished more quickly and with less red tape. Labor disputes would be decided by the agency after a consultation process with employees and Congress.

The Defense Department is the second-largest federal employer of civilian workers in the nation after the Postal Service. (Baltimore Sun)

Canadian teacher lockout continues
Classes remained cancelled for thousands of Toronto students May 26 as a lockout of the city’s 3,700 Catholic elementary school teachers continued.

The teachers have been without a contract since August. They were locked out May 16 after launching a work-to-rule campaign that saw them withdrawing from all extra-curricular activities.

The night before, the Toronto Catholic District School Board rejected a contract offer presented by the teachers.

The Toronto Elementary Catholic Teachers Association has said it wants a 10-per-cent raise over two years, while the board has offered 6.5 per cent.

The week before, the Ontario government introduced back-to-work legislation that would end the lockout. The new law will likely soon be passed. (CBC)

War declared on mega salaries
Austrialian unions will wage a three-pronged assault on executive pay in the wake of research shattering the link between gold-plated remuneration and company performance.

The Labor Council of NSW will press for legislative change, greater activity by super fund trustees, and grass-roots industrial campaigns to end the explosion in CEO pay which has jumped to 74 times the average weekly wage.

The research, conducted by a team of academics commissioned by the Labor Council, found that the often-stated link between high executive pay and company performance does not exist.

They found that executive pay levels had exploded and CEOs earn 188 times the salary of customer service staff.

In the report, the authors identify a range of reforms to address the pay blowout and increase accountability, including:

• Government use of purchasing policy to encourage firms with moderate executive packages..

• Restricting the use and abuse of share options by means of a specified cap on the ratio of executive options to the company’s total share issue and via the imposition of a minimum vesting period of three years.

• And, introduction of more stringent disclosure requirements, requiring formal shareholder approval for all executive salary decisions. (Workers Online)

Brazilian landowners convicted for 1985 murder
A Brazilian court on May 23 convicted two landowners in the rural northeast of ordering the murder of a prominent union leader 18 years ago.

The verdict was a rare conviction in the hundreds of cases of peasants or workers being killed in rural disputes in a country where land ownership is concentrated in the hands of a small minority.

Ranchers Vantuir de Paula and Adilson Laranjeiras were each sentenced to 19 years in prison for ordering the murder of union boss Joao Canuto de Oliveira, a proponent of land reform in the poor, northeastern state of Para.

The case had drawn attention from international human rights groups, who sent representatives to the trial, and was closely watched by Brazil’s Landless Peasants Movement, known as the MST.

More than 700 farm workers have been killed over the past 30 years in land disputes in Para alone, according to the Pastoral Land Commission, a local rights group. The death toll so far this year is already 13. (Reuters)

Slovak unions block borders over social measures
Slovak trade unions blocked 13 border crossing points on May 23 in a four-hour protest against what they saw as oppressive anti-social measures by Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda’s rightist government.

That morning, the unions began a blockade of thirteen border crossings to Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Border crossings with the Ukraine were not affected. Protesters used ropes, chains, and roadblocks and carried signs. Shortly before the beginning of the blockade, the leader of the Trade Unions Confederation addressed the activists. He said that the protest is just the beginning and a warning for the government which failed to meet their demands, such as a minimum wage increase, a rise in all social benefits, and children’s allowances to match the inflation rate.

Television footage showed hundreds of union supporters waving anti-government banners at several crossings, causing short queues of cars at the start of the protest.

Cost-cutting and other measures taken by Dzurinda’s reformist cabinet to prepare the country for EU membership next year have led to rising social tension, particularly among workers, the elderly, and others who feel their needs have been neglected since the fall of communism. (Reuters, RSI)

General strike ‘cost India $320m’
May 21’s general strike in India cost the country’s economy 15bn rupees ($320mil) in terms of lost production, the Press Trust of India has reported trade unions as saying.

“We might go for longer strikes if our demands are not met,” said Centre for Indian Trade Unions general secretary MK Pandhe.

“But for that we [the trade unions] will have to sit together to make enough preparations since any hasty decision could derail the country’s economy.”

Up to 50 million workers in India went on strike for one day in protest at government plans to privatise state-owned businesses.

The one-day stoppage severely affected the banking, transport, insurance, and mining sectors, and brought Calcutta to a virtual standstill as protesters marched through the streets.

The government’s privatisation plans aim to raise 132 billion rupees ($2.75bn) by selling off state-run companies in the year ending March 2004.

But protesters claim this is leading to huge job losses. They are also angry at plans to allow state-run companies to fire workers and reduce deposit rates for pension funds. (BBC)

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