|
Ex-miners recover pensions with dynamite
By Franz Chávez
La Paz, Bolivia, Apr. 30 (IPS) — Former Bolivian miners,
excluded from the pension system that emerged during the Latin American
wave of privatizations, have won a meager monthly payment of 60 dollars
— but the price was one worker who blew himself up with dynamite
and the threat of three more to follow his example.
“What else can I do when my health is critical and I live in desperation?”
exclaimed former miner Julio Saravia Oporto, 55, one of the three who
on Saturday threatened to imitate Eustaquio Picachuri, who died Mar.
30 when he detonated a dynamite charge he had strapped to his body.
“It would be better to disappear,” Saravia Oporto told IPS,
sitting in his wheelchair and holding a letter written by the Union
Federation of Bolivian Mine Workers (FSTMB) demanding the restitution
of his disability pension.
The death of Picachuri in the entryway to the National Congress building
in La Paz, 30 yards from the presidential palace, triggered the demands
of 3,500 former mine workers who, despite having contributed to the
pension system during their careers, lost their right to the retirement
cheques with the 1997 reform that privatized the pension administration
and imposed the principle of “individual capitalization.”
Also killed in the Mar. 30 blast were Col. Marbel Flores, chief of congressional
security, and the police force’s explosives expert René
Amurrio. Ten more officers were injured.
Picachuri, 47, unemployed and feeling very desperate, according to those
who knew him, demanded the return of the contributions he had made to
the old pension system during 15 years of working in the mines.
Bolivia had long relied on revenues generated by its mining industry,
but the state-run mining enterprise, COMIBOL, shut its doors when international
metal prices plunged in the 1980s.
After being laid off from his mining job, Picachuri could not retire
because he was not yet 55, as required by the former pension system,
which was a common fund of contributions by laborers and employers.
His case reflects that of some 8,700 workers — 3,500 of them former
miners — who with the 1997 reform lost what they had paid into
the system and their right to a pension.
The first administration of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (who served
as president 1993-1997 and 2002-2003) set up a system based on individual
capitalization and introduced the participation of two private pension
funds (Futuro de Bolivia and Previsión BBVA) that collect and
manage the contributions.
Furthermore, the government hiked up the minimum retirement age from
55 to 65 for men, and from 50 to 60 for women.
Unlike the old system, which was based on a principle of solidarity
in distributing pensions from a common fund, the new system is based
on personal savings, and pays out pensions according to the contributions
made during each worker’s active career.
The same sort of reforms have been implemented in several Latin American
countries over the past 20 years, driven by the reduction of the state
apparatus and the privatizations of public entities and services.
Saturday, Saravia Oporto, former mine worker Francisco Franco, 54, and
the widow of another worker, Ana Bazagoitia, 58, said they would follow
Picachuri’s example at the offices of the FSTMB. They had dynamite
strapped to their bodies and were connected by a fuse.
Behind them was a giant portrait of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary
fighter Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who was killed by Bolivian
troops in 1967.
For 20 hours, the three sat calmly with the detonators in their hands.
The police set up a 100-metre perimeter around the union offices and
kept a prudent distance on the central Prado avenue.
With the dynamite in hand “we felt the power and we remembered
the strength of the miners who resisted the most ferocious dictatorships”
that Bolivia has endured, said an emotional Oporto Saravia in the conversation
with IPS.
A Communist Party activist in his youth, he worked as a laborer, an
assistant to the blast experts and was a union leader at the tin and
zinc mine at María Luisa, of COMIBOL, until 1982, when he was
involved in a car accident while organizing a worker mobilization to
protest the last dictatorship (1980-1982).
No longer able to walk, Saravia Oporto obtained a disability pension
worth 101 dollars a month in 1991, but in 2001 that cheque — his
only source of income — was halted without warning or explanation.
Since then, he has made the 500-km trip four times from his home in
Salinas de García Mendoza, in the western region bordering Chile,
to the capital to demand his pension. But those journeys have been in
vain.
Dynamite was an important tool for Saravia Oporto when he worked breaking
up the rock to search for ore, and it was also a weapon of resistance
against the military governments.
And now it has become a dramatic instrument for defending his labor
rights.
The protest came to an end with negotiations between unionists and the
government, which agreed to provide a lifetime monthly pension of 60
dollars to all former workers who could not retire under the old pension
system.
Picachuri’s death and the protest by Saravia Oporto and the others
ended up benefiting the 8,698 workers who fell through the cracks between
the two retirement systems - and who had become known as the “sandwich
generation.”
But Saravia Oporto will continue his fight for the restitution of his
disability pension.
Serafín Salvatierra, leader of the former miners left without
retirement cheques, says he believes the battle for obtaining this social
recognition is only at the halfway point.
An indignant Salvatierra told IPS that other groups, like military officers
or judges enjoy broad retirement privileges and big pension cheques.
Bolivian military officials are guaranteed a pension, and if they have
not made the necessary contributions, the state provides compensation,
Alberto Bonadona, an official from the national social security system,
said in a recent television interview.
Unlike other sectors, the military maintained its own social security
system, while the other pension and retirement funds were transferred
to the government and privatized.
But this week, the Treasury Ministry announced that armed forces personnel
would begin to make their contributions to the privately managed pension
funds. The measure will also boost their retirement age from 55 to 65,
said Bonadona.
La Prensa newspaper, in La Paz, published a list of the largest pensions
paid to retired public employees, headed by former Supreme Court justice
Edgar Rosales Lijerón, who received 3,506 dollars a month.
But after the Picachuri tragedy, the government ordered cuts to the
biggest pension cheques, setting a maximum of 1,011 dollars.
According to official figures, 60 percent of the 8.7 million Bolivians
live in poverty. The national minimum wage is the equivalent of $50
dollars a month.
“There is no justice,” says Salvatierra, while Saravia Oporto
continues waiting for some official to reinstate his 101-dollar disability
payment.
On the eve of International Labor Day, May 1, the FSTMB resolved to
begin a national strike on May 3for the annulment of the pension law,
among other demands. Some of the trade unions of private companies have
said they will not take part in the strike.
Only bosses happy with Brazil’s
new minimum wage
By Mylena Fiori
May 1 — The Brazilian government decided that this year’s
annual increase of the country’s minimum wage will be 8.33 percent,
which is more than inflation and most price increases during the period.
However, by raising it from $80.89 US(240 reais) to $87.63 US(260 reais)
the Brazilian minimum wage still has a lot of ground to cover before
recuperating all the purchasing power it has lost over the last 64 years
since it came into existence.
According to calculations by José Maurício Soares, of
the union-linked DIEESE (Departamento Intersindical de Estatística
e Estudos Sócio-econômicos — Socio-Economic Studies
and Statistics Department), in order to obtain the purchasing power
it had in 1959, today’s minimum wage would have to be $ 208 US
($ 618 R).
In 1959, the minimum wage in Brazil was tied to the cost of a basic-needs
basket (cesta básica). At that time it could purchase four basic-needs
baskets. Today a minimum wage pays for 69 percent of one basic-needs
basket. In 1959, a minimum wage could pay for 1,000 trips on urban buses.
Today a worker uses all of his minimum wage to pay for 153 trips by
bus in the city.
Purchasing power is not the only way to compare today’s minimum
wage with what it was in the past (in fact, comparative purchasing power
is a difficult and uncertain calculation). There is also Gross Domestic
Product growth. That averages out to 3 percent a year since 1959, which
would mean that the minimum wage today should be $404 US ($1,200 R).
According to Soares, if the government continues to base adjustments
of the minimum wage on inflation indexes and increasing it slightly
above those indexes (which is what the government did this year; the
real increase was 1.2 percent or 1.4 percent, according to the government
and the DIEESE, respectively), it will take more than 49 years to double
it’s purchasing power. On the other hand, adjusting the minimum
wage with real increases of 3 percent (which is what has been done,
on average, over the last eight years), it will take around 22 years
to double its purchasing power.
Soares says that the only way to effectively increase minimum wage purchasing
power is to use long-term targets, for periods of at least 4 to 8 years,
and follow them.
Between April 2003 and April 2004, the IPCA (Índice Nacional
de Preços ao Consumidor Amplo—Broad National Consumer Price
Index), which the government uses to gauge its inflation targets, rose
6.10 percent. The IPCA measures inflation for families with monthly
incomes between 1 and 40 minimum wages in the metropolitan regions.
If the IPCA is used as a comparison base, the real increase of the minimum
wage announced yesterday was 2.23 percentage points (2.11 percent).
During the same period, the INPC (Índice Nacional de Preços
ao Consumidor — National Consumer Price Index) rose 6.84 percent.
The INPC measures inflation for families with a monthly income between
1 and 8 minimum wages in the same areas as the IPCA. If the INPC is
used as a comparison base, the real increase in the minimum wage was
1.49 percentage points (1.40 percent).
There is also the ICV (Índice de Custo de Vida — Cost of
Living Index), which measures inflation for families in São Paulo
with monthly incomes between 1 and 30 minimum wages. It rose 6.17 percent,
which means that if it is the comparison base, the minimum wage rose
2.16 percentage points (2.04 percent).
In addition to increasing the minimum wage, the government also decided
to readjust the family wage, which will go from $4.5 US($ 13.48R) to
$6.7 US($ 20.00R) per child for workers who receive the minimum wage.
Organizations that represent workers, such as the CUT (Central Única
dos Trabalhadores — Workers’ Central Union), consider insufficient
the announced increase in the minimum wage. According to CUT president,
Luiz Marinho, the readjustment will not make it possible to meet the
needs of the population, especially for those who receive between one
and two minimum wages. The CUT wanted the minimum wage to be fixed at
$101.00 US($ 300.00R).
The entrepreneurial sector, on the other hand, expressed satisfaction
with the increase determined by the government, avoiding economic impacts
that could lead to higher interest rates.
|
