Workers Struggles: the Americas
Chilean educators hold 24-hour strike over new education law, unpaid bonuses
24 August 2017
The World Socialist Web Site invites workers and other readers to contribute to this regular feature.
Latin America
Chilean educators hold 24-hour strike over new education law, unpaid bonuses
Following an August 4 assembly vote, Chile’s Professional Association of Professors called a nationwide strike for August 17 to protest a projected law of “New Public Education” (NEP) and to demand the payment of overdue pay and bonuses. In Santiago and other cities, teachers also marched and demonstrated.
Tensions escalated following the strike when President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski compared the teachers to the Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path guerrilla movement.
The first Historic Debt dates to 1981—during the Pinochet dictatorship—when public schools were transferred to municipalities and a readjustment of salaries of between 50 and 90 percent of teachers base salary was rescinded. Not only do many municipalities now owe debts to teachers, but the city of Punto Arenas “for several days suspended classes for nonpayment of lights and gas, which impeded the functioning of the schools,” noted a communiqué. In addition, teachers protested harassment on the job.
The union also called for a march to Congress building in Santiago for August 23.
Guyanese school janitorial workers repeat protests against low pay, abuses
School janitorial workers—called sweeper-cleaners—in Guyana have held recent protests over low pay, inconsistent work schedules and abuses by administration. On August 8, 9 and 10, they demonstrated, respectively, in front of the Ministries of the Presidency, Finance and Education in the capital, Georgetown.
The sweeper-cleaners gathered at…