Puerto Rico: Mass layoffs provoke protests, strikes

[IndianaGreen]

Puerto Rico: Mass layoffs provoke protests, strikes

By Bill Van Auken
5 October 2009

Puerto Rican workers and students have responded with protests and strikes to the September 25 announcement by the island’s government that it is laying off 17,000 public employees in response to its mounting fiscal crisis.

The layoffs are not only decimating the ranks of public workers, but will result in the shutdown of entire agencies, the cutback of social services and a sharp rise in unemployment in Puerto Rico.

According to the government’s own estimates, the layoffs will increase the unemployment rate from just under 16 percent—higher than any US state—to over 17 percent. This, however, is a rosy scenario, given that it factors in only the 17,000 layoffs and not their impact on the wider economy in terms of reduced consumption and the resulting additional job losses in the private sector.

Already, Puerto Rico’s poverty rate—some 45 percent of the population living below the federal poverty line—is far higher than that in the US, while the median income amounts to barely half that of the US population.

The massive layoffs announced last month are by no means the end of the Fortuño government’s austerity policy. It is anticipated that at least 30,000 public workers will lose their jobs, while the government has vowed to shut down some 40 agencies through a process of privatization and consolidation.

Elected last year as the candidate of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico (known by its Spanish acronym PNP), he is the first governor affiliated to the US Republican Party in 40 years.

In March, just three months after taking office, Fortuño imposed a “Special Law Declaring a State of Fiscal Emergency,” or Public Law 7, unilaterally suspending for two years all collective bargaining rights and social protections for public employees, while mapping out plans for $2 billion in reductions in the territory’s annual budget. This means a 20 percent cut across the board.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/puer-o05.shtml