Angered by President ‘Pepe,’ Teachers Strike Again in Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

Angered by President ‘Pepe,’ Teachers Strike Again in Honduras
Friday
Nov 5, 2010
3:44 pm By Kari Lydersen

Tens of thousands of teachers are on strike again in Honduras, just two months after they ended a months-long strike through a tenuous agreement with the contested government of President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa.

On November 3, thousands of teachers and students marched through the capital Tegucigalpa protesting a new wave of attacks on the powerful teachers unions by Lobo’s government. Streets were shut down for about four hours as teachers from around the region marched from the national university to the presidential palace.

Along with actions that have specifically targeted educators, the protesters also decried Lobo’s gutting of a minimum wage increase law that was supposed to take effect in January. Lobo has failed to pay minimum wage increases retroactively, as enshrined in the law, and has also instituted a new scale with lower overall increases and differing increases for different sectors —a move seen as directly retaliatory against teachers.

The blog Honduras Resiste explains:

The special articles which Lobo repealed (including Article 49 of the Teachers’ Law) guaranteed annual wage increases indexed by set percentages to the yearly increases in the minimum wage. These articles applied to teachers, government workers, public health employees, and public education professionals.

The regime wants to eliminate the regular increases and the percentages and force the affected unions to accept whatever increases the government says are affordable each year. This is aimed especially at the teachers, whose militant and organized struggles over many years won for them many benefits and a somewhat higher wage index than other professions.

More:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6616/angered_by_president_pepe_teachers_strike_again_in_honduras/