{"article":{"id":78747,"heading":"Building Bridges Radio:DeUnionizing Federal Workers &EL Salvador at a Turning Point?","author":"Ken Nash & Mimi Rosenberg","created":"2003-08-24 23:14:34","modified":"2005-08-15 01:39:19","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 08:39:19","article":"

Radio WBAI’s Building Bridges:

Your Community & Labor Report –National Edition

Produced by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash

DeUnionizing Federal Workers with economist Renee Toback

The Bush Administration has relentlessly pursued a policy of deunionizing the Federal Government’s workforce often in the name of national security. The latest attempt is Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s call to eliminate unions from the Defense Department.

Government unions had been the last bastion of strength in a declining union movement. Yet, what’s left of the union movement has been very quiet in the face of these attacks.



EL Salvador at a Turning Point? with

Gilberto Ernesto Garcia, Exec. Coordinator for the Centro de Estudios y Apoyo Laboral- CEAL (Center for Labor Studies and Support), El Salvador.

Omar Henriquez, Immigration Campaign Coordinator, SEIU, recently returned from a Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (AFL-CIO) sponsored Delegation to El Salvador



Formal negotiations for CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, began in 2003. CAFTA is a proposed commercial pact between the U.S. & five countries in Central America. It is modeled

after the now-infamous NAFTA which has had devastating effects on the environment, workers and farmers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

But the labor movement in El Salvador is making some waves impacting on the 2004 Presidential elections. The recent successful 9-month health care strike stopped the privatization of health care in

El Salvador and reactivated the Salvadoran social movement.A prolonged international campaign persuaded Tainan Enterprises to agree in recent negotiations to open a unionized factory in El Salvador.

The new enterprise Just Garments, the first maquila in El Salvador with both a democratic union and collective bargaining agreement, is now looking for customers.



BUILDING BRIDGES IS REGULARLY AIRED IN THE NYC AREA OVER WBAI, 99.5 FM ON MONDAYS FROM 4-5PM PT AND STREAMING AT www.2600.com\/offthe>hook\/hot2.ram

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