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Roundup: LatAm workers fight for labor rights on May Day

Xinhua, May 2, 2017 Adjust font size:

Citizens throughout Latin America marked International Labor Day on Monday by fighting to preserve hard-won labor rights or to improve their current conditions.

In the region's two leading economies, Brazil and Argentina, where pro-business administrations have succeeded progressive governments,workers protested against measures that threatened to erode their gains.

Brazil's biggest unions announced new steps to prevent the labor reforms designed to save the government money in pension payments, and to promote economic activity by giving businesses more leeway in hiring and firing.

The country's top two unions, the CUT and Fuerza Sindical,convened smaller trade groups to a meeting in the capital Brasilia to decide how to move forward.

Vagner Freitas, president of CUT,a national labor union, said they intended to either mobilize some 100,000 workers to march on Brasilia or call for another general strike, or both.

A massive nationwide general strike already paralyzed Brazil's major cities last Friday.

In neighboring Argentina, unions organized different protests against austerity measures imposed by the government of President Mauricio Macri.

One of the leaders of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Juan Carlos Schmid, addressed a crowd at a stadium in northern Buenos Aires.

"Half the population finds it hard to get to the end of the month," said Schmid, referring to households living paycheck.

"They are not doing what needs to be done. The government has taken an economic path that none of us agree with," said Schmid.

About 32.3 percent of Argentinians live below the poverty line, according to official figures.

In Uruguay, workers demanded better wages and greater government spending on education.

At a May Day rally in the capital of Montevideo, Elbia Pereira, head of the central union, the PIT-CNT, called on the government of President Tabare Vazquez to keep its pledge to invest 6 percent of the GDP in the education sector.

"The national government will have to decide whether to build more schools or prisons, more classrooms or cells," said Pereira.

The union leader also said some 370,000 workers earned wages that "you cannot live on."

In Honduras, a central American country, thousands of workers marched to protest the rising price of basic goods and lack of jobs, as well as public-sector corruption.

During the protests in the capital of Tegucigalpa, a small group of protestors lobbed stones at the headquarters of the ruling party, and were met with military troops who responded with tear gas.

Hondurean former president Manuel Zelaya, who was forced out of office by right-wing forces, later joined the protest march, riding along on his bicycle. Endi