SEATTLE LABOR DELEGATION TO PROTEST PRIVATIZATION AT U.S. EMBASSY IN EL SALVADOR

May Day Solidarity Delegates will report-back on May 16th from 7-9pm at the Washington State Labor Council offices.

Labor activists, union members, and workers across the U.S. are preparing to go to El Salvador for the Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador’s (CISPES) May Day delegation from April 27 to May 4th. Labor organizers and workers who are organizing for their rights in the Pacific Northwest will be joining forces with union members in El Salvador to speak out against corporate shortcuts across the globe and the U.S.-backed Public-Private Partnership (PPP).

Four delegates from the Seattle area, including a Sea Tac airport worker who is organizing for a union, will be joining 13 other U.S. delegates and taking off for the Central American country’s capital city, San Salvador. The delegates will be reporting about their time in El Salvador on Thursday, May 16th from 7-9pm at the Washington State Labor Council building, 314 1st Ave W  Seattle, WA 98119.

The delegates will be presenting to the U.S. Embassy and labor groups in El Salvador on the impact of privatization on workers’ rights. The delegation is designed to highlight the kinds of wage cuts, union busting, and rising costs to consumers that people in the U.S. have seen because of privatization of basic human rights such as education and water and to bring that to El Salvador as a trade of solidarity. Earlier in February, Salvadoran union leader Alex Gomez toured the U.S. and spoke out with Seattle workers at the Sea Tac airport. At the date of the airport workers’ union campaign launch, Sea Tac airport worker and May Day delegate Socrates Bravo turned to Gomez and said, “We are struggling here and you are struggling there…hopefully we can help each other.”

United States Ambassador Mari Carmen Aponte has threatened to withhold U.S. aid if El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly does not pass the PPP, which would privatize the country’s airports, water, electricity, and higher education, among other public sectors. According to Seattle CISPES, the United States is pushing this law because it would open El Salvador up for exploitation by transnational companies who could disregard human and environmental rights easily under the PPP.

In the past, El Salvador has been able to defeat privatization of healthcare in 2002 and water in 2007, for example, and CISPES hopes to replicate the labor solidarity model that has worked in the past alongside the strong social movement in El Salvador. Several labor groups throughout the U.S., including Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, will be including their own statement against the PPP in the Salvadoran media on May Day, while the delegates will be marching with over 75,000 people for international worker’s day.

For more information please contact Kaeley Pruitt-Hamm, Seattle CISPES coordinator, at (206) 325-5494 or seattle@cispes.org.