By Wendy Anders

Over the past month, leaders from about 20 unions and civic groups have held a series of meetings to define a common agenda to defend the rights of the country’s public sector employees, announced the Communication and Energy Industry Employees Union (ASDEICE).

After their third meeting yesterday at the Ambassador Hotel in San José they announced a protest planned for Thursday, September 1 from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. outside the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly to put forth positions on contentious employment, tax and other legislative proposals that unions feel threaten the country’s working class and undermine the country’s social guarantees, said ASDEICE in a press release on their website today.

The new movement, Unions United in Action (Unidad Sindical en Acción), has come together with a common agenda on worker rights and the country’s fiscal deficit, said another coalition member, the National Association of Public and Private Employees (ANEP) in a public statement today.

“These organizations represent 70 percent of the public sector workers, and believe the approval of public employment projects will increase economic inequality among workers,” said ANEP on their website about the Unions United in Action movement.

Olga Marta Gómez, representative for the Rerum Novarum Worker’s Confederation (CTRN), a member of the new movement stated at the meeting, “Our struggle goes way beyond defending salaries of public employees because if what moves the economy of this country are public sector workers and their salaries, then if these are affected there will be a social crisis. Different sectors will be converging including representative from the energy, fuel, education, health, municipal, air traffic, port, and a myriad of other sectors which are uniting to defend the rights of the working class of this country.”

The Unions United in Action movement leaders in a statement said the Sept. 1 protest is aimed at “informing public opinion about the real concerns facing the country,” and that it is a “goodwill gesture to request legislation affecting workers be repealed and that a tax evasion project be implemented immediately to reduce the fiscal deficit.”

 

Fabio Chaves, ASDEICE president said, “This government is not listening to the popular voice … they only listen to the business groups and private sector leaders.:

The new movement said that if their demands were not taken seriously after next week’s event, large-scale protests in the near future would be carried out.