Nicaraguan Unions to March to Support Government
NSCAG News |
on: Monday, 25 April 2011
Nicaragua's biggest trade union federation, the FNT, has called a march this Friday to celebrate the achievements of the Sandinista government and to mark International Workers Day.
Jose Antonio Zepeda of the ANDEN teachers union, and the leaders of the CST-JBE industrial workers union and the FETSALUD health workers union, have stated their intention to march this Friday in support of the Sandinista government's re-election bid. Mr Zepeda said "We have to mark the general improvement in education" and underlined that this Sandinista government had reintroduced universal free education and had worked hard to improve the quality of education in Nicaragua.
Luis Barbosa of the CST-JBE union highlighted the improvements for workers that this government has pushed through, from a minimum wage increase of 80%, to the 'solidarity bonus' that is now given to the lowest earning workers. His colleague Miguel Ruiz, the General Secretary of the union, said that the unions had to "celebrate and show our support for more work, more jobs, more housing, health, education and transport subsidies, all of which we have achieved with this government."
Ruiz also said that with the government of Daniel Ortega unions have more freedom to organise, there is more collective bargaining and more workers participating in production, all thanks to the work of the present government in re-establishing the rights that were "trampled upon under 16 years of neoliberal governments."
