Unions Fight for Power

Managua--The Sandosta Front (FSLN)'s effort to "rule from below" during the tenure of the new UNO government has given the union movement in Nicaragua unprecedented political clout. Because Nicaragua's National Assembly is relatively weak and has been ignored by President Violeta Charmorro, the FSLN has shifted the focus of its activity from its 39-seat minority in the 92-seat legislature to its large majority in the union movement. Twice in the first two months of UNO rule, Sandinista-led general strikes paralyzed the country, the second nearly bringing down the Chamorro government.

At the same time, the change in government and recent changes in labor legislation have presented many opportunities for new unions, most of them UNO-oriented, to organize and attempt to wean workers away from Sandinista-affiliated confederations. The outcome of the struggle for power in the labor movement will be a crucial factor in determining the character of Nicaragua's economy and society.

The rise of unions

The Sandinistas' victory in July 1978 ignited a massive organizing drive. Labor organization grew from only 133 unions representing 5 percent of the labor force in 1979 to over 1,100 unions with 55 percent of the workforce by 1984. About 90 percent of the unions are affiliated with the six FSLN confederations, the most important of which are the Sandinista Workers Confederation (CST) and the Association of Farm Workers (ATC).

The status of workers' rights has been greatly elevated in both Nicaragua's constitution and its political culture since 1979. Since the revolution, workers have made many gains, according to Domingo Gomez, general secretary of the Rice Workers Federation of the ATC. He cites land reform, the literacy campaign and an improved health and education infrastructure as benefits won by the revolution and the new unions. He also notes that workers play an unprecedented role in the management of businesses, particularly state enterprises and some private ones in which workers have access to financial records and have union representatives on management committees. Day care centers are common in factories that employ many women, and most collective bargaining contracts guarantee maternity leave, as well as lunch and transportation subsidies.

The war takes its toll

Despite the rapid growth of unions, Nicaragua's perpetual economic crisis--greatly exacerbated by the U.S.-sponsored war and economic aggression (see "Making the Economy Scream," Multinational Monitor, December 1989)--prevented workers from making many material advances during the period of Sandinista rule.

With the economy collapsing, Sandinista unions focused on supporting the war effort, discouraging strikes and asking workers to subordinate their needs to the national interest. Meanwhile, workers bore the brunt of the economic chaos, their buying power dropping 90 percent over 10 years. Even non-wage worker concerns, like reform of the Somoza-era labor code, which permits the arbitrary firing of workers, were never addressed. With leaders able to offer nothing but appeals for more sacrifices and more patience, many workers stopped taking the unions seriously.

While the Sandinista unions tried to mobilize workers for the war effort, non-Sandinista labor leaders on both the left and right complained that Sandinistas tried to repress or manipulate their unions. Antonio Jarquin, general secretary of the pro-UNO CTN, admitted in 1984 that some of the repression occurred because "some workers have been engaging in counter- revolutionary activities." Some pro-UNO union confederations acknowledge receiving money from organizations with documented connections to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Nevertheless, much of the repression was unrelated to the effort to combat U.S.-sponsored subversion. Although most workers freely joined the Sandinista confederations in the wake of the party's popularity following the Revolution, opposition union leaders across the spectrum claim that the government, the police and Sandinista turbas (gangs) worked together to persuade and at times coerce workers, including those already organized in opposition unions, to join the CST.

Having organized most workers into its unions, the Sandinistas ensured that these unions would continue to dominate the labor movement. They enacted a prohibition against formation of minority unions to compete with an existing one (usually Sandinista) in a given enterprise. When competing unions threatened Sandinista power, the Sandinistas used extra-legal methods to defend their position. The Worker's Front Malespin Martinez says that whenever his competing labor confederation managed to elect its own leadership to head a nominally Sandinista union, the Ministry of Labor would require new elections and the Sandinistas would send "goons" to the enterprise to intimidate the workers into voting for the Sandanistas' preferred candidates. As a result, from 1981 until UNO won the elections in February 1990, few non-Sandinista unions gained legal status, and the Sandinista confederation lost few member unions.

While denying that the CST held what critics call "captive" unions, Damaso Varga, general secretary of the Managua region of the CST, admits that workers did not have the opportunity to organize during the war. "The conflicts of war imposed on us in those years didn't allow a type of democratic discussion in which each group could participate in accord with its beliefs, in accord with its political affiliation, because there was a general mobilization." No competing confederations were eliminated or silenced during Sandinista rule, however.

The new scramble for worker support

Although the CST succeeded in its primary goal of keeping the workers united to win the war, the cost in terms of maintaining a solid base was high. Pacifying workers' militancy, justifying sacrifices and obliging membership in the CST weakened the unions. One of the reasons most experts expected the FSLN to win the February 1990 election was the size of its mass organizations, including unions, which succeeded in mobilizing vast crowds for Sandinista rallies. On February 25, these organizations turned out to provide fewer votes than expected.

On April 19, just six days before they left office, the Sandinistas changed the labor law to permit the formation of minority unions. Since then, new unions, particularly non- Sandinista organizations, have been forming at a rapid pace.

Three factions in the Nicaraguan labor movement compete to draw workers away from the Sandinista confederations. The fiercest competition comes from the Permanent Workers Congress (CPT), which unites four labor confederations, two rightist and two nominally leftist, in an alliance with UNO. The second faction is the Nicaraguan Workers Confederation (CTN), which is also pro-UNO and anti-Sandinista. It carefully guards its independence from UNO and the CPT, however. CTN General Secretary Carlos Huembes says the CTN doesn't want to be labelled an "official" confederation. "In Nicaragua, 'officialism' is something that is looked on badly and tends to disqualify," he comments. The third faction is the Workers Front (FO), which is affiliated with the far left Marxist-Leninst MAP- ML and is genuinely independent of both the FSLN and UNO. Leaders of all three factions express optimism that they will be able to lure many workers away from the Sandinista unions.

The change in government offers the pro-UNO unions distinct advantages in the competition to attract workers. Approximately $5 million in U.S. aid to Nicaragua is earmarked to support non- Sandinista unions. CPT confederations regularly receive assistance from organizations like the U.S. government-sponsored National Endowment for Democracy. The AFL-CIO also contributes to the Confederation for Trade Union Unity (CUS), an affiliate of the CPT, and provides scholarships for union cadres to be trained at the George Meaney Center in Maryland. The AFL-CIO- operated American Institute for Free Labor Development helped organize the CUS in the early 1960s.

Furthermore, the UNO government has demonstrated its eagerness to help the CPT by trying to include CPT officials in negotiations to settle strikes by Sandinista unions. The Ministry of Labor appears eager to confer majority status on CPT unions, giving them the legal mandate to represent workers in collective bargaining and other negotiations with management. The Ministry of Labor has already conferred majority status on a pro-UNO union of water utility workers in the San Antonio Sugar Mill, among others. But the Sandinista-affiliated CST asserts that the CUS union is not in fact representative of the majority of the mill's over 4,000 workers.

The Sandinista labor movement is mobilizing to face the new competition. To increase the cohesiveness of the movement, the six Sandinista confederations have joined together to form the National Workers Front (FNT). At the same time, affiliated unions are being granted more autonomy so their leaders can respond directly to the concerns of rank-and-file workers. New elections are being held to enhance the representativeness and popularity of union leaders at the base level.

Most importantly, the whole movement is becoming more militant. In the two months between the elections and the transfer of power, workers went on strike 188 times, perhaps as many as in the previous 10 years combined. The FNT has become a staunch defender of the workers' rights (like the right to strike) that the CST verbally supported but rarely exercised with the Sandinistas in power.

The strikes

There have already been two major confrontations between the FNT and the UNO government. Only two weeks after Chamorro assumed the presidency, her government was paralyzed for five days by a massive strike by UNE, the government employees union. A month later, many other workers and peasants joined government workers in an even bigger strike that brought the country to the brink of chaos. Strikers coupled wage demands with protests over unconstitutional presidential decrees, revisions to the Sandinista land reform and the government's failure to consult with workers and the FSLN about its economic policy.

The strikes shut down or interrupted most government services and offices, including Managua buses, telephones, banks and the airport. Workers occupied most government buildings and staged strikes outside the presidential offices. During the second strike, workers erected barricades reminiscent of the 1979 insurrection in the streets beside burning tires. About a dozen people were killed in skirmishes between roving UNO and Sandinista gangs. The Minister of Labor declared the strikes illegal. The Sandinista police followed government orders to tear down the barricades, but they refused to attack striking workers.

In between the two strikes, it appeared that UNO and the Sandinista's FNT might be in the process of establishing a working relationship. In early June, without recourse to a strike, the government and the workers reached an accord that Vice Minister of Labor Antonio Ibarra said inaugurated "a climate of participation and cooperation between all the sectors--union, government, and private business--to resolve the common and particular interests of each sector in a harmonious manner without recourse to more conflicts." Three weeks later, however, the workers were again building barricades.

Despite the wage issue orientation of the accords, the strikes were a qualified political success for the Sandinistas and the workers. The first strike accord requires monthly meetings between the FNT and the government to set new wages and discuss other worker concerns, an important step toward increasing the Sandinistas' voice in government. Lucio Jimenez, secretary general of the CST, said, "We didn't get everything we wanted, but we set a precedent. From now on the workers must be consulted about economic policy." Behind the scenes, a similar agreement was probably reached to settle the second strike as well.

The strikes strengthened the position of the Sandinistas and the FNT versus UNO and the competing labor confederations. According to Malespin Martinez, "the tactic of the FSLN of pushing the workers and then negotiating allows them to gain leverage in negotiating with UNO as well as to keep the workers from looking for alternatives outside the CST."

The strikes also demonstrated that UNO cannot rule the country without the cooperation of the Sandinista labor movement. UNO attempted to implement rapid radical changes in government policy in the belief that the Sandinista base was too weak and the labor movement too disorganized to oppose them. With the strikes, the FNT proved that it has enough worker support to pull off a successful general strike.

Until the Sandinistas and the UNO government can work out some lasting compromise, which may take a long time considering the ideological gulf currently separating them, the cycle of dialogue and confrontation will probably continue.

Finding a political role for workers

For both UNO and the FSLN, building worker support is crucial to a successful political future. Finding a role for their union allies, however, presents each with difficult dilemmas.

In accordance with its much smaller influence in the labor movement, the CPT's primary goal in the political struggle between UNO and the FSLN is to organize new unions in as many enterprises as possible and turn them into majority unions in order to weaken the FNTs base and strengthen its own. The CPT's support for UNO in the strikes, followed by settlements generally favorable to the FNT, and the CPT's subsequent exclusion from further talks may have damaged the CPT's claim to be a nonpartisan representative of workers' interests. In the future, reconciling the political interests of UNO with the interests of the workers will probably be an especially difficult problem for the CPT because UNO is eager to privatize state enterprises and reduce subsidies for public services like healthcare, education and transportation. If UNO pursues policies that are clearly anti-worker, the CPT may have to distance itself from the government in order to achieve its primary goal of gaining worker support.

One month of UNO government was needed to demonstrate that the FNT is the most potent weapon the Sandinistas currently possess in their efforts to "govern from below." Continued FNT militancy, however, presents the FSLN with similar problems of reconciling divergent party and worker interests. While general strikes help the party to pressure the UNO government and win some gains for the workers, they risk alienating other sectors of the population, which suffer greatly and may see the strikes as non-constructive efforts to sabotage the UNO economic plan. On the other hand, the FNT cannot seek further worker sacrifices on behalf of UNO and hope to retain firm worker support. Alejandro Bandana, a former official in the Ministry of the Exterior in the FSLN government, says questions naturally arise in FSLN internal debates about the relationship between the party and the unions: "How far do you go towards the national responsibility as opposed to representing your basic social constituency? New points of equilibrium are going to have to be defined ... responsibly and with an electoral view."

Finding a political role for the unions is further complicated by the need to give them more autonomy from the party. The democratization under way in the FNT is designed to increase worker support, but it will also inevitably result in greater responsiveness on the part of the unions to the workers, even at the expense of the party leadership.

While the FSLN wants its affiliated unions to be belligerent enough to pressure UNO and autonomous enough to win the allegiance of the workers, it also has an interest in limiting the independence and militancy of the unions. The FSLN must retain enough control of the workers to be able to use the promise of labor stability as a bargaining chip in negotiations with UNO. As Malespin Martinez put it, "the problem that [the Sandinistas] have is that they need to push the workers to recover their space, but only to a certain limit.... [If] the workers recover their dynamism and destabilize the co- government, the Sandinista Front also loses. Then the Front will have to support their demands or lose the workers."

Ultimately, the kind of brinksmanship displayed in the two general strikes risks detonating the powder keg of Nicaragua's polarized politics. Vice president Virgilio Godoy's right wing of UNO together with some contra elements took advantage of the mayhem surrounding the second strike to form a National Salvation Committee that appeared to be maneuvering to take over the government. A coup by hardliners would be a disaster for both the FSLN and for President Violetta Chamorro's more moderate wing of UNO. Unless UNO accepts the fact that the Sandinista labor movement must be appeased for national reconciliation and economic development to occur, and unless the Sandinistas find a way to retain the support of their workers without sending them into the streets, future labor conflicts could explode into a new civil war.

Alexander Patterson is a freelance writer and radio reporter working in Central America.