With the U.S. Congress about to vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Bush administration’s proposal to provide millions of dollars to support labor laws in Central America is nothing more than an attempt to buy CAFTA. A decade of neoliberal reforms has already created “flexible” labor conditions, leaving workers vulnerable to the whims of the market. Enforcing “current” labor laws will do nothing more than further entrench a system that exploits workers in Central America and benefits the corporate, profit-making interests behind free trade. The failure of a recent hunger strike in El Salvador, for example, endured by a group of ex-public workers protesting the neoliberal policies that destroyed their livelihoods, illuminates how legal reforms created through the expansion of “free trade” become mechanisms for institutionalizing the violation of worker rights.

In December 2004, 114 public penal and postal workers in El Salvador, represented by the Association of Public and Municipal Employees (AGEPYM), were arbitrarily dismissed from their jobs and unjustly denied severance pay. On May 28, 2005, after struggling with what they viewed as an ineffective and corrupt legal system for 6 months, 8 of the ex-public workers began what was to become a 36 day hunger strike to demand severance pay or reinstatement. They also protested the government’s treatment of public workers within the new neoliberal economic model, including a series of reforms that have set the stage for CAFTA. In the late 1980s, El Salvador began to implement reforms such as market deregulation, privatization of public industries, and the reduction of public services. A key component was also the “flexibilization” of the labor force. This entailed dismantling employee benefits and securities, undermining the effectiveness of labor unions, and gradually instituting a system of temporary contracts for public workers, thereby reducing labor regulations and “costs” in order to make the country more attractive to foreign investment.

These policies directly impacted the 114 ex-penal and postal workers when in 2001 the previous Ministries of the Interior and Justice were restructured and merged together to create a new Ministry of the Interior. Prior to this, public employees in these ministries were employed under a Salary Law and Civil Service Law, which provided basic protections such as long-term job security and guaranteed severance pay if dismissed. Following the restructuring, however, the workers could only keep their jobs if they agreed to sign yearly contracts, something they had not been required to do before. Their contracts were renewed each year until 2005, when the government opted not to renew them. Many of the 114 workers had been employed for 10 to 20 years before the system of temporary contracts. The workers were also denied their severance pay, which the government justifies by arguing that “temporary contract workers” are not “public employees” protected by the Civil Service Law.

In addition to the hunger strike, the ex-workers sent written appeals to the Minister of the Interior and the President of El Salvador, and lead marches to the Legislative Assembly. The U.S.-based Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) also pressured the Salvadoran government. The Ombudsman’s Office for the Defense of Human Rights in El Salvador denounced the temporary contract system as a violation of worker rights. However, Antonio Saca, President of El Salvador, addressed the hunger strike only once, on the eve of a European tour to discuss investment opportunities in post-CAFTA El Salvador. He stated that the workers were not wrongly terminated, but rather their contracts had legally expired. The Minister of the Interior, Rene Figueroa, echoed this position of legalized government indifference. He told the Salvadoran paper Diario Co Latino (June 24, 2005) that no one held a gun to anyone’s head forcing them to sign a contract: “I didn’t see anyone armed. They agreed to sign, no one obligated them. We have no obligation with them; they agreed to sign, as in any civilized country.”

For the hunger strikers, the “gun” held to their heads when they signed was the threat of poverty in a country with few employment opportunities. Neoliberalism and labor flexibilization have lead to increased unemployment, more precarious employment where jobs exist, and an expanded informal economy. Over the past 6 years, for example, while the cost of living has risen 18%, minimum wages have only risen 7%. The hunger strikers felt they had little option but to confront the government’s neoliberal policies with their lives.

After encountering only government indifference, and as the health of the hunger strikers became dire, the hunger strike was suspended on July 1 when the 8 ex-workers occupied the National Cathedral with representatives from AGEPYM and the Popular Social Block (BPS). The strikers occupied the Cathedral until July 7, when a representative of the Church, along with Ombudswoman for Human Rights Beatrice De Carillo, presented a request to the Legislative Assembly to create an emergency decree that would give the dismissed workers severance pay. The decree has yet to be acted on, and while the hunger strike and occupation of church has ended, the workers’ struggle continues.

The legal mechanisms which allowed the workers to be dismissed without severance and which rendered their hunger strike ineffective provide a window into the impact of market-oriented reforms on the rights of workers. Enforcing labor laws under CAFTA will merely reinforce conditions of “flexible” and exploitable labor. In addition, under CAFTA the state apparatus will become a mere mechanism of the market, and the legal category of “rights” will carry even less weight against “legal” government indifference and the interests of private capital. President of AGEPYM, William Huezo, summarized the deeper purpose of the failed hunger strike: “The next step is . . . calling on the people so that they can build consciousness, because we cannot let the people remain indifferent and scared . . . More than anything we need to break the fear, because today it is 8 workers, and tomorrow it will be everyone.”