The largest employer in Puerto Rico today is the Government. Public service workers presently total
285,000 or roughly 26% of the workforkforce. Gover-
nment employment grew dramatically in the late
1940s and early 1950s, going from 2.5% of the labor
force in 1940 to 19% in the mid-1960s. By 1974 it had
reached a staggering 28.6%, which ranks well ahead
of almost every state of the United States
Most public service workers employed by public
authorities and state corporations have had the right
to organize labor unions, bargain collectively and
strike since the passage of the Puerto Rico Labor
Relations Act of 1945. Yet the majority of workers
directly employed by the government have not been
able to unionize. And so an entry level job in the cen-
tral government today-in the health or public works
department for example-pays $442.00 per month,
while a similar classification in the unionized
Electrical Power Authority pays $1,225.00.
Throughout North and South America, most public
employees have been systematically and deliberately
excluded from the laws that enable workers in the pri-
vate sector to organize labor unions, negotiate collec-
tive agreements and even strike when a settlement between the parties cannot be reached. For instance,
in the United States, public employees were excluded
from coverage under the Wagner Act which granted
basic organizing rights to workers in the i930s. Those
public sector workers and their unions have had to
fight for the right to organize and bargain collective-
ly on a state-by-state basis. Today, there are 25 states,
mostly in the Northeast and Midwest, with collective
bargaining laws covering all public employees, and
eleven others with laws that cover only some public
workers such as teachers, police and firefighters.
These tend to be states where the unionization rate is
high and the labor movement is strong. Where unions are weak-in the South and Southwest-public work-
ers do not have these rights
In Puerto Rico, the politics of manipulation and
subordination of both central and municipal govern-
ment workers by the political parties is perhaps the
critical factor in understanding why public workers
have not achieved the democratic right to organize
unions and bargain collectively. In spite of the exis-
tence of a civil service system and the so-called merit
principle in public employment, the reality is that the
central and municipal governments have become, in
effect, huge patronage mills of the parties. Boththhe pro-commonwealth Popular Democratic
Party (PPD) and the pro-statehood New Progressive
Jos La Luz and Ottoniel Figueroa are staff members of the
American Federation of State County and Municipal Workers (AFSCME) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This article was writCten
with the collaboration of Egna Quinonez.
Party (PNP) are organized within most of the central
government agencies and even many municipal gov-
ernments. Their organic structures consist of a net-
work of party cadres-usually confidential staff to
the senior administrators in the public agencies-
who are commanded in many instances by the top
administrator of the particular agency. These “field
lieutenants” in turn have a network of delegates in
each work location to keep an inventory of the party
faithful and report all “hostile” activities by the mili-
tants of the opposition party to their superiors.
Favors are dispensed to those public workers who
toe the line by contributing financially to the party’s
electoral war chest or who help to identify voters in
their neighborhoods. The personnel rules and regu-
lations are bent every which way in order to accom-
modate the needs of this critical constituency for the
party. Merit-based step increases and permanent sta-
tus are granted by senior agency administrators to
those who “deserve it,” meaning those who have ful-
filled their obligations to the party.
In the meantime, wage, salary and bonus increases
are granted by executive orders of the incumbent
governor, representing a significant percentage of his
campaign pledges. On certain occasions–usually
close to the elections-job and pay classification stud-
ies are developed and implemented unilaterally by
the agency management in order to do “wage jus-
tice” to the workers. Most often the principle of
equal pay for equal work, length of service and job
experience are totally disregarded. But as long as
some workers are rewarded by party “commissars,”
and others are punished for being in the wrong party,
the outcome is often the same: division and inertia.
This situation began to change in the early 1970s
when teachers, public service workers in the public
utilities, classified university employees and firefight-
ers conducted strikes for higher wages and benefits.
Again, there was no unified and coherent strategy to
obtain bargaining rights for all government employ-
ees. In spite of that, the proportion of public employ-
ees engaged in strikes in 1973 hit 11.2 percent, up
from only 2.4 percent in 1968. These strikes, of
course, were part of the generalized political and
labor militancy which swept Latin America in the
early 1970s. They were also related to the rise of
Puerto Rican activism in the United States.
In 1973 there were so many strikes that the PPD
governor, Rafael Hernandez Col6n, called out the
National Guard. He was also forced to appoint a high-
level commission examining the feasibility of collec-
tive bargaining rights for public sector workers. The
commission, headed by a former dean of the
University of Puerto Rico’s Law School, David Helfeld,
released an exhaustive report in 1975, finding an
absence of adequate mechanisms to promote effec-
tive participation of public employees in decisions
regarding their pay and working conditions. The com- mission found that collective bargaining had been
highly beneficial to the morale and productivity of public service workers employed by the public corpo-
rations, and recommended that the principle of col-
lective bargaining be adopted in the public service. The commission’s report provided the basis for the
subsequent public policy debate regarding collective bargaining for public employees. Several dozen bills have since been filed by legislators from the two major parties as well as the smaller Independence
Party to grant employees in the central and munici- pal governments the right to organize unions and bargain collectively. None, however, have been
passed into law.
As they confront this situation, the cue for govern- ment workers is being taken from the recent cam-
paigns of the non-governmental public-sector work- ers. In the late 1980s, a broad coalition of unions led
by the telephone workers stopped the privatization
of the publicly owned Puerto Rico Telephone Company. Similar attempts to implement wholesale or partial privatization of the Electrical Power
Authority, the Aqueduct and Sewer Authority and,
more recently, the regional public hospitals and other public-health programs have encountered
fierce resistance by public-service unions in these
public corporations. Unions in the public utilities and the public corporations have shown the way to wage
a relatively successful fight against privatization and
corporate-driven restructuring. This is crucial because the threat of privatization
also looms over the heads of central and municipal government workers. This has triggered a renewed
militancy as well as a major push to obtain bargain-
ing rights that would serve to protect their jobs. A
major organizing, political and legislative drive is now underway by several AFL-CIO affiliates to
enhance the prospects for the passage of a collective
bargaining law. There is a growing awareness among central gov-
ernment workers in several agencies such as Family
and Protective Services, the Department of Health
and the Department of Labor that collective bargain-
ing is the only answer to the favoritism and discrimi-
nation driven by the political patronage within the
workplace. This awareness is spreading to the three political parties which, for the first time in history,
have included in their respective party platforms the
right for government employees to organize and
bargain collectively. In the end, of course, only a
strong, revitalized labor movement can win these
rights for government workers.
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