Puerto Rican Teachers Union Protests SEIU Raid

I think that the key thing here is that the teachers’ union is the largest and most militant union in Puerto Rico and has always been, and the efforts of SEIU earlier this year when the teachers were in the middle of a major battle and a strike with the government to step in, in essence, and to try to take over or raid the leadership of the union, has created enormous reverberations throughout the labor movement in the United States, as well as in Latin America. I think, in fact, one of the most interesting things was that Stern and Dennis Rivera announced before the convention started that they are going to begin a new effort from Puerto Rico throughout Latin America to build ties between the SEIU to build global unions. So, in essence, what SEIU is trying to do by gaining control of the teachers’ union and, in effect, the Puerto Rican labor movement is to then branch out into the rest of Latin America. Now, they insist that they’re not going to do it in a way that will hurt the autonomy or the democracy of those unions, but the record has so far—has not been too good in that way.

And in fact, on Saturday, just as I was on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton covering that campaign, there was a major confrontation at the SEIU convention center, where the teachers’ union demonstrated, and they were then confronted. The SEIU called in the police. The Puerto Rico’s infamous Fuerza de Choque, the shock police that came in and confronted the teachers, beat quite a few of the teachers. And I think one policeman was injured in the confrontation that lasted a considerable amount of time. Several teachers were detained. I think one was eventually arrested to be charged with the assault on the police officer. But the fact that SEIU would have such a demonstration at its national convention shows that the contradictions are growing there.