July 8, 1998
Filed at 1:37 a.m. EDT
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Union leaders hinted strikers would take more bold action today to cap the biggest labor protest in the history of Puerto Rico.
Tens of thousands of protesters began a 48-hour general strike against the sale of the state telephone company Tuesday by dramatically blocking a main highway and its entry to San Juan's international airport with hundreds of cars.
``We will start our activities at 4 a.m.,'' promised Annie Cruz, president of one of the two telephone workers' unions. She refused to give details for ``strategic reasons.''
``The fight doesn't end here. It's just beginning,'' Sen. Ruben Berrios of the U.S. territory's Independence Party told a sea of protesters Tuesday waving the island's single-star red, white and blue flag.
In other incidents Tuesday, gunmen strafed a bank involved in buying the telephone utility; protesters planted a bomb that was harmlessly exploded by police outside a provincial branch of the same bank; and saboteurs slashed telephone cables, leaving 260,000 people without long-distance service.
Union leaders have denied that their members are responsible for sabotage and other acts of violence that routinely accompany labor protests. Police have suggested that a clandestine pro-independence guerrilla group might have been responsible for past bombings.
Opposition politicians and union leaders accuse Gov. Pedro Rossello of ``selling off the national patrimony'' in a $1.9 billion deal to a consortium led by the U.S. giant GTE Corp. and the local Banco Popular.
The governor's opponents say the privatization is part of his campaign to make the Caribbean island the 51st U.S. state. Most opponents want Puerto Rico to remain a U.S. commonwealth.
The government says state enterprises cannot compete in the new deregulated markets and already has sold hotels and a shipping company and transferred management of prisons and hospitals to private companies.
Rossello wants to follow the telephone sale with those of other utilities, which would further weaken the waning power of unions that are strongest among the 300,000 government workers.
Pro-statehood groups in newspaper advertisements Tuesday denounced the strike as a political bid to frighten away foreign investment and signal that the Caribbean island is too unstable to be admitted to the union.
Labor leaders said they hoped the strike would persuade the government to hold a referendum of the telephone sale. But Rossello told reporters the only referendum on the island would be one for statehood that already has been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and awaits the decision of the Senate.
Telephone workers, who began an indefinite strike June 18, say they fear for their jobs. Like many state enterprises, the company is top-heavy with 6,400 workers controlled by 1,400 managers in positions often created to reward political supporters.
Some 60 unions called the general strike to support the telephone workers.
The telephone strike has cost Puerto Rico as much as $100 million, and the general strike could multiply that figure, said Santos Negron, a leading economist and former member of the government planning board.
Near the airport Tuesday, many tourists sweated in the tropical heat as they dragged their luggage through the blockade of honking cars.
``Well, I'm never coming here again!'' Spanish tourist Felipe de Andrea said as protesters helped him heft bags over the freeway divider. Riot police carried them to a police van that took him and others to the terminal.
LIAT Airlines canceled all flights, and at least two cruise ships canceled port calls. Hotel owners said hundreds of tourists have canceled vacations.
In the last general strike in Puerto Rico, tens of thousands of sugar cane cutters stopped working in 1934 to demand better conditions.