INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

We hereby inform that on Friday, November 22 of this year, our colleague Erick Alexander Zelaya Ramos was dismissed under the pretext of position suppression. Erick is the Secretary-General of our Union Federation, National Union for the Defense of the Working Class, which unites eight unions. Additionally, he serves as the Secretary of Organization for the CONAMYPE Workers’ Union (SITCO) and Secretary of Education and Culture for the National Confederation of Salvadoran Workers (CNTS), which encompasses 40 unions, mainly from the public sector. Erick is also part of the Coordination Committee of the Movement for the Defense of Workers' Rights (MDCT), a collective established to expose labor and social abuses across various national sectors. He has been at the forefront of the recent White Marches.

This dismissal is part of a pattern of 500 firings of union leaders under Nayib Bukele's government, aimed at demoralizing organized labor and popular sectors resisting his policies. This repressive strategy seeks to conceal the impacts of fiscal adjustments carried out in partnership with the International Monetary Fund. These measures include:

• Over 11,000 public sector workers losing their jobs;
• Cutting benefits for state workers, such as wage scales in health and education, collective bargaining agreements, and other rights;
• Severe budget reductions across government departments, leading to further deterioration of public services, particularly in health and education. These measures will have a disproportionately harmful impact on working-class women and marginalized communities, resulting in increased economic recession.

Alongside our Secretary-General, 12 female CONAMYPE workers were also laid off as part of position eliminations. These measures led to the closure of three Micro and Small Business Support Centers in Zacatecoluca, La Libertad, and La Unión, adding to the earlier closure in Cojutepeque. These centers are vital economic development hubs. Paul Steiner, President of CONAMYPE, has enacted measures that contradict Bukele's inauguration speech promising "Economic Reactivation." These actions undermine essential services for micro and small businesses (MSEs), which account for 90% of the country’s enterprises, generate 70% of jobs, and contribute 35% of GDP.

Among the dismissed is our comrade José Ángel Flores Granados, maliciously targeted. He is the Secretary-General of SITCO, Secretary of Environment for UNT, and a renowned advocate for environmental and indigenous rights. He also coordinates the Indigenous Movement for the Integration of Ancestral Peoples’ Struggles (MILPA).

These actions aim to silence the working class and repress human rights defenders, dismantling hard-won achievements and weakening resistance against future assaults on labor and social conditions.

In response, the National Union for the Defense of the Working Class:

• DECLARES A RED ALERT in the face of imminent threats to our leadership.
• CALLS ON ALL human rights defenders to join the MDCT and persist in the struggle.
• ANNOUNCES a national and international campaign to defend the violated rights of union leaders and uphold the fundamental right to union freedom and association.
• ALERTS the international community, including the United Nations, International Labour Organization, Organization of American States, embassies, and Salvadoran consulates in democratic countries, to monitor the situation and activate appropriate mechanisms.
• ANNOUNCES the activation of national and international legal measures through the UN, ILO, IACHR, and other bodies, alongside public denunciations on both national and international levels.
• URGES the public to defend state institutions, as the government’s neoliberal agenda will inevitably lead to the privatization of essential public services like health and education.

To all defenders of human, labor, social, environmental, indigenous, LGBTQIAP+, women’s, youth, pensioners’, and workers’ rights: STRENGTHEN THE SPACES OF UNITY, such as the Movement for the Defense of Workers' Rights. Unity and continuous struggle are the only guarantees of victory.

Given the current economic and human rights conditions imposed on us, we are left with one viable response: A GENERAL STRIKE to transform oppression into justice.

We call on international labor organizations to:

• Send letters to Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador; Rolando Castro, Minister of Labor; and Raquel Caballero de Guevara, Deputy Human Rights Ombudswoman.
• Show solidarity with UNT through video messages from union leaders in your countries.
• Submit statements of condemnation to Salvadoran embassies and consulates, preferably before December 21, the date of our Black Christmas Pots and Pans Protest (Cacerolazo Negra Navidad).

In the face of neoliberal aggression: GENERAL STRIKE!
UNITY, RESISTANCE, AND STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE FOR THE WORKING CLASS
#BlackChristmas
National Union for the Defense of the Working Class, UNT
San Salvador, December 5, 2024