Sources: Dow Jones Newswires

July 15, 2009
 
SANTIAGO (Dow Jones) -- Chile's civil workers' union, the Association of Fiscal Employees, began a 48-hour strike Tuesday to protest job instability and failed labor overhauls.

The two-day strike is intended to bring the government to the negotiation table over both the gendarmerie labor-overhaul law and job security, as many government employees work on fixed contracts.

The gendarmerie is Chile's prison police.

Ninety percent of government services are currently frozen, with the exception of the civil registry, which plans to join the strike Wednesday, according to the workers' union, known by its Spanish acronym as Anef.

Thursday is a national holiday in Chile, so government offices won't re-open until Friday, at the earliest.

"The strike will continue until the government takes action," Angela Rife, Anef's vice president for international relations, recently told Dow Jones.

Last week, the union announced plans to strike in solidarity with the gendarmerie, which has been on strike since the beginning of the month in protest of the government's veto of a law that would improve labor conditions for the Ministry of Justice's civil servants.

"We hope that during this period, in which Congress is discussing the gendarmerie law, parliament and the unions can ensure that the government sits down to negotiate and uses dialogue to reach a consensus with workers," Anef President Raul de la Puente told La Segunda evening newspaper on Tuesday.

By Risa Grais-Targow

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