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Puerto Rican teachers, who are threatening to strike for higher pay, on Wednesday found themselves without union representation after a ruling by the U.S. commonwealth's Commission on Public Service Worker Relations.

The institution withdrew its certification of the Federation of Teachers as the exclusive representative of the 42,000 employees of the Department of Education.

The commission justified the move by noting that Puerto Rican law prohibits striking or any other activity "that entails the interruption of work."

Union chief Rafael Feliciano criticized the decision as "an attack on the right to free expression," and he announced that he will appeal the move in the courts and said that "the rights to union (representation) and to strike cannot be separated."

The measure also orders the Federation to immediately halt the collection of dues from its members, establishes a fine of $30,000 and prohibits its president and 19 members of its executive committee from occupying leadership posts in unions for the next five years.

Meanwhile, the spokesman for Puerto Rico's Union Coordinator, Luis Pedraza Leduc, reaffirmed on Wednesday the "unconditional support" of his organization for the Federation.

Pedraza Leduc said that the decision responded to the interest of the government to install "a union linked to management interests."

"All this is coldly calculated. Through announcements and legal measures they are going to try and distract the teacher from the heart of the matter, the negative attitude of management toward negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the Federation of Teachers," he added.

Feliciano is calling for the government to commit to bringing teachers' base salaries up to around $2,500 a month within three years and to abandon any idea of privatizing the schools.

The average instructor's salary currently stands at about $19,200 per year.

Acevedo Vila last month decreed a $100 increase in teachers' salaries, which Feliciano called "a pittance, a joke" that, taking inflation and taxes into account, will result in a net increase of only $40 per month.

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Puerto Rican teachers now without union representatives

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"the rights to union (representation) and to strike cannot be separated.".[/QB]

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Not unlike Canadian essential workers or Canadian Government workers who can be legislated back to work. Decert is a round about way of having government do what it has the right to do anyway, namely stop the strike and order folk back to work. On the other hand, typically if the union knew that it was doing was an act against the law, they could have been left as union representatives, and possibly jailed or fined, but having your union folk in the pokey is similar to having them removed.....