Support for trade union service capabilities - CNT-Affiliated Public Service Union to Offer Child Care

On 25 July, the USO’s NGO for development SOTERMUN (Spain) and the CNT-affiliated national public workers’ union, UNTE-SN, of Paraguay, will be opening a nursery in the capital Asunción with places for 120 children aged 0 to 5 years.

Cooperation to build trade union capacities usually takes the form of training and education for union representatives and support for trade union infrastructures. As in this case, however, support is also given for the benefits the union is able offer its members or the public in general. This also contributes to boosting the union’s prestige and membership base, especially in a country with such a dearth of public resources and where inequalities are so extreme.

The work on this project, which has now come to fruition, commenced in 2010, after SOTERMUN-USO succeeded in securing funding worth 102,674 euros from the Madrid Community. Today, in the context of turbulent times and an institutional coup that has ousted the democratically elected president, Fernando Lugo, we are showing our unconditional solidarity with the working people and our sister nation of Paraguay, as well as with the decent and progressive political, trade union and social organisations that represent the Paraguayan people. We add our voice to the social and popular appeal at Paraguayan, Latin American and international level for President Lugo to be returned to his post, for constitutional order to be restored and for democratic procedures and timeframes to be respected, so that the Paraguayan people, and them alone, can exercise their sovereign right to determine the president and the government they wish to represent them at the next elections in 2013.

The Director of SOTERMUN, Manuel Zaguirre, who took part as an accredited international observer in the elections won by Fernando Lugo in April 2008, will travel to Paraguay in mid July (as part of a solidarity mission already scheduled). He will take this opportunity to reiterate, in situ, the support for the democratic process and our solidarity with the fight for social justice in a country, Paraguay, where SOTERMUN-USO has a long history of cooperation with numerous social and trade union organisations.

By Area Internacional - USO