Municipal workers of Americas create a new regional organisation

The founding congress elected the CONTRAM Executive Board and debated issues including tax justice and the ways that corruption and tax evasion damage municipal services; the threats presented by free trade agreements; the fight against privatization and corruption; and the organization of women, youth and LGBT people, and the unity of all municipal workers in the Americas.

Sixteen Executive Board members (eight titular, eight substitute) were elected following PSI guidelines of gender balance, with 50% female and 50% male members. The titular members are: Rubén García (Argentina),  Darío Restrepo (Colombia), Lairet Figueroa (Venezuela), Yesenia Jirón (Nicaragua), Mirtha Arias Noguer (Paraguay), Joao Domingos dos Santos (Brasil) and Paula Leite (Brasil). Substitute members are: Mariana Chicaiza (Ecuador), Juan Bautista Estrada (Colombia), Ana María Ríos (Honduras), Juan Camilo Bustamante (Chile), Odenir Guterres (Brasil), Karla Lucía Alves (Brasil) y Melvin Armando López (El Salvador). The nominations of a male titular representative from Mexico and a female substitute representative from Paraguay are still pending.  

Representatives from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela, and an observer from the Caribbean attended the founding Congress. The event received support from the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation (FES), GdG-KmSfB (Austria) and SUTSPEEH, the trade union of workers of the State of Hidalgo, Mexico.

At the end of the CONTRAM-PSI Americas in Mexico, seven trade unions organisations from Brasil affiliated to PSI.