On Saturday, June 15^th, the United Confederation of Workers of El Salvador (CONFUERSA) elected its first board of directors in the confederation’s inaugural General Assembly. The activity was held at the headquarters of the Salvadoran Union Front (FSS), of which CONFUERSA is a member. Over 200 union leaders joined invited guests Humberto Centeno, Minister of Labor, and Medardo González, Secretary General of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party, at the celebratory event.

CONFUERSA represents 24,150 workers from 26 different unions and three labor federations: FUERSA, which represents workers from across the private sector, FESIPAES, which represents workers in the public sector and autonomous state institutions, and FESITRAM, the federation of municipal workers. The newly-born organization will serve “to combat the dispersion and atomization of the labor movement,” which has been systematically dismantled under right-wing neoliberal governance since the 1992 signing of the Peace Accords, said CONFUERSA’s newly-elected Secretary General Wilfredo Berríos. With the February 2014 presidential elections on the horizon, the FSS hopes to use CONFUERSA as a principal instrument of the popular struggle to ensure the continuation of the changes begun under this current and first FMLN administration.