The fight over a belt-tightening on social security benefits began on April 23, with labor organizations mobilizing throughout Panama. Unions from across industries and regions called for an indefinite strike. The largest construction workers’ union froze building projects. Protests blocked busy streets. Participating public teachers’ unions closed schools. In Bocas del Toro, a western Caribbean province bordering Costa Rica, thousands of banana workers stopped showing up to work at plantations.
In a shift from previous administrations, President José Raúl Mulino has doubled down on squashing mass mobilizations. In June, Mulino’s government suspended constitutional rights and communication services across the Bocas del Toro province to quell the protests led by banana workers and indigenous communities. On July 17, President Mulino’s Labor Ministry threatened the largest construction workers’ union, the Single National Union of Construction and Similar Workers (SUNTRACS), with legal dissolution. Four SUNTRACS leaders were criminally indicted, and two have since sought asylum abroad.
After an 81-day strike across various sectors, union members returned to work with zero de facto gains.
The general secretary of the largest banana workers’ union, SITRAIBANA, also faces criminal charges. After an 81-day strike across various sectors, union members returned to work with zero de facto gains. The Education Ministry has since threatened to fire hundreds of teachers who participated in the strike.
Mulino Won’t Budge on Pension Plan
Driven by a slipping bond rating, Mulino made social security reform his signature policy in his first year in office, 2024. On March 18, 2025, he signed Law 462, reforming the Social Security Fund (CSS), which aims to stabilize Panama’s pension system. The controversial reforms would result in a gradual increase in social security taxes from the previous 12.25 percent to 15.25 percent by March 2029.
Opponents argue the law also further entrenches existing class divides by establishing pensions based on a percentage of one’s salary, resulting in comfortable retirements for upper-class workers, while blue-collar workers will be forced to get by on as little as 60 percent of their salaries. The minimum pension is set at $265 per month, or $3,180 per year, in a country with a per capita income of $19,000 per year.
In 2022 and 2023, mass mobilizations were successful in winning concessions from Panama’s government. In 2022, post-pandemic inflation led to protests around the government’s failure to address the rising cost of living. With unions at the forefront of the fight, Panama’s government offered a temporary freeze on gasoline prices and launched a series of dialogues with social organizations.
In 2023, unions were a prominent presence in the fight against a controversial copper mine in the Caribbean province of Colón, owned by the Canadian corporation, First Quantum Minerals. Ultimately, Panama’s Supreme Court ruled the mine’s concession unconstitutional, and the president signed a moratorium on new metal mining concessions.
In a break from previous administrations, Mulino has cracked down on unions as the protagonists of the opposition to Law 462. At a press conference during the start of mass street protests in May of this year, Mulino stated, “Law 462 will not be revised.”
Targeting Banana Workers
Mulino has employed the harshest tactics in the Bocas del Toro province, where agricultural workers are primarily indigenous. Arcides Baker, the general secretary of the second-largest banana workers’ union, SITRAPBI, shared in an interview that his union, along with the larger SITRAIBANA, organized a general strike starting on April 28 to protest the social security reform and to demand that the government engage in dialogue with the banana workers. Approximately 7,480 union workers on the Chiquita-owned plantations joined the strike, according to Baker.
Within a month, Mulino’s government declared a state of emergency in the province, justifying the move as a reaction to vandalism and road blockages. Police began detaining citizens without cause. Meanwhile, documenting police abuses was made nearly impossible as the government also cut off internet access from June 20 to 30 in the region. The National Authority on Public Services (ASEP), a regulator of telecom companies, ordered a suspension of services in the province.
Baker described the violent suppression of protesters by the government, who were beaten or even fired at. Following the end of the state of emergency, the Panamanian Ombudsman’s Office published a preliminary report based on interviews with 186 detainees, which detailed 104 reported cases of abuse that included excessive force, beatings, prolonged handcuffing, and exposure to tear gas. Ninety-two people reported that they were detained without cause.
In June, the banana workers’s union won a momentary concession from the president. After meeting with Francisco Smith, general secretary of SITRAIBANA, President Mulino signed a reform in labor law for banana workers, increasing their pension benefits and recognizing the hazardous nature of the work by improving benefits for workers injured on the job. Two days after the law Smith had advocated for was signed, however, he was arrested on charges of advocating for criminal acts and crimes related to road blockades.
Chiquita, formerly known as United Fruit Company, engaged in a series of mass firings in June and July, eventually terminating more than 6,000 plantation-related workers. On August 29, Mulino announced he had reached a deal with Chiquita to eventually bring 5,000 of these jobs back to Panama by February 2026. Baker said that unions were not included in these negotiations.
Lawfare Against Construction Workers’ Unions
SUNTRACS, an approximately 85,000-member union, now faces a legal dissolution request from the country’s labor ministry.
The situation for the country’s largest construction workers union is equally dire. SUNTRACS, an approximately 85,000-member union, now faces a legal dissolution request from the country’s labor ministry. Meanwhile, four of its leaders are being prosecuted on a fraud case involving the sale of resort property to members of another union in lieu of payment. Abdiel Bethancourt, the defense secretary for SUNTRACS, called the dissolution attempt unprecedented.
“First, it’s illegal,” Bethancourt said at a protest outside the country’s legislature, the National Assembly. “Second, it’s the first time in history that the Ministry of Labor of this country has asked to dissolve a labor organization. It has never existed in the history of Panama.” Bethancourt also pointed to the exacerbation of inequality that Mulino’s social security reform promises. Many workers can now only expect pensions at 60 to 70 percent of their salaries, according to Bethancourt.
“The law forces workers to work more, to contribute more [to their pensions], and to have a smaller percentage when they retire,” Bethancourt said. “The best example right now are the judges. They receive 100 percent of their [salaries as] pensions. It was a special resolution. But the people, the great majority of the workforce, will not retire with 100 percent. The unions and social organizations of this country are against this.”
Legal affairs columnist Rodrigo Noriega said that he found the chief criminal case against SUNTRACS’s leadership “very flimsy.” The primary evidence in the fraud allegation was a difference in valuations of a resort property that SUNTRACS was given in lieu of payment for a project in which they were involved.
Repercussions for Teachers
Teachers’s unions joining the strike had one of the most broadly felt impacts. Fernando Ábrego, general secretary of the second-largest teachers’ union, ASOPROF, reiterated his opposition to the reforms. “It’s a law that will guarantee good pensions for an elite in Panama,” Ábrego said. “For people with around $4,000 or $5,000 salaries per month. We are talking about legislators, we are talking about judges, and we are talking about commissioners. But not for the rest of the country.”
ASOPROF, with approximately 6,400 members, as well as other striking teachers’ unions, returned to work after the 81-day general strike. Ábrego said 295 educators face potential firing for “abandonment” of their jobs, a process Ábrego considers illegitimate, arguing teachers have a right to strike.
“It’s a model of rule that is authoritarian,” Ábrego said of the president’s response to strikes across the country. “It’s a savage imposition of neoliberal, anti-popular politics, that’s the only form to impose these financial and economic policies on the Panamanian people. Casting aside the option of dialogue, the option of debate.” As Mulino promised in May, he has made no revisions to his social security reform.
Corey Kane is an independent journalist focused on the environment in Panama. He has written for Ecoaméricas, The Tico Times, and the Houston Chronicle.