Workers' rights get new attention
SAN SALVADOR -- In a routine that varied little for seven years, Miriam Jurez, a 42-year-old single mother, rose at dawn and endured 12-hour days bent over a sewing machine at Doall Industries, where she and hundreds of other maquila, or factory, workers earned $142 a month pumping out clothing for Liz Claiborne and other famous US brands.
The longer she worked, the angrier she became.
''More than anything, we wanted them to enforce the law and to respect us," said Jurez, a former leftist guerrilla who lost her husband during the country's 12-year civil war. Her eyes flashed as she told how her bosses denied workers their rights, including medical care, overtime, and paid vacations. She also described verbal abuse by employers and said pregnant workers were often denied permission to see a doctor.
Last year, Jurez began talking to other workers about forming a union. But instead of improving conditions at the factory, she and several dozen other union organizers lost their jobs in May. Doall officials defended the firings, citing a slump in work orders at the Korean-owned factory, which is one of roughly 240 foreign-owned assembly plants operating in El Salvador's 15 free zones.
Jurez is one of hundreds of maquila workers who say their rights have been violated by employers who flout El Salvador's labor laws with impunity, complaints that are echoed by workers in countries throughout the region. Human rights groups have long bemoaned the failure of Central American governments to enforce their own labor laws, an issue that could delay implementation of the planned US-Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA.
A Liz Claiborne executive said the New York-based company had a local representative in El Salvador who monitored labor conditions at the factory, a practice the company follows in all countries where it contracts out clothing production.
''In many cases, we make good progress," said Roberta Karp, senior vice president for Liz Claiborne corporate affairs and the company's senior counsel. ''But in other cases, the progress is not enough." She noted that the company intervened in a factory dispute at another Doall plant in El Salvador in 1999, persuading the company to rehire several dozen fired workers.
That plant closed earlier this year, citing a slump in contracts. But Karp said company officials would have to investigate the recent firings at the Santa Tecla plant to see whether they were due to union issues or cost-cutting measures.
''It's got to be clear. It would be inappropriate for us to manage their business," she said.
Marlene Lpez, a labor lawyer who took Jurez's case to court, is convinced her client was fired for standing up for her rights in a country where power has traditionally been held by a tiny ruling elite. ''In El Salvador, the fact that companies violate the law by firing union workers isn't even news. Everyone knows it," said Lpez, who represents hundreds of maquila workers each year in cases alleging violations by their employers.The problem of unenforced labor laws in Central America is receiving close attention in Washington, where CAFTA is becoming a campaign issue.
President Bush strongly supports the agreement, saying it will create thousands of new jobs for American workers and protect the textile industry from competition from China when global textile quotas are eliminated starting Jan. 1.
CAFTA, which would immediately eliminate tariffs among the United States and five Central American countries, was due to be in place by January. But it's not clear whether Bush will push for a potentially contentious vote in Congress before the November elections.
Critics of the agreement, including Senator John F. Kerry, say it does not do enough to protect workers' rights and would force US companies to compete with rivals in countries where labor laws are routinely ignored.
Alex Hong, a factory manager at Doall, denied his company discriminated against unions, two of which he said operate at the plant. ''We always act within the law," he said in a telephone interview, adding that all the fired workers received severance packages.
But Edwin Flores, the leader of one of the unions, said together they represent only 65 of the plant's 600 workers. He noted that as recently as January, the company was refusing workers' access to government health care.
Karp, the Liz Claiborne executive, said her company was alerted to the problem and persuaded management to start paying its health care dues.
''The companies do everything they can to keep unions small, and the Labor Ministry does what it can to help them," said Gilberto Garca, a leading Salvadoran labor activist who was invited to speak before the US Congress in March on labor abuses in his country.
Garca also contributed to a December report on abuses in El Salvador's maquilas by New York-based Human Rights Watch. The report, titled ''Deliberate Indifference," argued that ''because labor laws are weak and government enforcement is often begrudging or nonexistent, employers who flout the law have little worry that they will suffer significant consequences."
Government officials say the report, as well as another recent study by the British organization Oxfam, is biased and does not take into account recent improvements in labor conditions in the country.
''All they want is to cause damage to a sector that is creating a huge number of jobs," said Jorge Nieto, the country's labor minister. He said the government had worked closely with the International Labor Organization to modernize the country's labor codes and that ''our laws are as good as the most developed country."Nieto cited a recent law making it a jailable offense for employers to withhold social security and health care payments by employees. Another prohibits employers from forcing prospective workers to take pregnancy tests.
Other officials argued that CAFTA would improve labor conditions by putting El Salvador and other Central American countries under a microscope.
''For us, it's not only about access to markets, but about consolidating the reforms we've implemented so far," said Miguel Lacayo, the country's Harvard-educated minister of economy. He said he hoped El Salvador would be able to move away from unskilled maquila-based jobs to skilled industries under CAFTA.
But labor activists argue that there is little to guarantee that the agreement won't perpetuate widespread abuses.
Lpez, the labor lawyer, took 500 cases to court last year and has filed another 100 cases so far this year on behalf of female maquila workers. Many of the cases involved women who lost their jobs after Carolina Apparel International, a subsidiary of North Carolina-based Rives Apparel International, closed its Salvadoran plant in December. The company, which produced clothing for famous US labels, left without paying several weeks' salary and severance packages to its 350 workers, she said.
The lawsuits are now in limbo, since there is no company representative left in the country to confront the charges. Attempts to get comment from the company were unsuccessful. Telephones at its head offices in High Point, N.C., have been disconnected.
Labor activists say that in some ways Salvadoran workers are worse off today than before the war. In his speech to members of congress, Garca cited figures showing that 2 percent of the country's 2.5 million workers are unionized, compared with 10 percent during the war.
''Before, labor leaders were fired, jailed, kidnapped, or killed. It was one of the causes of the civil war," said Joselito Acosta, a union leader who has spent two years fighting efforts by
The company finally backed down in February after Acosta and other labor leaders took their campaign to Washington and met with Representative James P. McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, and other members of Congress.
''Today, they don't kill you," Acosta said. ''They just fire you, because they know there will be 15 more people waiting to take your place."