El Salvador Union and Worker News Bulletin (September 2006)
Produced by CRISPAZ-El Salvador
In this Issue:
1) Hermosa Maquila Workers Put Former Boss in the Hotseat Go
2) Salvadoran Labor Activist Freed Thanks to International Pressure Go
3) Victory for Salvadoran Labor!: Legislative Assembly Approves ILO Conventions Go
4) Court Decision Forces Labor Ministry to Recognize Industry-wide Unions Go
5) Just Garments Gets a Makeover Go
6) Water Workers’ Union Receives Death Threat Go
7) CRISPAZ Hosts Student Delegation on Labor Rights in El Salvador Go
____________________________________________
Hermosa Maquila Workers Put Former Boss in the Hotseat
Women workers from the now-closed “Hermosa Manufacturing” maquila factory announced that Hermosa owner, Joaquin Salvador Montalvo, will be the subject of a court hearing set for September 1 in the city of Apopa . The women are suing their former boss for failure to pass on their social security and pension deductions to the government agencies responsible for those accounts. Montalvo now operates a maquiladora known as MB Knitting Mills in Guazapa, 20 miles from San Salvador.
The women’s pay stubs show deductions for Social Security and pension payments, but Montalvo failed to pass those deductions to the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (ISSS) and pension fund. Hermosa workers report that many employees got a rude awakening when they visited public hospitals and were told that they could not be served because they had not paid into the system. Workers say that Social Security authorities and Montalvo worked out a partial payment deal, whereby some women received care at government facilities, while others were arbitrarily shut out. Many pregnant women were denied pre-natal care as a result of the negligent payments.
Now Montalvo is in the hot seat. It’s not the first time: workers previously occupied his factory for months when Montalvo closed Hermosa and attempted to move equipment to the MB Mills site 20 miles away. Former Hermosa workers have opened lawsuits against their former boss for back wages, pension money, and social security payments. The September 1 hearing will define if there is enough evidence to move to trial in the pension case. The other cases are pending.
Hermosa workers are asking that interested persons and unions send the following letter to El Salvadoran President Tony Saca, to bring their former boss to justice for his negligent actions. Click here for the letter: SPANISH version; ENGLISH version.
Salvadoran Labor Activist Freed Thanks to International Pressure
On July 6th “Daniel Morales” became a household name for union members and labor activists around the world. The youth was arrested the night of July 5th after a student protest in front of El Salvador’s National University turned ugly and resulted in the shooting deaths of two policemen.
In response to the shootings, authorities initiated a wave of repression against unions and student organizations. On the night of July 5th, fifteen riot police raided the offices of the Union Coordinator of Salvadoran Workers (CSTS in Spanish) where Daniel serves as Secretary of Press and Propaganda. Daniel was tortured and beaten and told by police agents that, “you just lost all your rights.”
When police uncovered a rifle at the scene, Morales was charged with illegal possession of a fire arm. (The rifle belonged to a security guard who is part of a CSTS-affiliated union.)

Morales Before and After International Solidarity
That’s when international union solidarity kicked in. A shocking photo of a jailed Morales surrounded by members of the “Mara 18” street gang was circulated in labor and activist circles around the internet. Letters started pouring in. Unions in Chile, Uruguay, Pais Vasco, Honduras, Nicaragua, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Germany and the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center in the US sent support. Daniel was released four days later.
“I didn’t know so many [unions] existed,” says Morales, as he displays an impressive pile of letters that demanded his freedom.
Now free to speak about what happened on the night of July 5th, Morales met with CRISPAZ reporters in the same CSTS office which was the site of the police raid and his arrest.
He pointed to a couple of stains on the wall. “That’s blood,” he says calmly. The stains have faded to gray and look like they may have dripped from his nose. “First they put me face down on the floor. They wouldn’t let me look to the side.” There were five agents standing over him, their boots on his back and head, he says.
“Then, they made me stand on my knees facing the wall. If I leaned back, they knocked me into place with their rifle butts.”
Things got even rougher when police found the gun in the search, “Even though I was hand-cuffed, they tried to put the rifle in my hands to get my fingerprints on it. I kept my hands clenched,” he says. Morales also relays how he was thrown in the back of a pickup truck as police drove him around in an effort to intimidate him. He was taken to five jails in a row. He finally landed at the Casa de Monserrat, Bartolina 911, where the famous photo with the gang members was eventually taken.
“The government wanted to scare us and stop us from organizing. They want to use the CSTS as an example of what could happen to an organization that was struggling for basic rights. But exactly the opposite happened. Thanks to the show of support, we feel stronger now knowing that we are not alone.”
Still, Morales is taking precautions. He says he received death threats before July 5th, and that he continues to receiving intimidating phone calls at home. Now, he says, even his mother is getting calls inquiring about him at her home.
“After 20 years in power, the Government is afraid that our organizations will expose their criminality and fraud,” says Morales, “That’s why they are attacking our organizations.”
Victory for Salvadoran Labor!: Legislative Assembly Approves ILO Conventions
The Salvadoran Legislative Assembly approved ILO Conventions 87 & 98 by a
unanimous 84-0 vote on August 24. Union members hailed the vote as a long-awaited victory.
“Salvadoran unionists have fought for years and many have given their lives to see these Accords approved,” said Wilfredo Berrios of the Salvadoran Union Front.
Conventions 87 and 98 were inaugurated in 1948 and 1949 respectively and establish the basic workplace rights for millions of workers around the world. They guarantee workers the right to free union association and collective bargaining. Until the vote, El Salvador was the only Central American nation not to have ratified them.
The ARENA-led government resisted decades of demands for their ratification until three months ago, when the European Union threatened to suspend El Salvador’s preferential trade status. Then Grupo Calvo, a Spanish-owned firm that runs a large fishery in La Union, said it could not risk losing the trade benefits, laid off 300 workers and moved processing work to Honduras. ARENA legislators suddenly announced that Conventions 87 and 98 were a priority for legislative approval.
Government officials and ARENA party representatives are concerned that approval of the accords will lead to a unionized public sector workforce, which could put the brakes on plans to privatize many public sector jobs. Amendments were passed that prohibit officers of the National Civil Police and soldiers from unionizing. ARENA legislators also won a vote to nullify the right to strike for workers in “vital services,” such as healthcare, the courts, water delivery and the electricity maintenance.
Both measures were approved by a simple majority, however, and need a two-thirds majority approval in the following Assembly session (beginning in 2009) for them to take effect.
Court Decision Forces Labor Ministry to Recognize Industry-wide Unions
Unionized workers in El Salvador’s privatized telecommunications sector won a major court decision in their struggle to form an industrial union last week. The Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ in Spanish) found that the Salvadoran Labor Ministry acted improperly when it denied legal status to SITCOM, an industrial union comprised of telephone, radio, TV and cable TV workers.
The CSJ decision requires that the Labor Ministry allow SITCOM to present its documentation for a second hearing. The union of Telecom workers, SUTTEL, brought the case and waited three years for a decision.
“This is a precedent setting decision for workers throughout El Salvador,” said Wilfredo Berrios of SUTTEL, “Organizing an industrial union makes workers less vulnerable to attacks from transnational corporations that try to violate our rights and repress our wages.”
Berrios adds that since SITCOM members hail from a variety of communication companies, it will have more capacity to weather corporate attacks on worker organization at any one company. That benefits workers, he says. SUTTEL represents workers at the multi-national Telecom, formerly known as ANTEL, the state-run telephone company in El Salvador which was privatized in 1996. Telecom is currently owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
Just Garments Gets a Makeover
Just Garments, the only worker-owned maquiladora in El Salvador, has undergone a makeover. The company has received enough financing to buy itself clear from debt and transform its production model.
The company will sew ready-to-dye natural (off white) cotton t-shirts and will have a US-based fair trade distributor (http://www.seacinternational.com/about.html) handle orders.
“Now everything is in place for a one-week turnaround from placing the order to receiving it. Our new plan resolves a lot of the logistical problems we had before with working across borders,” said Gilberto Garcia, a member of the Just Garments Board of Directors.
The company has built a special arrangement with Comfort Colors of Vermont (www.dyehouse.com) to dye Just Garments shirts for US and Canadian-based orders. Garcia says that the shirts will cost a competitive $3.50 un-dyed, and around $4.25 with color.
Just Garments workers currently make $158 monthly, about 5% higher than the Salvadoran minimum wage for garment work. Garcia says that once the orders start rolling in, Just Garments hopes to increase wages by 15-20% from their current levels.
“The idea is that we become a model company where the pay covers more of cost of living than what today’s salaries cover.”
Orders and inquiries can be sent to info@justgarments.net or visit www.justgarments.net
Water Workers’ Union Receives Death Threat
Union workers from SETA, which represents workers at El Salvador’s National Water Administration (ANDA) received in their office an anonymous death threat in an unmarked envelope on July 25.

“Article 7 of the Constitution [of El Salvador] gives us the right to organize ourselves freely and form unions. Repression against us is a demonstration that we’re doing our organizing job well,” said Wilfredo Romero, General Secretary at SETA.
Meanwhile, government plans to disband ANDA privatize El Salvador’s water management moved a step forward. ANDA Director Carlos Funes announced that the proposal for a Water Reform Law was 80% complete and would be introduced for debate in the National Assembly before the end of 2006.
The proposal would transfer water management to the municipal level and force local governments to contract water services to private companies. Similar arrangements in other Latin American countries have led to reduction in water quality and higher rates.
CRISPAZ Hosts Student Delegation on Labor Rights
From July 24th to August 3rd, CRISPAZ hosted a delegation of 8 Jesuit university students from Georgetown, St. Joseph’s, Xavier and Loyola College, Baltimore and a representative of United Students Against Sweatshops for an eleven day El Salvador Encounter. It was the third CRISPAZ delegation focused specifically on economic justice issues and students support for workers’ movements and fair trade initiatives in El Salvador.
This year’s Encounter focused on the struggle of union organizing and fair trade in the Salvadoran and global context and how students can work to support these struggles. The group met with workers who have met resistance to their organizing efforts by the company’s they work for, clothing labels and the Salvadoran government.
The group spent the night in the homes of members of a coffee cooperative that sells to the fair trade coffee company, Equal Exchange. We learned about the formation of the cooperative, the growing, harvesting and processing of the coffee, but most importantly, we met the people who benefit from the fair trade movement.
The students met and networked with Salvadoran students, labor leaders and organizers, artisans and coffee growers to gather ideas and resources for their social justice work back on campus.
Through delegations like this one, CRISPAZ supports the formation of Jesuit university students in their organizing with other students for peace, justice and economic liberation. CRISPAZ remains committed to contributing to a student movement that includes the voices of Salvadorans on Jesuit campuses across the country.
“This trip reinforced the harsh realities of injustice that I as a citizen of the US am so directly connected to. I came to El Salvador with a theoretical understanding of poverty, economic injustice and inequality, but experienced everything that academia can never convey—the human face of a collective struggle against the current oppressive economic system of power and wealth.” --Sara Wallace-Keeshan
“This delegation was precisely the kind of motivation and empowerment needed to return to our universities and mobilize our work for social justice.” –Earl Aguilera