Exploited Labor: News & Updates

According to payment vouchers for the current melon season for companies of Fyffes in Honduras, they are not paying the minimum wage which was decreed for the agriculture sector in 2020. In April 2020, International Labor Rights Forum, Fair World Project, and the International Union of Food Workers published a report alleging ongoing labour rights violations faced by 6,500 workers on Fyffes’ melon plantations in Honduras since 2016. Abuses detailed in the report include toxic chemical exposure, wage theft, union busting and poor working conditions made more unsafe amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Fyffes is the top importer of melons to the United States, which are sold in major supermarkets across the country. In 2019, Costco and Whole Foods stopped buying Fyffes' Honduran melons due to the ongoing allegations.

Unit, a new tech startup, is looking to bolster private-sector unionization rates by focusing on small workplaces that do not normally get the attention of large labor groups across the US. The company, launched in December 2020, offers individual groups looking to organize software tools, a web app, and dedicated staff who act as labor advisers to better help clients navigate unionization efforts. To begin with, individuals can invite their coworkers onto the platform. Once enough interest in unionizing builds up, Unit assigns a full-time adviser to the drive. "We have a mission to support the rights of workers to organize and improve their places of work,"  Unit founder Jaimie Earl White said. "Mission-wise, that is very aligned with the traditional labor movement and what people have been trying to do for centuries."

More than two months of a hunger strike have wreaked havoc on the health of Florenzi apparel factory workers, so they decided to break their strike and celebrate the progress in their case. For the Florenzi Women's Collective, it all began last July, when, after being dismissed without justification, they took over the factory where they assemble medical gowns and blouses. After the first month without eating solid food, workers were finally given an audience with El Salvador’s Minister of Labor, Rolando Castro. Then on March 10 they met with Judge Daisy Abrego, from the First Court of Labor Justice, to begin the process of investigating their claims. "We feel victorious. The strike is stopped, but the struggle and the taking of Florenzi we maintain," said José Rivas. He and co-worker Nuria Martínez maintained their hunger strike for 64 days. Workers say that although they have stopped the hunger strike, they will continue their struggle to ensure that their rights are met. Among other grievances, workers report that the company, Industrias Florenzi, did not pay four months of salary owed to the 210 employees, nor the legally required severance pay, vacation pay, or bonuses.

Right-wing Central American politicians are applauding Plan Biden, a US strategy promising corporate investment in return for neoliberal reforms. They pledge to remain in the US “sphere of influence” and isolate China and Russia, while calling for regime change against Nicaragua’s leftist government. Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal investigated the extensive damage that Biden’s neoliberal policies have already wreaked on Central America, when he served as vice president and the point man for the region in the Barack Obama administration. Now that he is president, Biden is repurposing the Obama-era policies and expanding them.

“Women Organized in Resistance” reads the banner hanging on the wall behind these women textile workers who are making their struggle very public. Draped over the table where they sit is another banner: “Together We Break the Chains.” Rina Vargas explains what’s going on: “Today marks the 55th day of the hunger strike and we can affirm that the Salvadoran State and the institutionality that it defends so much has failed the working class. The constitution of the republic is used at the convenience of economic power, the foreign-owned companies are defended, but thousands of workers who produce wealth in this country are abandoned.”

Teacher unions are staging protests in Bogota today over unfulfilled government agreements and to call for safe conditions in order to return to classes following school closures due to the pandemic. Teachers will stage a rally outside the Ministry of Education, where they will present a series of conditions over the reopening of schools.

On July 1, 2020, more than 200 workers were fired from the Industrias Florenzi textile factory without receiving salaries, bonuses, or full severance payments (as required by law). A few days after the dismissals, factory personnel took over the facilities where the hunger strikers continue to demand justice. Many unions and other organizations in El Salvador are supporting this feminist struggle and are offering the former workers workshops on labor rights, gender, education and sexual health. Some say it has helped them empower themselves personally and in their work cause.

Corporal Pierre Jean responds to the call of a disturbance in Farmworker Village, gets out of his patrol car seemingly bent on imposing his will on a man who is clearly not well — though, equally clearly, not a real threat — and, within seconds of arriving, rushes him, boxes him in, and shoots him dead. A bad thing — a horrible, preventable, violent death at the hands of the police — has happened. That much doesn’t change.