After years of toil and protest, the Nicaraguan textile union has achieved a major victory. On Apr. 4, the Managua Appeals Tribunal ruled that the Chentex factory must immediately reinstate all nine of the union leaders it fired and pay all back wages for the entire period in which they were illegally locked out. On May 10, Chentex complied peacefully, signing an agreement with the union, and on May 14, key union leaders returned to work.
Nicaraguan textile workers and their union had been leading an heroic struggle to increase wages at the Chentex factory in Las Mercedes free trade zone near Managua. Workers at Chentex sew blue jeans for U.S. retailers, including Kohl’s department store, at a rate of 30 cents per hour. The jeans sell in U.S. stores for between $24 and $30. Since Fall 1999, union organizers and workers had been asking for an eight cent wage increase. Along the way, their efforts were met with severe repression, including verbal and physical abuse, threats, surveillance, and bogus criminal charges. The union leaders were fired from their jobs at the factory in May 2000, following an Apr. 27 one-hour work stoppage. Due to management blacklisting and a high rate of national unemployment, none of the leaders had been able to find work elsewhere. Chentex owners even tried to bribe union leaders into giving up their fight with offers of the equivalent of three to four years’ wages. And yet, even under these circumstances of extreme duress, the workers refused to concede. Chentex management also attempted to derail the ruling with an appeal. But on Apr. 20, the court upheld the original judgment. The National Labor Committee, a leader in the U.S. solidarity movement, reported, “No transnational in the maquila sector had ever been ordered by the courts, in Nicaragua or elsewhere in Central America, to reinstate fired union leaders prior to this ruling.”
Credit is due to the union’s tireless efforts and solidarity demonstrations abroad. Throughout their struggle, the union has been accompanied by activist supporters in the U.S. and in Taiwan, the home of Chentex’s owners. As part of the Focus on Sweatshops initiative, CTA held a street demonstration at its national conference in Milwaukee last Nov. 3, urging Kohl's to support workers’ demands for a wage increase. Over 400 such demonstrations were held at Kohl's stores in the past year. Now anti-sweatshop activists have ended this campaign, and will turn their attention to other cases of sweatshop labor injustice. For full details about the Chentex victory, go to www.nlcnet.org.
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| Sixth annual Dood
Friday Stations of the Cross in Endicott, N.Y. attracted young people to walk
in solidarity with those suffering injustice. At the 10th station, where Jesus
was stripped of his clothing, they prayed for reform fo sweatshops that exploit
workers who make our clothes and sneakers. (Photo: Joe Coudriet) |