Honduras | HR | PRESS RELEASE The teacher Rommel Baldemar has been deprived of his liberty arbitrarily for 480 days …
FESTRAS union leader brutally beaten
Odilia Caal Có, local leader in a branch of the IUF-affiliated Federación Sindical de Trabajadores de la Alimentación y Afines Servicios y Similares (FESTRAS) was brutally beaten earlier this month in an attack which left her with multiple injuries including a broken rib. The attack took place in an export processing zone (maquiladora) on the premises of Winners Textil.
We are all Odilia Caal Có
Odilia Caal Có, general secretary of the Winner Workers’ Union (Sitrawinner), was held against her will in the offices of the company, where she was beaten and threatened until she signed a statement withdrawing from the union. The Korean-owned Winners Textil maquiladora company makes clothes for several companies that are very well-known around the globe. In that microcosm, labor persecution is characterized by brutally violent practices and vicious harassment.
A battle has been won, but the struggle continues
A vigorous and effective denunciation campaign succeeded this past Tuesday, June 9, in blocking the submission to congress of a proposed amendment to Provisional Measure 927, which establishes a 20-minute break for every 1.4 hours worked in meatpacking plants.
“They plan to solve the problem with more neoliberalism”
Honduras is a nationwide living experiment for testing out political, social, and economic trends that are later transplanted to other latitudes. The 2009 coup d’état heralded similar situations that would soon spread across Latin America. Labor reform, the invasion of paid-by-the-hour and intermittent work, political assassinations disguised as crimes of passion, criminalization and judicialization of popular struggles, a new penal code, the application of novel union-busting tactics, and institutionalized and unpunished corruption. Of that pandemic, Honduras is the hotspot.
Coronavirus and human rights
The multinational corporation Arcor called on police forces to prevent biosecurity controls from being carried out in the Bagley Córdoba plant, which specializes in cookie production, and to silence workers’ demands.
White flags signaling hunger
Thousands of Guatemalans, poverty-stricken men and women, are suffering the most brutal effect of the coronavirus pandemic: hunger. And they are flying a white flag in their homes calling out for help, Carlos Luch, general secretary of the Union of Workers of Embotelladora Central SA (Stecsa), told La Rel.
JBS, arrogance and greed
April 8 marked another anniversary of the death of Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady,” whose steely eyes looked unmoved upon the suffering masses as they fell by the millions into the abyss of social dispossession.
Cargill’s union busting ways
Today marks two years since Cargill workers in Turkey were fired for attempting to form a union.
Human rights organizations back the OHCHR report
Dozens of human rights organizations gathered as the Coalition against Impunity and Convergence against Continuity, having read the human rights violations report issued on Wednesday, January 22, by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), support and ratify the denunciation of the repeated human rights violations perpetrated by the State of Honduras.