Central America

By MURRAY BUSH

fter 410 days of a
grueling strike and
occupation, the fab-
ric workers at the
Lunafil plant out-
side Guatemala City
returned to work,
only to begin a new
struggle.

Battered and bloodied by 14 months of
violence, harassment and isolation, the
union agreed to a contract settlement with
the plant owners in late July. The plant
finally reopened at the end of August.

The Lunafil union workers who still have
jobs at the plant are still isolated, still face
harassment from their employer and are
working under many of the same conditions
that prompted the strike back on June 9,
1987. They are also facing a new threat from
a staff association that has been set up at the
plant.

When the occupation began, 91 workers
sealed themselves inside the plant site. By
the end of the conflict, there were 39 left and
of those only 24 got their jobs back.

Under the Guatemalan Labour Code, if
the number of union members slips below
20, the union is automatically decertified at
the plant.

During the conflict, the union, a member
of the UNSITRAGUA labour organiza-
tion, demanded back pay and reinstatement
for fired and laid-off workers. That
included all 39 occupying workers who
were by then living in shacks built from
scrap wood, often without running water or
electricity, behind a 12-foot high concrete
wall the owners built around the site to
isolate them from their families and friends
and to restrict the passage of food over a
fence.

At one point in the conflict the owners
offered back pay, holiday pay and bonuses
if the workers would end their occupation.
But the union rejected the offer, holding out
for reinstatement of the workers laid offand
fired when the strike began.

Under the settlement finally reached in
late July, all the workers were not reinstated
and there was no back pay.

The company practised effective black-
mail. Throughout the conflict Lunafil con-
stantly repeated its threat to close down the
plant and move it elsewhere, leaving the
union workers out on the street and the
town of Amatitlan without its major
employer.

The workers occupying the plant faced
other threats. Soon after the strike began,
two Lunafil union leaders were kidnapped
by armed men, later to be released after
being spotted in police custody.

The plant owners hired El Bano, an
armed private police force, to patrol the
plant around the clock, they advertised
against the strike on radio and TV and they
launched a suit against the workers for
“trespassing” on the plant site.

The owners also removed trucks. the
workers had been sleeping in at the start of
the occupation and offered payoffs to entice
workers to leave the site.

As well, armed paramilitary groups
staged raids to try to take away the workers’
blankets in the night, to rip down their
banners and placards, and once to rip down
a barricade built at the entrance to the plant
to prevent trucks from entering and remov-
ing machinery or fabric.

The barricade was built by union suppor-
ters in May after some 200 government riot
police escorted trucks into the plant to
remove finished product — taking away
the union’s only bargaining lever, other
than the by-then rusting plant machinery.

With resources dwindling and the
workers frustrated, the contract settlement
was reached in late July and a month later
the plant reopened.

The strike was watched closely in Gua-
temala by both the union movement and
employers as a test case for the “democrati-
zation” process being carried out by Presi-
dent Vinicio Cerezo’s Christian Democrats

18 » Pacific Tribune, December 19, 1988

uatemalan union
battles on after
4-month strike

Family members and supporters pass food to strikers (top) over the fence built by
the employer to isolate workers occupying the plant. Below, a striker talks to his

wife through the chain link enclosure.

(the first civilian government in Guatemala
since a CIA-backed coup installed military
rule in 1954).

While the occupation showed a fierce
determination on the part of UNSITRA-
GUA and the Lunafil union, the results
show the weakness of Cerezo’s constitu-
tional labour law changes. The outcome
constitutes a heavy blow against trade
unionism in the country.

The strike garnered some international
support, but nothing close to the publicity
of the Coca-Cola workers strike-occupation,

which was aided the company’s multina-
tional ties.

The owners of Lunafil, which employs
about 200 workers, have hired non-union
workers and isolated the 24 remaining
union employees. The union members are
not allowed to talk to the non-union
workers at the plant. As well, at the end of
October, the owners introduced ‘“Solida-
rismo” at the plant, the ‘‘Christian alterna-
tive” to “Communist unions” that employ-
ers throughout the country are pushing
under the banner of labour peace.

The concept, imported from Costa Rica,
establishes or replaces unions with a
worker-management association through
which employees contribute a percentage of
their income and the company “matches”

the contribution (often actually advanced

sout of employees’ constitutionally guaran-
teed severance pay, not out of company
profits). The money is then invested for
“profit-sharing” and services such as com-
pany stores and social programs.

In the case of Lunafil, the employers
brought in Solidarismo with employees
contributing 41 per cent of their income.
They have promised that a store will be set
up to sell things such as TV sets at a dis-
count to Solidarismo members.

What the program does not offer are the
rights to strike'and to collective bargaining.

Under the Cerezo constitution, it takes at
least a year to legalize a union and any strike
vote needs passage by at least two-thirds of
the total number of workers in the plant.

Working conditions inside the Lunafil

plant are worse than before the occupation. —

Workers initially walked out after reject-
ing a company demand for 12-hour shifts
and a fourth shift that included work on
Saturday and Sunday. Under the new con-
tract there are both 12-hour shifts and the
fourth shift.

UNSITRAGUA had been counting in
part on Cerezo’s labour legislation changes.

But UNSITRAGUA spokesperson Byron
Morales says the Lunafil organizers repeat
edly asked for help from the government in

settling the dispute, but got little satisfac-.

tion.

“We are now supposed to be living in
state overflooded with laws, freedoms, acts
and legal clauses to protect our rights. The
fact is, however, that our laws exist on the
papers and in the pages of the constitution,

not in the garrisons and the headquarters of

the security forces, who are all too ready t0
ignore those ‘funny papers.”

He describes the conditions under which
UNSITRAGUA operates in its cramped
sixth-floor offices in downtown Guatemala
City:
“We have received anonymous phone
calls, where the callers say a bomb has bee?
planed that will shortly explode. And some
of the women have had trouble in the eleva"
tors. Men they don’t know get on the eleva
tors with them and start asking the wome?
questions about UNSITRAGUA, the?
won’t let them out of the elevator.

“The phones are tapped — there at@
times when you can tell that someone else 1s
listening. And people are always watching
the building to see who comes in and out.
From the building across the street, people
are watching with binoculars and takin&
pictures.”

Even with the civilian government,
business as usual for organizations such
UNSITRAGUA. Morales says that despit@
media and government reports ©
decrease in human rights violations, “We,
as members of UNSITRAGUA, maintal?
that even at this point the situation abou
human rights violations never changed 1°
the better. :

“Some conditions against human rights
have been tactically changed, leaving the
impression that an improvement has
reached. For example, the disappearances

it iS

(of activists) in the cities have decreé
remarkably, while at the same time de
pearances in the countryside have increas™
to incredible limits.”
Since 1983 there have been on
“legal” strikes in the country. : th
But despite the roadblocks put in 1s pa ‘
the labour organization remains optimist
“The people and the working class a -
doubled their efforts to build up our OFE
zations in order to reinforce and streng full
the way we present our demands for
respect of human rights,” says Morales-
Murray Bush is a member of the execute
of the Vancouver-New Westminster Ne ‘ast
paper Guild. He visited Guatemala
summer.

ly two