GUATEMALA'S LABOR MOVEMENT Coke Victory Spurs Recovery
Slaughter, Jane
The Guatemalan labor movement is showing signs of recovery after the intense repression of the last half dozen years. Being a union officer is still a high-risk job. The kidnappings...
...The Coke union got its international federation to send telegrams, even though the strikers were not federation members...
...The last time the Guatemalan movement gathered on May Day, in 1980, 90 people were disappeared that same day, either picked out of the crowd or taken from their homes later that evening...
...Plainclothes police patrolled outside, and the Army set up roadblocks, stopping passing cars and occasionally firing shots...
...Problems are similar to those of unions anywhere...
...No Coke bottles move down the conveyors, the red and white trucks that carry the worldwide symbol of U.S...
...The organization does not have its own press or mimeograph...
...When the Tejidos Universales company began removing machinery from the factory-and two union leaders disappeared--CONUS gave counsel on how to deal with the Ministry of Labor and how to obtain severance pay...
...CONUS helps organize new unions, and tries to give tactical and political advice to the less experienced...
...At first Coke officials refused to take any responsibility for the plant, travelling to Europe to explain to STEGAC's supporters that the plant was not viable...
...This year, the only May Day celebration was the Coke workers', 16 REPORT ON ThE AMERICAS I REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16behind the walls of the occupied factory...
...CONUS came to the plant on the second day...
...Inside the Guatemala City CocaCola bottling plant, the atmosphere is quiet...
...That agreement was made between the parent company and the International Union of Food and Allied Workers Associations (IUF...
...The company agreed to pay each worker a lump sum amounting to two and half months' pay as reimbursement for the work they had done in maintaining the plant, and set up a $12,000 trust fund for the survivors of those killed in 1978-80...
...soft-drink imperialism are parked...
...On June 17, management fired 12 union members and five members of the executive committee, reducing the workforce to only 19...
...This is what can happen," he says, "when you don't have a strong union...
...ganizing...
...The occupation came four months before elections designed to prove to the world-in particular the U.S...
...And workers at the ALINSA aluminum plant appear to have been inspired by the Coke example...
...The May 27 agreement was signed only by STEGAC and Coke's Central American subsidiary...
...In this way Guatemalan workers have been able to keep the government from destroying the movement by picking off its leaders...
...the office workers and professionals-las corbatas (the ties)--consider themselves above the street cleaners, drivers, construction workers and park employees from which the new slate is largely drawn...
...Yet there is more activity than there was a year ago...
...But necessity is making us struggle...
...Saving the Union, Not Just Jobs The agreement legitimized the union's occupation of the plant, and the Army's roadblocks are gone...
...Memories of June 21, 1980 are vivid: 27 leaders of the National Workers Central (CNT) were disappeared from union headquarters in one sweep...
...In June a reform slate took office in SCTM, the municipal workers' union in Guatemala City...
...Normalcy And Terror It is almost possible to forget for a moment that the Guatemalan labor movement functions under the shadow of the death squads...
...Nor do there seem to be tense preparations against a possible police take-over of the worker-occupied factory...
...The employers seek ways to get around the contract...
...At the first meeting called to form CONUS, there were only three people...
...The May 1 bulletin explained that CONUS was not calling a May Day demonstration this year...
...The SCTM A priest says mass in the warehouse for the occupying Coke workers...
...This time Coke refused "in principle" to deal with the IUF, also refusing to take direct control of the plant, as the unions suggested...
...Though impressive, the solidarity was unsuccessful in reversing the firings, and management accomplished its goal of busting the union: under Guatemalan law a union must have at least 20 members...
...The international attention focused on their struggle for union rights in 1980 had forced the Atlanta-based CocaCola Co...
...Now the workers staff the plant on 24-hour shifts, except for the union officers, who are inside most of the time...
...Now CONUS has approximately 30 unions affiliated...
...One index of the severity of the repression the labor movement has suffered is that CONUS' predecessor, CNUS, had 150 member unions...
...Some unions have dues check-off...
...The incoming grievance chairman lived at the union hall for two months...
...Now these new managers, Anthony Zash and Roberto Mendez, in a night-time meeting with the leaders of the STEGAC union, were claiming that the business was bankrupt and that they were about to shut down...
...Rodolfo Robles, STEGAC's secretary general, says that the union rejected this idea out of hand...
...to throw out the previous manager, an American named John Trotter, and install new ones...
...One CONUS leader describes the process: "After Fernando [Garcia, recording secretary of the glass workers union] was kidnapped, I was determined to do something...
...The first three months of the occupation were tense...
...Asked about government repression, they say their business is not with the government but with the mayor...
...Determined to Do Something" The most important step forward in the Guatemalan labor movement is the formation of a new union federation, CONUS...
...It took two-thirds of the votes with an eight-point program that could have been lifted from a similar program in any U.S...
...They get out of the terror crisis and adapt to new ways of orJane Slaughter, staffwriter on Labor Notes, visited Guatemala in July...
...And yet they continue the same activities that have caused the deaths of so many of their fellow members...
...And normal activity continues: contracts are negotiated...
...Trade union liberty does not exist...
...Although STEGAC appears to have wrung a major concession from CocaCola, the waiting game is not over...
...Most refused to do so, although it meant going without any income for over four months...
...The union's numbers have shrunk from about 560 to 400...
...Union leaders are cautious when speaking of the upturn in activity...
...Leaders complain about low membership levels...
...took over their plant from the departing franchise owners on the night of February 17, they brought with them the bloody memory of 1978-80, when they lost eight members to the death squads...
...At one point the Minister of Labor suggested that the union borrow money and set up the plant as a workers' cooperative...
...In 1980, Coke agreed to oversee the management of the plant...
...The level of organization comes in waves," says Frank La Rue, an exiled Guatemalan labor lawyer living in Washington...
...Now they will try to negotiate an addendum to the contract, to ensure that the dependents of any worker who is disappeared will continue to receive his salary...
...Fragile Upturn Two recent strikes signal improved opportunities for union activity...
...One reason the workers boldly occupied the plant was that they were unlikely to find jobs elsewhere if it folded...
...The federation has no address, no phone...
...They received two weeks' pay...
...Throughout the struggle STEGAC has made the union's survival its foremost goal...
...We don't believe workers should fight only for their own factory," he explains...
...Congress-that Guatemala is on the road to democracy...
...Members of the bottler workers' union, STEGAC, are waiting, waiting for a new owner to be found so that their union can resume its normal functioning under Guatemalan-style labor relations...
...If a worker wants to find CONUS, he or she must make personal contact with one of the leaders...
...When the workers at Embotellad"The first three months of the occupation were tense...
...Coke pressured the workers to take the money set aside as severance pay...
...Thus when asked about the effect on labor of setbacks suffered by the guerrilla movement, union leaders invariably reply that there is no connection between the two struggles...
...The workers occupied the plant, and other unions came to their aid...
...The program calls for higher wages and weekly paychecks...
...At selection time the incumbents will step aside to allow others to gain experience...
...It was the first agreement between a transnational corporation and an international union secretariat...
...In some respects the labor laws, first promulgated in 1947 under the democratic government of Juan Jos6 Ar6valo, are more progressive than those in this country...
...The bodies of three workers were discovered wrapped in the banner they'd carried in the march...
...city...
...After receiving no paychecks for four weeks, workers in a Chimaltenango factory an hour's drive from the capital struck for three and a half days in protest...
...And yet new leaders have emerged to take their places...
...It sounds familiar...
...The employer is honoring the contract 100% now," says a member of the executive committee of STICAVSA, the 400-member glass workers' union...
...Labor courts are unbearably slow, and stacked against workers...
...more often, because of the danger, they are handed out inside the factories...
...to hold up its end of the bargain...
...As yet its affiliates are only in Guatemala City...
...The leaders of past federations have been virtually wiped out...
...But in May another compafiero was added to the union's list of martyrs...
...The Minister of the Interior called the union's position "practically one of rebellion...
...Two months later 17 more were captured at a Catholic retreat...
...The literacy classes, labor education and the twice-weekly union meetings continue while the union waits for Coke SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1984 15The plant cafeteria...
...The history of the Guatemalan labor movement is the history of its martyrs...
...CONUS is not strong now, but it will be," says Coke's Rodolfo Robles...
...CONUS issues bulletins (denuncias) about the continuing murders of trade unionists and about government and employer violations of union rights...
...Any Coke worker, union official or not, would be blackballed by CACIF, the employers' organization...
...One of their biggest problems is that only about 3,000 of the city's 7,000 employees are union members...
...The other leaders stayed inside the plant for 32 days after his disappearance...
...Forming a cooperative would have taken the Coke workers out of the union movement...
...Workers staff the plant on 24-hour shifts...
...At the next there were 18...
...ora Guatemalteca S.A...
...It's a change for the moment," says one union officer...
...Union officials are full-time and paid by the employer...
...Accepting severance pay (the pasivo laboral) would have meant taking the chance of not being rehired...
...We don't want to be martyrs," says another union leader...
...Overall, however, the government has attempted to act as mediator...
...leaders want an end to outside contracting, unjust firings, forced early retirement and having to provide their own tools...
...The government of General Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores appears willing to allow a degree of union organization and activity as long as it remains within the bounds of strictly union concerns and does not become overtly anti-government...
...Since the signing, the workers have been free to take the severance pay, since their employment with the new owners is assured...
...Over 20 unions sent telegrams to the employer and to the Ministry of Labor and bought radio time for denuncias...
...Sometimes the bulletins are distributed at bus stops...
...STEGAC feared the company would hire new, non-union workers at lower wages...
...But on February 18, during the bargaining that produced this contract, one of the union negotiators was kidnapped off the street and has not been seen since...
...After a while people accommodate to a certain level of repression...
...The kidnappings and murders continue unabated...
...Unions have been wise to develop the custom of rotating leadership...
...The others wanted to give up, but I said no, we'll form an organizing committee and the next meeting will be bigger...
...I began trying to get people together, but they were afraid...
...One hundred days later, on May 27, Coke pledged to find new franchise owners, and to recognize the union and the current collective bargaining agreement...
...Some workers have grown impatient that Coke has not produced the fabled new owners...
...While workers view the agreement as a victory, it is also a step backward in one important respect...
Vol. 18 • September 1984 • No. 5
