GUATEMALAN TRADE UNIONS Testing the Water
Eisner, Anna
The Coca-Cola bottling plant in Guatemala City is surrounded by a high cement wall topped with barbed wire and broken glass. Inside, the factory compound houses a bottling plant, loading and...
...And while Coke appeared the exception to the rule in labor-management relations, all was not well...
...If we fail, you'll know, I'll be in some embassy or taken out of the palace feet first...
...David Versus Goliath The Coke workers' union, renamed STECSA (Union of Coca-Cola Bottling Workers) in 1985, has exemplified the labor movement's David versus Goliath quality...
...His charm lies in his at times alarming ability to frankly not make promises, 6to project a sort of "street wise" realism out of tune with the usual and mistrusted politician's cant...
...They regrouped in the late 1950s and 1960s in the face of constant violence REPORT ON THE AMERICAS I 4and by the 1970s, although never rep- I resenting more than 4% of wage workers, unions were leading massive popular demonstrations and strikes despite an exceptionally antagonistic state...
...There is no guarantee that independent trade unionism can survive...
...If we can not control the security forces, there is no democracy...
...The democratic opening in Guatemala seems very small-about the size of a bullet...
...When police killed a young demonstrator in the department of Izabal in April, banana workers on a nearby plantation struck in protest...
...This victory was something of an anomaly, coming at a time when escalating repression forced other Guatemalan unions into retreat...
...government...
...develop new cadres at the leadership and the membership level...
...Few May Day 1986: Breaking through six years of fear labor leaders express confidence that Christian Democratic President Vinicio Cerezo, who took office in January, is capable of overcoming the violent anti-unionism of Guatemalan and transnational businessmen...
...Up to this point, CGTG has opposed AIFLD's CUSG, avoided a public link with the Guatemalan Christian Democratic Party and worked in harmony with UNSITRAGUA...
...Cerezo is not so sanguine...
...The cooperatives confront no employer and instead concentrate on self-help ac1985 1986 PRIMER ANIVERSARIO UNSITRAGUA Por la unidad de la clase trabajadora_ Uni6n Sindical de Trabajadores de Guatemala Enero 86 A poster proclaims an independent union's first anniversary tivities such as credit unions in the city or bridge-building in the countryside...
...The front room is usually crowded with people: Coke workers, their friends and children and organizers from other unions arriving to exchange ideas...
...Hence CLAT and AIFLD rival for leadership in Latin America's traditionally anticommunist unions...
...But the Guatemalan labor movement has long been accustomed to adversity...
...As the STECSA recently stated, "As long as there is confidence, there is hope and as long as there are people there will be struggle...
...CGTG and UNSITRAGUA co-sponsored this year's May 1 march, while CUSG refused to participate...
...those without work are at a dead end...
...Independent of political association, it receives counsel and money only from its members...
...Out of work done by CLAT grew another labor organization, the General Coordinator of Guatemalan Workers (CGTG...
...Challenged by other groups to increase credibility, its leader, Francisco Alfaro, now talks a tough pro-labor line...
...The confederation states its ambitious aims: to "reactivate the union movement...
...and seek fraternal ties internationally and nationally...
...In December 1985 she was brutally mur- dered and unions face enormous difficulties...
...Again, as in 1980, the Coke union provided a model of how transnationals could be successfully challenged, even with a small labor movement in a country under military rule...
...As a result, it operates out of a minuscule office, with one old typewriter, a coffee machine and some folding chairs...
...The new owners were letting production slip in what workers now think was a plan to get rid of the militant union once and for all...
...These include the municipal workers and the national associations of secondary and primary teachers, whose militancy is famous, despite a ban on state worker unionization since 1954...
...We may succeed, we may fail...
...On May 31 Mercedes Sotz and his three-year-old son were walking down the street when his son was shot in the back...
...an incongruent rose garden which borders the menacing wall...
...The division of terrain between the company and the union makes the entire place look like a monument to the struggle between capital and labor...
...AIFLD is tainted by its relationship to the U.S...
...During 1985, AIFLD sponsored training courses attended by 12,500 Guatemalans...
...Inside, the factory compound houses a bottling plant, loading and parking areas for the delivery trucks, a truck mechanics shop and the administration building...
...At the same time, in anticipation of a Christian Democratic victory, money and advisers from the pro-Christian Democratic Latin American Confederation of JULY/AUGUST 1986 * See "Guatemala's Labor Movement: Coke Victory Spurs Recovery," Report on the Americas, September/October 1984...
...Over 9,000 turned out for the May Day march, the first since 1980, when over 100 people were killed or disappeared in the following days...
...In 1980 an international campaign led by the Geneva-based International Union of Food and Allied Workers Associations (IUF), which had affiliated STECSA, forced the plant's U.S...
...The strong union at the U.S.-owned Duralux factory-where several union people have been killed or kidnapped-now faces the threat of a plant closure...
...The AIFLD was initiated in 1962 to combat communism and promote U.S...
...At 3 p.m., when the Coke salesmen come in with their trucks and the production crew gets off work, the compound seems a bit like a college campus...
...The new owners, who include members of the wealthy Porras family and a congressional deputy from the right-wing Revolutionary Party, Enrique Claverie, try to dominate the union without the violence of previous owners...
...Labor leaders have said they will continue to act unless price controls are implemented, though Cerezo has warned that security forces will move against demonstrators...
...promote the unity of the Guatemalan labor movement...
...I offer a government based on law, nothing more...
...Inflation too has sparked activity...
...Killings and disappearances are twice what they were at this time last year, according to the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission...
...It includes the Coke workers union and 24 others, representing some 35,000 workers in factories, banks and plantations...
...Neither Cerezo nor Sobernis pretends to be a strong working-class advocate...
...by morning, over 400 workers had the plant completely occupied round the clock...
...Trade unions were destroyed after the 1954 U.S.-sponsored coup...
...The AIFLD-supported CUSG, which was pro-government during the period of military rule, has won little popularity...
...But civilian rule, with at least its promise to respect the labor movement, has spurred union organizing...
...The union sponsors biweekly chorus groups in the mechanics workshop, union orientation classes to the side of the workshop and English courses in the back room of the union office...
...Unions do not yet have sufficient power to deal with the crises of the urban and rural working class in wages, medical care, housing, work, transportation or prices...
...parent company to install new concession owners who pledged to respect the union...
...Moreover, to endure, unions must, in the words of one leader, "constantly overcome the psychological crisis terrorism continually generates...
...its board of directors has included directors of W.R...
...The labor movement must both advance and defend its ground at the same time...
...When municipal workers in Guatemala City were laid off and their union took the protest to the new president, Cerezo said he had to respect municipal autonomy...
...In the 1970s the largest labor confederation, the National Confederation of Workers (CNT, since destroyed by repression) broke with the CLAT, charging it with red-baiting...
...After the killing, in which at least two members of the Guatemalan Army intelligence unit, the G-2, were implicated, one of them, G-2 Army Captain Armando Villegas, was made director of Cerezo's presidential guard...
...As a result CUSG has a staff of 25 and a beautifully equipped two story office building protected by an expensive security apparatus...
...There are three labor confederations currently: (1) the CUSG, which receives the backing of the AFLCIO's American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), (2) UNSITRAGUA and (3) CGTG, supported by CLAT...
...The day the new Minister of Labor Catalina Sobernis took office, she promised trade unionists would not be persecuted...
...Since this article was written, the situation has deteriorated...
...One month later, the plant started operation...
...In order to avoid another shut-down, for example, the union carefully monitors production and sales...
...The elements were a strong local union, a necessarily informal national support network and affiliation with a dynamic international that generated concrete support from abroad...
...On his release he accused the mayor's bodyguards of abducting and beating him...
...New Obstacles At the Coca-Cola bottling plant, there are always new problems...
...According to a CUSG official, AIFLD has provided CUSG with $50,000 a year since 1983...
...He accuses Cerezo of betrayal and even recently led protests by housewives...
...journalists Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon in the June 30 issue of The New Republic reveals many of the details of the abduction and death of Beatriz Barrios Marroquin, the school teacher and union activist mentioned in this article...
...That no Coke employees were kidnapped was partially due to the support and attention they received from other Guatemalan workers, the IUF, unions around the world and some international press...
...But the decision, expressed in the formation of UNSITRAGUA, has been made to try...
...Not until 1983, to offset Guatemala's miserable international reputation, did thenpresident General Efrain Rios Montt permit a pro-government trade union confederation, the Confederation of Trade Union Unity (CUSG...
...CLAT by its history...
...Without the resources to project its presence through ads and national conferences as other groups do, it has what ultimately matters-a base...
...On one day alone, May 29, seven people were murdered...
...Everyone dashes about, some to go home, others to play soccer or basketball, others to get to a class on time...
...In December, school teacher Beatriz Barrios Marroquin was murdered...
...AIFLD is not known for financing disputes against factory or plantation owners...
...Although hostile to one another, they share the aim of containing trade unions which otherwise might spark a mass movement...
...5Workers (CLAT) arrived on the scene...
...The four refused to leave the plant...
...The CLAT, with ties to the Church and Christian Democracy, was founded in 1954 to offset U.S...
...queried one worker...
...Real wages have declined dramatically, basic items such as milk are beyond the reach of working-class families and unemployment has grown sharply...
...But CUSG, with never more then a handful of phantom unions to begin with, is shrinking...
...UNSITRAGUA is both the strongest of the three (in the numbers of consequential unions affiliated with it) and financially the poorest...
...Those with work do not make enough to live on...
...They twice saw the plant invaded by armed forces, and eight lost their lives...
...Suddenly on the night of February 17, 1984, the owners, claiming the company was not making a profit, told four union leaders: "This piece of shit is closed...
...The only neutral space is occupied by Anna Eisner is a Ph.D...
...The hum in the small union office reflects a new surge of trade union activity throughout the country...
...What about us...
...Fight-back tactics have taken unconventional directions...
...and left-wing presence in the Latin American labor movement...
...It is impossible to understand the dynamics of these groups without examining the two hemispheric organizations involved...
...Meanwhile, President Cerezo's ability to do anything but announce his own helplessness seems daily more dubious...
...Both have a poor reputation among Guatemalan trade unionists...
...foreign policy interests...
...Following the union's tradition of undauntability, one labor leader has read up on Transactional Analysis and remarks, "I'm figuring out how to use it back...
...Both are good, but Coke's improved position in the soft drink market has yielded yet another conflict...
...Coke is now threatening the big lead taken by its competitor, Pepsi Cola, during the occupation...
...candidate in Latin American history at New York University...
...The teachers are particulary important: they have been on the verge of striking for almost a year...
...Guatemalan trade unionists are working their way through new and old issues of intimidation, fear, division and attempts at co-optation...
...An investigative report by U.S...
...Terrorism has not disappeared...
...On one day alone in 1980, 27 trade union leaders were kidnapped...
...you have a lot of experience with endurance...
...A news article commented, "The fact that the body was dumped in a place where it was sure to be seen has caused fear among teachers, who are considering a strike...
...Grace Company, Anaconda Copper, the United Fruit Company and Pan American Airlines...
...Cerezo replied, "That's another problem...
...The Coke workers reaffirmed their reputation for tenacity by staying in nweural Terruory: A rose garden as1 %uaremala-s JOKe pianx the plant for 376 days despite a wave of antiunion terrorism, in which over 17 unionists from neighboring factories were kidnapped...
...Several sectors of the workforce have not yet affiliated with any grouping...
...A worker who went to an AIFLD seminar said, "It was handshakes, smiles, backpatting, cocktails, lots of talk about 'democracy,' how to get bank loans and 'why don't you join CUSG?' " The CLAT-supported federation, CGTG, is still in formation...
...On February 1, 1985 the Coke union won an agreement to open the plant with new franchise owners--a Guatemalan investor group-and a new union contract...
...And workers School teacher Beatriz Barrios Mar- roquin with her children...
...unions became semi-clandestine...
...Self-Help, Not Confrontation Both CUSG and the AIFLD office in Guatemala have been more interested in building cooperatives than in promoting trade unions that defend wage workers against-and win benefits from--employers...
...create new unions...
...Whether it beREPORT ON THE AMERICAS i comes such a tool depends on its membership, which includes a small number of unions...
...Between its founding in 1976 and 1980, Coke workers were jailed, fired, tailed, threatened, beaten and forced to work at gunpoint...
...demonstrations against prices have drawn large crowds...
...In Guatemala, neither AIFLD nor CUSG supported the Coke workers' occupation...
...In March, STECSA accused Pepsi of sending out people to threaten Coke salesmen making deliveries...
...Another union leader, a member of Guatemala City's Municipal Workers' Union, Jose Mercedes Sotz, was kidnapped back in February after he protested union lay-offs...
...As one worker said: "Death squads, the army, government detectives, and now Pepsi...
...In early 1985 STECSA and other unions formed a new organization, Unity of Guatemalan Workers' Unions (UNSITRAGUA...
...Association with CLAT does not necessarily mean that the CGTG is a tool of CLAT or the Christian Democrats, who would look to it for the workingclass support they lack...
...Coming Together Encouraged by the Coke union's triumph, trade unionists took a deep breath and increased their activities...
...UNSITRAGUA has cautiously and quietly joined together the militant unions attacked in the 1970s and early 1980s...
...it is simply more selective...
...Thanks to battles won by the Coke workers'union, it also houses a soccer field, a basketball court, a cafeteria, a plaza dedicated to martyred trade unionists and a two-room union office...
...When asked what he would do about repression at a meeting with trade unionists I attended, he replied, "If I were to say you can be sure no one will persecute you, well, we all know, there is nothing worse in politics then being naive or thinking others are...
...No Guarantees It is not clear what the new government can or will do for labor...
...Instead, they employ the techniques of Transactional Analysis in meetings to make the union representatives feel like "infants," incompetent and therefore dependent on an effective "father," i.e., management...
...her head and breasts were slashed, her hands cut off and "More to come" inked on her body...
Vol. 20 • July 1986 • No. 4
