Eufemia Cruz: Standing Up for Justice

"Will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?" --Luke 18:7

Eufemia Cruz is one of 27 fast-food employees fired under illegal circumstances and denied legally mandated severance pay in early 2004.

Some have since settled out of court for less than they are legally owed. But others, including Eufemia, have stuck with the case the Association for a More Just Society (AJS)'s Honduran partner organization, ASJ, has taken to court on their behalf.

Eufemia lives with her four children, (Kaydy, 16; Richard, 14; Kevin, 9; and Edwin, 8) in Flores del Oriente, a poor community on the very edge of Tegucigalpa. Entering her house you can immediately see she's a hard worker, determined to make the best of her circumstances. Her yard is neatly swept, and her home is small but tidy. All of her children are in school--her daughter Kayday even goes to night classes to learn graphic design besides going to high school.

Eufemia had worked for Church's Chicken for three and a half years, and had always been an exemplary employee. But when her bosses found her name on a list of employees interested in learning about organizing to promote labor rights, they decided to fire her. Eufemia says she had never actually attended any union meetings, or even been in contact with anyone from other Church's Chicken locations in Tegucigalpa.

Honduran law requires that employees be told a certain amount of time before they are fired--thus giving poor but hard-working Hondurans a chance to find a new job in an extremely slim job market before their current source of income disappears.

If an employer does not warn an employee before firing him or her, the employer must pay the ex-employee a small bonus, again to help the employee ward off starvation while seeking a new job.

Unfortunately, Eufemia's bosses did neither. She and 26 others whose names appeared on the list were all simply told one night after work not to come back. When they went to their employers' attorney to claim their severance pay, he claimed not to know anything about it and threatened to have them arrested if they came back.

ASJ's legal team and Revistazo.com journalists soon took on the case and continue investigating and pushing it through Honduras' clogged and inefficient court system. In 2005, ASJ supporters in the United States and Canada held dozens of protests in support of Eufemia and her co-workers.

INTUR, the company that operates Church's Chicken franchises (as well as Burger King, Little Caesar's, and a number of other fast food franchises) in Honduras, still refuses to pay Eufemia the approximately $1,000 it owes her.

But two years of frustration in court have not dulled Eufemia's appetite for justice. “I'd rather lose verything than accept the low amount my old employers have offered. To me, that would be accepting injustice,” she says.

Eufemia is every bit as persistent as the woman in Jesus' Parable of the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:1-8). On a monthly income of less than $150 she puts food on the table, pays for electricity and water, and puts her four children through school. After Church's Chicken fired her, she brushed herself off and got back to work—at a factory, at the US embassy, at an ice-cream stand, and now at a hospital.

Together with ASJ, Euphemia persists in the fight to make Honduras' fast-food magnates respect their poor employees' rights.

Surely God will hear their cry for justice.

Learn more about the fast-food case.

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The Association for a More Just Society (AJS) oversees and funds initiatives carried out by Honduran partner organization la Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa (ASJ). AJS is a US-registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so all donations to AJS are tax-deductible for US taxpayers.