Labor Court Rules in Favor of Three Security Guards
"Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty." —James 5:4
The December 4, 2006, murder of Dionisio Díaz García, who worked as a labor lawyer for the Association for a More Just Society (AJS)'s Honduran partner organization, ASJ, has not ended AJS-supported efforts to protect the labor rights of poor security guards in Honduras. The Honduran Court of Labor recently made a final ruling in favor of former Delta guards Tomasa Turcios and Juan Ramón Rivera and former Inter-Con guard Franisco Betanco. These rulings are final and cannot be appealed.
Delta Security must pay Tomasa 68,028 lempiras (US$3,580) and Juan Ramón 25,255 lempiras (US$1,329) that is has owed them for over a year.
Inter-Con appealed a July ruling calling for Francisco Betanco to be paid approximately 42,750 lempiras (US$2,250), but the court rejected the appeal. In March 2007, thanks to negotiations overseen by ASJ, Inter-Con paid Betanco 50,000 Lempiras ($2,650)! Inter-Con is one of several companies that, after having been contacted by ASJ, have been willing to conciliate labor disputes with former employees.
The fight has been long and hard, but at least for these three guards justice has been won, or is at least finally within reach.
Tomasa's Story
Over the past five years Tomasa worked as a private security guard for companies known as Alarmas de Honduras, Delta Security Services, and Seguridad Técnica de Honduras (SETECH). In reality though, the owners and managers of these three companies are the same people. In Honduras, employees who resign from their jobs are ineligible for many severance benefits they could claim if they were fired. In order to keep employees from building up pensions, every few years the owners of these private security companies forced Tomasa and all her co-workers to “quit.” Then they would rehire them under a new company name.
Tomasa's employers also routinely (and illegally) deducted the costs of uniforms and other equipment from Tomasa's pittance of a salary (only about $130 a month). They also withheld government-mandated bonuses. Once a manager confiscated Tomasa's gun, then accused Tomasa of stealing it and told her she would have to pay more than a month's salary to replace it. Many other Delta guards, including Juan Ramón Rivera, have reported similar treatment.
Tomasa reported all these abuses to ASJ, which quickly agreed to help Tomasa file a complaint with the Ministry of Labor.
Tomasa's employers, though, were none too pleased with having someone stand up to them. They harassed Tomasa, but she refused to withdraw her complaints from the Ministry of Labor. So in September 2005 Tomasa's employers forced her to quit again—this time for good.
As usual, they didn't bother to pay any of her legally mandated severance payments. They didn't appear to care that without a job or even severance pay Tomasa, who was pregnant at the time, would have a hard time meeting her own needs, let alone those of her soon-to-be-born baby.
Betanco's Story
Francisco Betanco Ríos has spent his whole adult life protecting other people. But when his former employers fired him for asking for better working conditions and refused to pay him a cent of the approximately $2,250 they owed him in severance pay, there was no one to protect him. At least, not until ASJ stepped in.
Betanco, 47, joined the Honduran military while still in his teens and spent six years there. He spent the rest of his adult life as a private security guard—until his career was cut short this past February.
For the last eight years Betanco worked for the Honduran branch of Inter-Con Security Systems, Inc., based in Pasadena, Calif. The hours were long and the management seemed always to be searching for ways to deduct a few lempiras from the guards' miserably low salaries.
One day with two hours left to go on his shift, Betanco was struck with acute symptoms resembling those associated with dengue fever. He requested to be relieved, but his boss refused. Betanco survived, but a friend, Feliciano, was not so lucky. He too fell ill and suffered through the end of his shift, but died shortly after arriving at the hospital.
Betanco had had it. Life was already hard enough trying to support seven children on his minimum-wage earnings and the little his wife made selling tortillas.
So with several other Inter-Con guards he formed the Association of Private Security Company Workers. They weren't asking for any favors—just for their employers to follow the law. “It says right in the constitution that we have freedom of association,” says Betanco.
Inter-Con, though, didn't like anyone standing up to them. They hassled Betanco and eventually fired him—on Valentine's Day 2006. To avoid paying the $2,250 in severance benefits Betanco had built up over his eight years at Inter-Con, the owners said Betanco had disobeyed orders. When he told firm managers he would pursue the case in the Ministry of Labor, “they laughed in my face and told me 'we have the Ministry of Labor bought off,'” says Betanco.
Betanco went on his own to the Ministry of Labor, but made little headway there. But one day a co-worker directed him to ASJ. ASJ labor lawyer Dionisio Díaz moved Betanco's case through the Ministry of Labor and the Labor Court, while an ASJ journalist put pressure on Inter-Con by publishing articles about their abuses on Revistazo.com.
On July 27 the Labor Court ruled that Betanco had not disobeyed any orders, and that his employers thus owed him his severance pay in full. Inter-Con, however, is appealing the decision.
Betanco’s case is not unique—43 other Inter-Con guards have made similar complaints to ASJ, as have dozens of guards from at least four other security companies.
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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.
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