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HIGIA, the cleaning company that had a contract with the UPN, has committed a series of labor rights abuses, including forcing cleaning women to take monthly pregnancy tests and not granting employees their vacation days. Last year, ASJ achieved an agreement with the UPN, stating that if these violations continued, the UPN would not renew its contract with HIGIA. And due to continued abuses the contract was not renewed in December of 2010. Even with this exciting step, there is still a lot of work to do. HIGIA has not paid workers who have ended their contract period their severance pay, so Amador continues to advocate for them. Even in this difficult the situation the UPN is showing some support by agreeing to withhold HIGIA’s last payment until it has paid its workers.
Amador hopes work conditions will improve at the UPN, and in another institution, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE), he sees an even more compelling example of what can occur when decision makers decide to protect the labor rights of the most vulnerable workers.
In June of 2010, 50 cleaning women, many poor single mothers, were fired without explanation or severance benefits by a cleaning company called Samakarben, which had held the contract for janitorial services at the BCIE for decades.
In recent months, the the lawyer, Humberto Amador, has worked hard to reclaim the labor rights of these cleaning women. Part of the process has been working to make BCIE officials see that while they may not be legally responsible for the former Samakarben employees, they do have an ethical responsibility to these women who have diligently cleaned the bank for years. Thanks to Amador's insistence, BCIE rehired many of the cleaning women formerly employed by Samakarben.
Now these women work under Mejores Pisos, the company that currently holds a cleaning contract with the BCIE. Two times this year, once in January and once in February, Mejores Pisos tried to force the cleaning women to sign a contract that included illegal clauses renouncing major labor benefits; the company also wanted them to sign blank sheets of paper that the company would later print a resignation notices on--a practice meant to make firings look like resignations, a distinction which under Honduran law means the difference between receiving significant severance benefits and not receiving any.
But, thanks to Labor Rights training provided by the AJS-supported Labor Rights project, the women realized that the contract was unfair and refused to sign it. Instead, they returned to the bank and told the manager in charge of the agreement with Mejores Pisos. In the past year the cleaning women have built a trusting relationship with the bank, and as a result the bank is now willing to defend their rights. Amador notes, “The bank really appreciates the cleaning women because they’ve been working in sensitive areas with a lot of money for many years and they’ve never had a cent disappear.” Because of this trust the bank manager was willing to call Mejores Pisos and demand a better contract. In late February a satisfactory contract was finally delivered and the women signed it. As they triumphantly remarked “We didn’t sign it till they gave us what we wanted!”
Amador says that stories like this are the goal of the Labor Rights project, "Here we see the hand of the contractor, and that's what we want. I cannot supervise all the cleaning women or cleaning companies; the contractor must recognize their social responsibility.” With workers empowered to demand their rights and contractors who recognize their responsibility to their workers, Amador and other team members see hope for Labor Rights for vulnerable workers in Honduras.
More stories and information on AJS's Labor Rights project
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