Marina Rios, Maquila Program Director MAQUILA Workers --Testimonials MAM (Melida Anaya Montes/ Movimiento de Mujeres) 10. 25. 03
FTAA Reality Tour Sponsored by PICA 10/22-31/03
Translation: Chris Daemon/Jesse Kates-Chinoy Saludo/Facilitation: Margaret Baille Recording: Meredith DeFrancesco Transcrition: Katie Greenman Review: Katherine Kates
[ Note:All presentations by group not transcribed]
[laughter as patriarchal cap is placed on Jimmy’s head]
....mi nombre es Janet Redman.....thank you very much for taking the time
to talk to us today and share your stories.....my name is Celia McLay, I’m
a doctor. I’m very grateful and thankful for being here and getting to
meet the three of you. We’ve been here in the country....our third day. We
have met with so many people and we all have been suffering different
levels of devastation....what’s happened here with our companies coming
in. We’re anticipating going home and working hard to change things.....
Presentation/Group Saludo:
My name is Margaret Baille and I’m a member of PICA and have worked hours
with the Bangor Clean Clothes campaign with sweatshops and years ago I
worked as a special machine operator long before any of you were born in
shops in Boston, Massachusetts and helped with organizing work for the
union.
I want to read something that was written by Jon Falk who had hoped very
much to be a part of this delegation and for health reasons couldn’t come.
“Good afternoon and greetings from Bangor, Maine,
the U.S. Sister City of Carasque, El Salvador. We are a delegation
which includes health care workers, labor union officers, educators, and
community activists. The members of our group work and live in Bangor and
its surrounding communities. We are united by our common concern about the
harm that global free trade is doing to our own families and friends, to
our local communities and economies. We stand in solidarity with our
brothers and sisters throughout the hemisphere who are working to build a
political and economic system that will allow local communities to survive
and prosper, and that will benefit the vast majority of people, not just
multinational corporations and the very wealthy.
We have come to El Salvador to learn from and be inspired by the remarkable struggles and victories of the Salvadoran people, and to share any of our own experiences that you think may be useful to you. We are very grateful for the opportunity to meet with you, and we hope that the exchanges which we have today will play at least a small part in bringing about the type of a world which is our common goal.”
I hope that you realize what a big help you can be to us when we go home
and try to bring this story and our experiences to people in Maine because
often when you tell a story people listen, and if you’re just giving
numbers and theories they don’t hear.
Marina Rios, Maquila Workers Program Director:
I like the fact that your delegation has a good sense of humor. And the
fact that you’re such a multidisciplinary delegation, some of everything.
Chris: They’re incredible. La delegacion mas luchador --they’ve been
working together for a year and are very organized and are looking for
many ways to fight. They’ve come to work, they’re very special. [When
asked to translate, Chris said she didn’t want our heads to get too big!]
Marina Rios:
Asi es la lucha, con ganas, con alegria= This is the way to struggle, with
energy, desire and with joy.
First I’ll tell you that the MAM, Melida Anaya Montes, has existed for
quite a while and has a long history of working with the sister cities and
with the PICA organization. We were formed in 1992. We’re women who come
from a political, military background that is we were women of the left
and we formed the organization in order to work for the rights of women.
We work in four main areas, in the area of health and nonviolence towards
women, economic development, local development, and institutional
strengthening. We work in other subareas of feminist education, with women
in the maquila sector and with young women.
In the area of health and violence prevention we work both with women who
are already experiencing problems and with women to prevent future
problems. We work in brigades in the rural areas to prevent uterine
cancer and breast cancer. In the area of violence prevention we work in
the psychosocial area. We have a psychologist. We do legal advice and
accompaniment for people who have to take cases through the legal system.
And also in advocacy to try to change domestic violence through domestic
violence laws. For example in a case last year where we did so.
In local development we work with committees, we work with communal
directorates, we work with groups, everything that has to do with
improving the quality of life in the communities. We also work in
coordination with the mayors’ offices and with other institutions that
work in the communities to advance this work. We also work providing
training to the city council women in different municipalities. We also
work developing gender policies. This is an example of a gender policy
that was written for the municipality of New San Salvador, Santa Tecla.
That’s being worked on with all the city functionaries. This project came
out of a diagnostic study that was done in that municipality last year and
as a result there was a gender unit created. We said as a basic
requirement that we wanted to make sure that the people who are put in
charge of that unit are people that we suggested and believed in to
guarantee that the goals would be realized. We also in Cojutepeque created
this platform, that’s different from a gender policy, a platform is a list
of demands that the women in this municipality have come up with and that
they’re demanding of the city authorities--more opportunities and benefits
and so forth. And we’re doing something similar in San Raphael Cedros
which is close to Cojutepeque.
This type of work with the municipalities we’re doing primarily with
municipalities of the FMLN. We’re also working with parliamentarians on a
Central American level; that means not only with the parliamentarians of
the Central American Parliament but parliamentarians who are in the
legislative assemblies of each country, working on figuring out how we can
get greater percentages of the national budget dedicated to health and
education and other areas that concern women. That area is very important
because we recognize that it is crucial to be fighting for pieces of the
pie and not just fighting for the crumbs left over; need to get to where
the budgets are determined.
In economic development we work on three areas--one in the training of
women who receive loans, we actually give out the loan credit in a
particular methodology that’s supplied with all the groups of women. The
most important component--we try to make sure that our loan funds and our
credit aren’t an end in and of themselves but that they be a means towards
working with the women recipients to achieve changes on the political
economic level in the country. There is no bank available only to women in
the country. We proposed such a bank but the government made substantial
changes to the proposal, for example making it accessible to women and men.
In the area of feminist education, the basic spinal cord of the whole organization that runs the ideology that unites all of our different programs. And the objective is to dismantle the patriarchal system. [laughter, with reference to beginning wearing of the patriarchal hat by Jimmy] We work with different groups in the communities, different levels, 1-3, depending on their learning. It’s very hard work, it’s not easy to dismantle a structure that’s based on 30-40 years....in terms of the individual person (not the society). [Jimmy interjects that he’s already dismantled]
We have a lot of strategic allies, men who are allies and work with us. It’s very important to work with men and not just women because men are exercising the power and the violence, so if we just work with women and raise their self-esteem and don’t work with the men, the men continue [malvados] evil.
[Jimmy-that’s the first time I’ve heard of a woman needing a man....]
The area I work in, which is work with women in the maquilas. We have four
different components. The first is the training in terms of labor rights
and different mechanisms and all the different organizations you can go to
to exercise your rights in that area. In the legal advice area we do
telephone follow up on cases that are in progress and the demands made. In
this legal support area we don’t just work on labor cases, we also work on
cases of domestic violence, other forms of abuse, child support payments.
We also work in the area of organization which is one of the most
difficult areas to continue organizing and pushing it forward. We work
with one group of women from the maquilas of which these women are
members. We’re starting work in four communities of San Marcos with women
who work in the Maquilas in the area. We’ve done sort of an about face in
working more on the local level, in a more united way, than in working on
our different sector areas. It has to do in part with making the
organization more sustainable. We know that the women who work in the
maquilas now, they could stop working in the maquilas, but they’ll still
be women in that community who are former maquila workers. So, to give
some continuity we can work with those women, continue the contact and
follow their history.
In terms of the health area, we’re working with the Pan American Health
Organization and the Ministry of Health and the Social Security Institute
doing advocacy.This has to do with an effort to work in a coordinated way
to work on health, hygiene, and safety in the workplace. Some people have
asked us if we’re an organization that is working in resistance to the
neoliberal economic model and the free trade system, why are we working in
this particular area to improve health and safety in the maquila sectors.
Our answer is that just because we’re working in resistance doesn’t mean
that in the meantime we’re not going to work to improve the conditions in
that area. We’re part of a network of women from Honduras, Guatemala,
Nicaragua and El Salvador who are working on these issues. The central
axis of work for all these organizations in the four countries is on
health and occupational safety. This network is proposing the creation of
a campaign around health and occupational safety on a regional level. For
this campaign we’ve held forums on a regional level, and on a national
level, and also mixed forums to try to launch the campaign. We’ve tried to
create campaigns that include humor and picaresque aspects to try to reach
people about free trade. The last time down in the central plaza we did an
act, we weren’t a political party, an organization that was giving away
freebies, but we, just four people, got up on a stage, with microphones
and some books, with a program and about 2000 people gathered around--very
full, full, full.
Chris--at the end of the march on October 12, I was trying to remember the
MAM women, a group of about 10 women dressed in black and they pantomimed.
The crowd shouted out how free trade would affect us and the women acted
it out. It was really cool...
Marina Rios:
We started this campaign in public spaces on the 15th of July and then we
repeated it on the 26 & 28th of August , and now on the 12th of October
because the people don’t have much access to public space and it’s
important that we take back that space and provide information to people.
The last one brought people from all across the region, from Honduras,
Nicaragua, and Guatemala to participate.
We’ve also done a campaign on a national level against the labor
flexibility “flexibilization” legislation. We’ve done that together with
women from Las Dignas and Funde, Hormusa which is the union organization.
Because it’s very important that there are many actors involved in these
efforts.
Those are our activities with a broad brush of the work that we do. We
know that it’s a very difficult sector with which to work, the women of
the maquilas. First because we can very easily fall into a trap in which
women tell us, ‘ this is a job and we can’t do campaigns here, because
if we do the [factory owners] maquiladores will pick up and leave and
we’re not going to have jobs.’ So what we say is that maquilas can exist
but as an option not as the only opportunity for jobs in this country.
Because we determined that maquilas are not an empowering option for
women. They don’t have any resources, time, or money to study. Moreover
they are very repressed.
A woman can work 5-7 years for a company and then she’s a disposable
product and she’s not hireable by another company because if she’s over 30
or 40 years old, no one else will hire her.
If she becomes sick as a result of her employment, but it’s afterwards,
there’s no follow-up. The state has no responsibility because she’s no
longer insured under the ISSS [Social Security Health System] program, so
she’s not covered.
So those are our fears about free trade and that’s why we’re against the free trade agreements because we consider that they put women in a very precarious position.
It’s all based on a fallacy---there’s millions spent on ad campaigns to
convince women to go to work in the maquiladoras---to tell them that if
they go to work in the maquiladoras they will be able to cover the costs
of sending their children to school and feeding them and now they’re even
telling them they’ll be able to have a telephone line in their house.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the campaigns, but in the campaigns the
campesinos are shown saying that they’ll be able to sell their pupusas,
loroco, their corn and their beans in the United States. That’s a fallacy
too.
What they don’t say to us is that our market will be inundated with products from the United States and China and there’ll still be high barriers of different types in place so that we will never be able to reach the North American market.
They don’t talk at all about the problems that the people are faced with,
only about trade and commerce. We’re very clear that what the United
States is trying to do, the reason why the United States wants free trade
with El Salvador and all the other countries in the region is that they
want a place in which they can put all of their genetically modified corn
and all their other waste products.
*The key struggle this year in our country has been to stop, at least
partially for the time being, the privatization of part of the health care
industry, because that’s one small area that remains of what once were
resources in the hands of the state. And they’re systematically going
about taking apart the unions, for example the port workers were a strong
union, the airport workers were a strong union and they are taking them
apart. The electric industry workers union, they fired 49 union leaders,
everybody who was in a leadership position. Because union organizing is a
human right, a basic human right. Given what’s going on here you can’t ask
the question why don’t the women in the maquiladoras unionize. That’s a
question I’m asked in the United States, in Europe--everybody wants to
know why the maquila sector doesn’t organize. I tell them that if they are
able to destroy the union movement in the so-called stable industrial
sectors how could you hope to create a strong union movement in such a
volatile temporary sector as the maquiladoras represent.
That’s why we believe that our role is to offer training and consciousness
raising and sensitivity awareness workshops and to teach people how to
struggle for their rights. We’re not union organizers. If the women
participate in these processes and then decide that they want to form
unions it’s their right to do so. We’re not telling them [what to do].
We’re at the door of the election process and that means that we’re
undergoing a threat that really different than the threats we were facing
up until now. And the threat is to the poorest of the poor. The poor are
now living in miserable conditions and those living in these miserable
conditions are that much lower. As an organization we’re working on
training and consciousness raising among the people to be able to vote in
a very conscious way. But since we aren’t affiliated with any particular
party so we’re not for example telling them that they should vote for the
FMLN.
There might be questions because I’m sure I haven’t been able to talk
about everything.
Margaret: Should we ask questions before we hear from the others?
Marina Rios: Mejor con ellas y despues......Better with them [listen to
them first] and questions after..Group asked to direct specific questions
to women. They need direction.
[Note: All three women have given fictitious names]
Margaret: We would like stories about your experiences. We want to know
what we can do to support you in the best way. More specifically, we’re
interested in knowing if you have worked on Gilden shirts. We’ve been
involved in trying to do something about Gilden. There are shops
[factories? in El Salvador. The state of Maine when it buys any garments
? for various departments such as police, fire, whatever, that they now
have to investigate the as best they can the conditions under which the
garments were made. We obviously don’t want to hurt people who are working
in these companies but we urge the manufacturer to improve as best they
can....there’s some pressure from the buyer that they want their clothes
made under decent conditions.
If we can learn about any maquilas that are making uniforms and similar
things which Maine might buy that are made under good conditions we’d
like to know about that. Recently, I think I’ve heard about this before,
but I have more details, about a module system of having people work as
teams so there’s tremendous pressure if one person falls, slows up, the
whole team suffers so the pressure is really terrible and this is making
people work extremely fast.
[interjections--I was wondering if we could ask them what their basic day
is like--un dia tipico en la vida de una trabajadora en una maquila, also
if they are from San Salvador or if they moved here, a lot to answer--]
Margarita :
First I’ll tell you the labels I’ve worked producing. In my prior work I
produced Royal Park, ICA, and Dorby products. And in my current work I
produce Dickies. Dickies produces uniforms. We make shorts and pants. I
was born in Guatemala, but I live here in San Salvador in San Martin. Even
though I was born in Guatemala all my papers list me as a Salvadoran. I
was never legal there, I legalized here and I have three babies. I worked
under the modular system that you talked about when I worked for the
Dindex company. But that maquila was closed due to some massive toxic
exposures, not the ones I mentioned. The owner of that maquila is the
owner of a store chain called Rollings. So when that company closed down
we were owed salary. We, all of us were at least owed the last fourteen
days work period and since we took him to court, the owner closed down the
factory and then the owner left the country. Even before the final closing
they had been in the situation in which often when payday came around they
would only give us 15 or 30 colones which is a couple of dollars to cover
our transportation costs and they wouldn’t pay us our salaries. And if we
complained they’d say, “Well?”. I’ve also worked for Koreans and they are
very hard to work for. They shout at you, they give you nicknames, they’re
very demanding.
In each company that you work for it’s a different experience, it’s a
different work, but their mistreatment is a constant. Due to necessity,
due to need, the fact that we have to be able to maintain our children,
send them to school, we stay regardless of what they pay us. Now where I
work for example we don’t know the value of the final garment that we’re
making, because they pay us a certain salary for the operation that we
carry out on that garment, but we don’t know what it’s worth. The working
conditions are very difficult for example when the earthquake happened,
we’re stuffed in together and then the machines are very close together
and there are other things piling in the passageways and so when the
earthquake happened and the panic struck and the companeras were running
into each other as we as things falling on them and so there were a lot of
people who were injured. The emergency exits for example that are supposed
to be emergency exits when an emergency comes and you try to get out
they’re under lock and key. But when an earthquake comes you aren’t warned
so that the person can go get the key and unlock the door. Now where I’m
working there are much better conditions. Each walkway there are signs for
the emergency exits. The machines are situated so that there’s more space
between them. The emergency exit doors are kept open. That’s all for now
on my part but my companeras can speak.
Margaret:
When you did work under this modular system, was there tremendous pressure
because if you went slowly then the whole team lost ?
Margarita:
When we worked in the module we were given a production quota and each of
us had a part of that production quota that we had to meet. There was a
lot of pressure. Now I work in a non-modular system and it’s better. Now I
work under individual goals system. I was working for example making the
square around where the pants come together and first I was at 90% , then
at 80% . The percentages are about what you’re able to produce. They put
a little flag above your table. If you’re a 100% producer meeting the
production goal you have have a blue flag with gold lettering above your
head. If you’re at 90% it’s a pink one and so on. And now I’m under a
different system. I’m putting the labels in the clothes and so what I
earn---I’m paid a baseline salary and then I’m paid according to how many
I complete--piece work. So now they’ve created something called the gold
club for women who are producing above a 100%, and there’s a lot of
discrimination. The supervisors come through and say, “Your neighbor here
is a gold club member, why aren’t you?” And the women themselves who are
gold club feel superior to the women who aren’t and there’s a lot of
hasseling. But the thing is, it’s not that the goals stay the same. The
production quotas are always going up. And of course the gold club’s
little flag is gold colored.
Question: I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more what
happened with the poisoning. Also, would you say that the Korean nicknames
were degrading?
Margarita: In that past company we were drinking water with feces
residue. The situation was that the water, they’d serve it out of crystal
water { purified water company} containers, but the water that was put
into those containers came from a cistern. Out by the cistern there were
containers of paints and other chemicals and so that it was found that
there were waste accumulations and chemical wastes in the water. The other
problem with that company was that we worked in very enclosed spaces, very
unhealthy conditions. There are three versions of what actually caused the
poisoning. One that it was something emitted from the lamps that were very
low above our heads. The second version that it was the water, and the
third version was that it was due to poor ventilation. When the women
passed out green substances came out of their noses and we didn’t have any
alcohol around to bring them back to consciousness so we had to [fan them
with our hands] and things to try to bring them around. A number of them
were hospitalized and one woman who was an engineer, pregnant, lost her
baby.
In that Korean company where they used nicknames, I believe that company
is now closed, but they called us things like tortoises if we were slow,
or some other name if we were fast, it would not only be in words they
would draw pictures and put them up above our work areas. Things to make
us feel bad. In the Triton company where I am now the pressure that they
put on us is they assign instructors to us. The instructors might have
previously been machine operators but now that their instructors they feel
really important and something special and they pressure us.
Question: To the best of your or anyone’s knowledge is the modular system
increasing in maquilas?
Margarita: Not all are the same. Each company will determine if that
system works and if it doesn’t they’ll go back to the quota system.
---Time to hear from the others about their experiences--
Marisa:
I’m a single mother. I’ve worked in maquilas for fourteen years. I worked
first in a factory called Cuzcatlan Textiles. The owners of that company
were from the United States and we were treated more or less well, but I
don’t remember the labels [marcas] that we produced. I’m from San
Salvador, I was born here and I’ve never left the country. After [that
first company] I worked in the Siman S.A. company that produced Levis,
Silverhut, Dockers, and Buffalo Spring. That’s the only company I ever
worked for that gave us food every fifteen days. They paid us well and
paid our social security taxes and our FD [?] They closed one day
overnight without giving us any prior warning or time, or telling us why
they were going to close.
Then I went to work for a Taiwanese company and as the companera mentioned
there they give us a different kind of treatment. They give us all those
nicknames and such. And there they give us work quotas and those who don’t
fulfill them have to stay until seven at night if need be to finish. If
you don’t reach the production quota [meta] they tell you that you are a
chicken head or an empty head and they’ll withdraw our social security
payments, our FD payments and they won’t give us permission to go to the
doctor for example. You can’t organize there. If you do they take you as a
rebel, they identify you as a rebel, troublemaker.
When I first heard about the free trade agreements we thought that was
going to be good for El Salvador. We thought El Salvador was going to
become another United States of America. But when you look closely at the
situation and I had my eyes opened by the Melidas here, we first thought
it would be like the United States and hoped they’d start paying us the
same as they pay workers there, [Chris- but that’s impossible, that’s not
going to happen].
If we were paid the way people are paid in the United States I’d have a
house. The way we’re paid here we’re just more or less able to get by,
survive. But the low salaries we make, we’re told by the government that
with the free trade agreements even our schedules are going to change,
that we’ll be working two hours at one type of activity and 3 hours at
another, but nothing changes and salaries certainly aren’t changing. We
still earn 42.5 colones per day. I have friends who have left for the
north and they told me that what you earn here perhaps in a month is what
you can earn there in a week or less. ....maybe you’ll take us all to work
up there....
So, I thought a free trade agreement would be to our benefit, but in
reality it’s not to our benefit. They put as the option the maquilas, but
there are so many high school graduates who don’t have any options.
There’s no time working in the maquila to get a high school degree. I got
my high school degree through great effort, but all it’s done for me is to
help my kids with their homework. I teach my kids, but it’s not opening
any doors. It’s convenient for the company owners to have people working
who are illiterate. When I comment to my workmates that I come here and I
work with Las Melidas. They say, “What’s the point of doing that? So we
have one president or another; it’s not going to make any difference. You
have to work to eat. If you don’t work, you don’t eat.”
For example in the campaign against the privatization of health, I got
involved and I was collecting signatures in the company. That got me into
trouble. I was called in by management and told I was going to be taken to
the police, that it was illegal what I was doing. The company that you
mentioned Lourdes Textiles, Inc. I know that company and they treat
people more or less well, but I can’t go to work there because I’m 36
years old and to change jobs, to work there I don’t think you can be over
30. The longer you’ve worked in a maquila the more experience you have,
but they don’t value the lifetime experience.
Margaret: Do you know people who are working in this company, Lourdes
Textiles?
Marisa:
The father of my daughter, but I’m not with him, he works there. I found
out that he works there when I went to the human rights ombudsman office
to get him to pay child support. He used to live in Mejicanos but he took
off and went out to live on the road to Santa Ana near that factory to try
to get out of his responsibilities. But from his sisters I found out where
he was.
Question:
Does that American company actually fire people when they reach 30, when
they reach a certain age are they let go, or is it just an age for hiring?
Marisa:
To get into a new maquila, you usually have to be under 30. Sometimes you
can stretch it to 33. But in terms of whether they fire you when you are
older, sometimes they’ll come up with a pretext at Christmas to get rid of
people. That’s the way it was at Siman S.A. [Chris-”generalized
commentary”]
Question:
If the maquila picks up and is gone one day, could you not get another job
[if you’re over 30]?
Marisa: If you have good connections, I know you could probably get in.
Marina Rios:
A lot of women over thirty who don’t have any hope of getting into another
maquila work in subcontracting shops that have even fewer rights and you
can make even fewer demands. Charlie Products is a company that
subcontracts for GAP and they do a lot of their production in those
workshops.
Marisa:
In the maquilas where we work, if we protest a little and now I’ve started
to protest a little, they say that we should be grateful because we have
work and are able to feed our children, because it doesn’t cost them
anything to close the factory and move it someplace else. It’s the way to
maintain you always under their command/power.
Question ( Rachel ): I just want to ask if in any of their jobs that they’ve had any kind of benefits or any standards .....sick days, vacation, time off to see a doctor, care for a child, any kind of health care benefits. Is there anything?
Marisa:
In terms of time off to go to the doctor, since they don’t give us the
certificate that we need to do that, we go to the doctor on Saturday.
Where I work even if they give us the certificate that you need to go to
the doctor, we have to give them a three day warning.....When it’s a
question of taking my children they say, “Don’t you have a neighbor or
somebody in your house to take them?” And even to go to the parent-teacher
meetings for example. That kind of permission to take a child to the
doctor or to go to a parent-teacher meeting or enroll your child in school
are called personal permission slips. If you take one of those you have
to make up the time. They also demand that when we do that we bring back
proof that went to the doctor or a school meeting and if we don’t, they
take off a double-day. Sunday the seventh day, they double charge us.
Question (Rachel): How many days a week do you work and how many hours?
Marisa: 44 hours from Monday to Friday or Monday through Saturday.... I get up at 5 o’clock in the morning. It takes me an hour to get to my workplace. I enter work at 7 am and work until 4:18 in the afternoon unless we’re doing overtime, in which case we work until 7pm. But the women who come from San Vincente or Cojutepeque they get up even earlier to be able to get there.
Maria Luz:
I was born in San Salvador. I’m a hundred percent Salvadoran. I’m 30 years
old. I’ve been working in the maquilas for 12 years; I started working
there at the age of 18. I began working because....
I come from a family of low resources, originally a campesino family. Our
parents weren’t able to give us access to education. This comes from a
whole slew of cultural antecedents that brought our parents to that
situation where they couldn’t offer us those things. They just didn’t have
it. For me to graduate from ninth grade I had to go work that year during
three months of the school vacation as a maquiladora. With those wages
that I earned I bought the cloth (I was studying clothes making at the
time), I made my school uniform and I used the rest of the money I earned
to buy my school supplies and to buy shoes. My parents only had to help me
out by giving me the bus fare or money to cover some of the things that
the school offered. That’s what I did to graduate from ninth grade. Even
though it was just ninth grade I was able to do that. I started working
after that in a maquila and I haven’t stopped since. I’m a single mother
and the maquila work is the most common work. It’s the work that you are
most likely going to find here in El Salvador. For this reason the
majority of the women. Nowadays the young people don’t learn how to make
clothing; they learn how to machine operate instead. Most of us are single
moms. The dads shine in their absense from the care of their children.
What we earn therefore as single moms isn’t enough neither for ourselves
nor for our children to cover food, shoes, clothing. Every pay period we
have limit ourselves in some way and buy only the most necessary things at
that time. Here, for example, we use to operate in colons. Now, even
though the colon disappeared and the dollar appeared, we’re still paid in
colons. There are no “Washingtons” [dollars] here, just Columbus. [
check Spanish] It’s a great limitation that we face to still being paid
under the colon, but in a dollarized company. And as my companera has
said, the owners demand of us that we daily improve our production quotas.
Whatever you produce the first day they want us to increase. We can never
do less. It doesn’t matter if you have a headache or of you’re sick, if
you’re suffering from some problem that you’re thinking about worrying
about, you have to produce the same amount or more. They’re not taking
into consideration the personal problems that one might be facing.
I have worked for four different companies and the three previous ones didn’t have any of the benefits that I have right now. For example in my prior employment I suffered great demands put upon me, discrimination, shouts, different things that were imposed upon me. I try not to discuss or get into conflict with them but when you do you’re identified as a union organizer or a problematic person or a rebellious person because we’re tied to our work. The companies forget that we’re human beings and if you look at the labor codes, within the labor codes it says we have freedom of expression. Under the labor codes there’s freedom of the organizing, it’s listed there. But, when they see that you know a little bit about your rights, it puts you in a more dangerous position. Before working with Las Melidas [MAM] when I was ignorant I couldn’t defend myself, but now I can defend myself and I can help other people defend themselves.
For example, we meet periodically with our supervisors and they inform us
if we’re going to be let go early in the day or if we’re going to be
working overtime and she told us that we had to be understanding of the
situations that the company goes through periodically. One companera said,
“But regardless of the situation the company is in, the company always
insists that we work at 100% and so is that really fair?” The supervisor
said, “Well, if you don’t like the situation the way it is, the door is
always open and you can leave.” They like to make us desperate so that
we’ll quit so that they don’t have to owe us any vacation time or any of
those other benefits. One of our companeras said to our supervisor, “Your
salaries are on the backs of our work. Why are you taking the side of the
owners of the company. If we went out on strike the company wouldn’t earn
anything and you wouldn’t earn anything. I think we’re very lucky to have
this institution here that helps us defend and look out for our rights as
workers.
[Chris asks what did the supervisor answer when the companera asked this
question]
She didn’t say anything. She felt pressure that supervisor that day,
because they really feel empowered to make some difference and the
supervisor didn’t say anything; she left in silence.
We talked among ourselves that day and I said, “Yes, there are
revolutionary women here and I support revolutionary women.” The others
said they agree with that and if we have to go out on strike we’ll go out
on strike.
But really other than that kind of pressure and discrimination we don’t do
so badly at the company I work for. The majority of things aren’t that
bad, for example at the end of every month, they celebrate the birthdays
of all the women who’ve had birthdays that month and they have cake and we
go out at 2 o’clock in the afternoon for a break and eat the cake and they
don’t pressure us to come back in really quickly. On Mother’s Day and
Worker’s Day they give us a lunch and so it’s only my first year there but
I see that they value us as workers and as human beings a little bit more.
For example for the annual Christmas party they’re now hiring the
orchestra of San Vicente.
Director: Does that mean next year when there’s mistreatment at the work
site no one is going to say anything because they danced to the orchestra
of San Vicente.
Workers: No, no, no, we’ll still denounce.....
A lot of the mistreatment comes from the supervisors and the other
companeras who mistreat each other. For example the workers who are
friends of the owners, the color of the flag above their workplace will be
very low not very high [not clear] , luck meeting the production quotas.
But if they’re friends of the owner, they’re called “yo-yos”. And there’s
a worker’s committee that’s made up of primarily friends of the owner. The
worker’s committee is supposed to defend us as workers but the members of
the committee will go and say, “That worker’s not working, when the
machine’s broken....they try to blame it on us.”
Margaret: Could you share what labels you’ve worked on, especially now.
Maria Luz: S.L. and Miss Dorby (dress labels before). Now Dickies.
Question: Are men and women working together , you’ve mentioned women
primarily, but also your husband [2nd worker] works in one. And is there a
difference in treatment between men and women?
Margarita: If the supervisors like the guys then they treat them a lot better.
Margaret: (continuning for clarification)
In the United States, cutters are primarily men, and pressers are mostly
men...
Workers (collective response):
We’re all mixed together. Except for in the ironing department, there are
a lot of men in the other sections. They like to hire men now because they
don’t have babies. And in packaging, there are a lot of men as well as in
the warehouse. Fixing machinery, repairs, too.
Question: inaudible
Collective response and Marina Rios:
Maybe 10 % men where one works. The [name unclear] investigation in 2000
found that 83% of the workers were female and the rest were male. In the
maquilas there’s a 20-30% difference in wages between men and women.
Question/Comment (Jimmy): I’d like to have a talk with you guys for about an hour. Answer: You can come at any time of day you like and ask us what you like. Jimmy (cont.) : We’re not coming back here. I could it after this if they had time. Maria Luz: We’ve given you just a little bit of what our life in the maquilas has been like. Jimmy: I just think I could show them a couple of things that might get them into trouble with their supervisors.
Response:
[laughter] Seria bueno/That would be good.
[decided to have small gathering after meeting....Jimmy, Dennis, Meredith
and a few others stayed...]
Question (Dennis):
I have a couple of things I was interested in knowing. Since we always get
confused by numbers, could you tell us what the minumum wage is the
maquila sector and how that compares with basic needs expenses, “market
basket” [canasta basica]? The other question is if you’d say a
little more about this labor flexibility “flexibilization” law that you
mentioned. What does it mean for maquila workers?
Marina Rios:
The minimum wage is 151 dollars a month. That’s with the five percent
increase that was approved 3 to 4 months ago. The basic market basket with
just the miniumum of products---cooking oil, rice and beans, and corn for
just 2-3 people is about 250 dollars a month. The expanded market basket
which includes bills you’d have to pay for -- water, electricity,
education-- for poor people it’s 550 dollars a month. In this legislative
proposal to flexibilize the labor code--it started to circulate about two
years ago--but it’s never been presented to the legislative assembly in a
formal way. I think there’s never been the appropriate moment for them to
do so, because by touching the labor code, it touches everything...
[Chris needed to excuse herself for planning schedule. Jesse takes over
translating]
So this labor “flexibilization” is already being put into practice in some
practical ways in a sense that we don’t have the right kind of contracts,
that we’re losing a whole lot of labor benefits. But the real danger that
I see is if this actually is realized and becomes a law. If that happens
then we’ll lose some of the last benefits that we have, such as maternity
leave.
Question (Margaret): Is the 150 dollars minimum wage what people are earning in the maquilas? Is it an average? Question clarification (Janet): 150 dollars per month, is that the government minimum wage or what they are making in the maquila. What is the maquila wage versus the minimum wage?
Marina Rios:
The minimum salary we are talking about is gross, so that’s before they
have discounts for social security and the AFP’s[ ]
and pensions. That’s what is paid in most of the maquilas. In some
maquilas they pay bonuses for being able to produce the quotas---they call
it incentives, but that’s just sometimes. Few women that have come in
here earn 1700 colones a month versus the 1400 colones which is the
minimum wage.
Question: So they earn minimum wage in the maquilas?
Director and Maria Luz:
Basically yes, this is the minimum wage that’s being paid in the maquilas.
People say, “ I earn 582 colones, 582, 582. No one ever says, “I got
a thousand colones,” but that has to be every 2 weeks.
But then there are whole lot of women that after work go to wash clothes
or iron clothes or sell things on the street and go to work in the
informal sector because they find that this minimum wage isn’t nearly
enough to make ends meet. And then there’s also a lot of women who, in
addition to work in the maquilas, go into prostitution.
Question (Janet): In the United States when we talk about free trade, the maquilas and the people who work there, people say that it’s at least a job. I wonder what your response would be to that comment?
Collective Response:
If we had good salaries, it would be good to have these jobs. However, the
price of electricity is going up, price of the telephone is going up and
our salary isn’t going up. As well, we used to be able to buy food for 2
or 5 colones and now we have to buy it for 25 cents or a dollar which is a
raise in prices when the conversion gets rounded off. And so you can see
that our salary might go up 2 or 3 colones but the price of the basic
needs basket has gone way up much faster.
Marina Rios:
The representatives from the European Union when we submitted a project
proposal to them to be able to have a project to raise consciousness among
maquila workers said they weren’t going to fund that project because the
women already had work. They were going to fund more projects in the rural
sector because they thought the rural women were much poorer. They said
the people have work here who work in the maquilas. They have work but
don’t have any rights.
[laughter]
Comment/Question (Sara):
You said something so beautiful and simple that these owners don’t seem to
realize that you’re people. You’re people and you’re mothers and you’re
raising people. And your responsibilities as mothers....I know this is a
big question, but if each of you could just say something briefly about
how you make sense of that and organize your mothering with this other
piece of your life.
[laughter, sighs, .... note: this question evoked the tears of motherhood]
Margarita:
Being a woman, I feel a lot of pressure in the workplace and also at my
house because now my son will just ask for things. My son said something
to me the other day that made me pretty sad. He said, “Mom, you didn’t
bring me any milk today.” I said, “I didn’t have enough money today.” He
said, “How much does milk cost?” I said, “16 colones” which is a little
less than 2 dollars. Then
the other food I needed to buy cost 10 colones. I didn’t have enough to
bring you milk today. If they give me more work then maybe I’ll buy milk
later.” He said, “Okay, Mom. I understand that.” I said, “Well, you just
need to be patient and later I can buy you milk, but now I can’t because
at least we have food and what do you think is more important, milk or
food to eat ?” He said, “I think food is more important.” I said, “So,
you just need to be patient. When there’s money I’ll buy milk.” It’s
difficult because I want to be able to give him everything that he needs,
but there’s not enough money. I don’t feel good because there’s pressure
at the workplace and I feel pressure at home to be able to give my
children everything they ask for, but I don’t have enough money to cover
all of those costs.
Marisa:
At home I have three children; my oldest daughter is 16 years old, the
next one is 14, the next one is 11 years old. My oldest daughter just told
me that she wasn’t going to continue studying because she said, “Mom, I
know sometimes you don’t have enough money to cover all the costs, all the
school supplies. I’m not going to study. I’m going to work and I’m going
to try to help you.” I said, “No, I want the best for you.” I was only
able to finish my sixth grade education and I don’t want her to live doing
the work that I do. However, I wasn’t even able to have her finish 9th
grade. I didn’t want her to work in the sweatshops [maquilas] and suffer
all the discrimination that we suffer. She said, “Mom, I just want to help
because I know there’s not enough money. You can’t bring home enough money
with the work that you have.” I said, “But when you’re a minor, even if
you work in someone’s house taking care of kids, you’ll be discriminated
against and they’re not going to pay you what you really deserve.” She
was only able to finish 7th grade. My other child is studying 7th grade
and the one after 5th grade. But my oldest daughter hasn’t been able to
continue studying.
Sometimes as mothers we have only bus fare to get to work. We don’t have
anything to buy lunch, anything to buy some fruit. But, I feel better with
that knowing that we’ve left beans and rice at home and our children won’t
go hungry even if we’re not able to eat when we go to work.
At my workplace they don’t care what problems we might be having at home,
or what sickness you might have. Right now I’m going to a psychologist to
get help with this because the place I used to work used to give me an
incentive, a bonus, when I met the quotas. They changed me to another
operation, to another task and I’m not as efficient as I was before. So, I
was given a letter of complaint. They want me to have the same efficiency
that I had in my previous operation. If I get three letters like that from
the ministry of labor then I’m going to be fired and they’re not going to
pay me. A lot of times in the workplace they try to make us hopeless
enough to quit and resign.
Maria Luz:
There are certain moments when I feel alone, when I feel frustrated and
then there are other moments when I feel like I’d like to stop existing.
At the same time I have someone to live and to struggle for and those are
my children. The reason I’m working is for them and I’m working so hard.
I’ll come up against whatever comes because there’s no one else to help me
there. I don’t have a husband to say, “Here, take some of this money or
here, I was able to buy these things.” In the family I have to be the man
and woman at the same time and to be able to help the children and say,
“With what little we have, I’m going to make ends meet and help you
children get ahead.” So, it’s because of both of my children and for my
family that we keep on going and keep on working. That and God who gives
us strength to keep on struggling.
At work sometimes it seems like along with the operating machines we’re
the machines as well. We may start at one time in the morning and end in
the afternoon, but during the day the production has to be constant and if
not then the supervisor says, “Come back next day.” They’re not asking
‘can you come back this day?’ They say, “You didn’t meet the quota so
you’re all coming back on Saturday.”
We don’t even have time to play and to go out with our children. Some days
that we don’t work, sometimes we come here [MAM], that’s when we leave the
house, we leave our chores behind, we leave the clothes that we have to
wash and we come here to learn a little bit more about everything that’s
around us and about what could affect us. We don’t have time or money to
take our kids even to the park and I think that affects us a lot too. We
don’t have either time or money for any recreation, any free time to get
rid of these worries and fears.
Marisa:
I have a lot of similar problems with what the companeras have been saying
except what gets to me the most is that I live in the same house--I share
a house with with three other families. My family says to me, “You’ve been
working for this many years in the factories and you still don’t have your
own house!” Sometimes I feel like a coward and then I remember that I
don’t have enough money with the salaries and I have to pay for
electricity, having to pay for the house where I live, having to pay the
water bills, having to pay for schooling for my kids. When my children
get sick, that’s when I spend more. We don’t have enough money to move
into another house, so they just have to take it, they just have to
withstand those problems. But, there are always those kinds of problems
with families.
Maria Luz:
Some of the people kill themselves working, they pass years working and
they can’t prosper because they don’t have that salary. I feel like when
I become old and retired I won’t be able to say I did this or I bought
this after all these years of working in the maquila.
[break in recording]
[comments not clear]
Margaret: We appreciate what we’ve been able to hear.
Margarita:
We, as well, thank you and feel happiness that there are still people who
concern themselves with the working conditions in the maquilas. Thank you
very much.
[applause]
Director:
[Quiza para no terminar asi con esa emocion tan grande, a mi me toca un
poco seguido---porque trabajo directamente con ellas, y tambien a mi me
conmueva bastante, es importante tal vez una rueda y un abrazo colectivo
porque eso tambien ayuda para nuestro cuerpo]
Maybe, to not finish like this with so much emotion , it seems to me
because I work directly with them and also I’ve been moved so much, it’s
important perhaps to make a circle and have a collective hug because this
also helps our body.
[ everyone moving to form a circle .....laughter]
Marina Rios:
As maquila workers we deal with some very difficult topics sometimes, not
just in terms of work but also in terms of family, in terms of social side
of things.
We also talk about family problems, problems that happen with the
children, with the husbands, with their mother-in-laws....everything.
Lots of times the women come feeling very down and we say, “Well, there is
no workshop today; we can have this therapy time together” and we bring
into the imaginary space the supervisor or the boss or the owner and we
beat the shit out of him!
[applause]
There’s nothing more important that feeling the warmth of our companeros
and companeras who are with us in this struggle both in this country and
in the United States and Europe and all over.
Maria Luz: I feel happy being able to share with you, so God keep you safe during your voyage and God bless.
