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Maquiladora Unions Form Coordinating Body Fired union officers from the Chentex factory in Nicaragua told their stories and those attending expressed solidarity with their struggle to reinstate fired workers and to get criminal charges against union officers dropped. Experts, including former FSLN Nicaraguan Minister of the Economy Dr. Alejandro Mart�nez Cuenca, gave presentations on the place of the maquiladora industry in the global economy. Lucas Wei Huang, representative of the Nien Hsing Consortium in Nicaragua, spoke about factory costs and answered pointed questions from the audience. In their final declaration, the Central American and Caribbean union representatives resolved to continue the struggle for respect for the rights of workers established in each country's labor code and in international covenants and to strengthen alliances with all social sectors that identify with the struggle to organize unions in the region's free trade zones. Maquila organizing has not gone well in Central America. Serious violations of workers' right to organize and collective bargaining are rampant. The most effective anti-union strategy has been to close one factory and move the work to another. Some plant closings have been abetted by "forced" removal of unionized factories from private free trade areas, such as the Continental Park in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, owned by well-known Liberal Party political candidate Jaime Rosenthal. For the last three years, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation (ITGLWF), a Trade Secretariat located in Geneva, Switzerland, has sponsored an extensive program of coordinated organizing with its affiliates in Central America with input from UNITE!. Significant financing has come from the ITGLWF's European affiliates. Results have been sparse, however, despite attempts at improved coordination. In most instances, success has been more of a holding action against an intense anti-union campaign throughout the Caribbean Basin. Victories have been short-lived have come as the result of massive international campaigns attempting to pressure retail outlets such at Kohl's and Target here in the United States. A measure of the fragility of democracy in Central America is the fear many workers have of losing their livelihoods if they dare to defend their rights. In response to these problems, "on the ground" activists are planning to meet in Chicago at the Second Latin America Solidarity Conference (LASC II) on March 17-18. Their goal is to improve coordination between US human and labor rights activists and their counterparts in Latin America. LASC II itself aims to "develop analyses, coordinate strategies, and calls to action for solidarity work throughout Latin America in response to the many harmful and damaging aspects of globalization." The conference will address such topics as democracy, militarization, corporate globalization, trade, the environment and environmental justice, labor, indigenous peoples, women's issues, rural/agricultural concerns, human rights and immigration. (See http://www.americas.org/LASC/). Despite the
relatively few successes of international solidarity in Latin America,
the strength and coordination of such organizations is expanding.
Networks and activities within the United States continue to grow as
much as the attempts to defend workers at the local level falter.
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