NICA: CHENTEX UPDATE, CAMPAIGN FOR LABOR RIGHTS Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Campaign for Labor Rights, 1247 "E" Street SE, Washington, DC 20003. Rapid Action Network Alert posted on February 9, 2001 IN THIS ALERT: 1. Update on Chentex Workers' Struggle 2. Letter Writing and Nien Hsing's Response 3. Congressional Investigation of Military Purchases from Chentex 4. Where do we go from here? 5. Background [Information in this Alert provided by Nicaragua Network, and the CST union in Nicaragua] 1. UPDATE ON CHENTEX WORKERS' STRUGGLE Pedro Ortega, General Secretary of the Nicaraguan Federation of Textile and Garment Workers (CST-JBE), told the Nicaragua Network this afternoon (Feb. 9, '01) that the union will meet with Lucas Huang of Nien Hsing Consortium (which owns the Chentex Garment Factory) on Monday February 12th. During this meeting, the union will hear a counterproposal from Chentex management. He stated that there was some hope of coming to a final agreement, but that this was not certain. The Garment Workers Federation and Chentex management had made a verbal agreement in early January to sign an accord but the accord fell apart when management and the "company union" in the factory organized a protest against the agreement and management officials said that they could rehire only 7 of the workers who were fired during 2000 for union activism. Ortega said that one piece of the management's counterproposal is a day care center for workers' children to be set up at the factory. He added that in returning to negotiations, the union will continue to insist that fired workers and union leaders be rehired. The accord, which fell apart in January, provided for the rehiring of between 70 and 90 workers taken from a list of 130 workers put together by the union as well as for the rehiring of 2 of the fired union leaders. In other news, the Garment Workers Federation has organized another union in a free trade factory, in the Roo Hsing factory. Roo Hsing, like Chentex, is located in the Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone outside of Managua, Nicaragua. This factory was in the news recently because it was letting chemical waste drain directly into Lake Managua. The union has had to put pressure on the Ministry of Labor,which at first refused the legal recognition for the new union at the Roo Hsing factory and also refused recognition of the new board of officers of the 25 year old union at the Calzado Sandax factory. Ortega told the Nicaragua Network that organizers expected that recognition of the union officers at both factories to be granted by the Labor Ministry on Tuesday. 2. LETTER WRITING AND NIEN HSING'S RESPONSE On January 18th, Campaign for Labor Rights requested that letters be written to the CEO of Nien Hsing, Ron Chu Chen, expressing concern and outrage about the labor rights abuses that have occurred in the Chentex factory in Nicaragua. Since that day, we have received over 350 such letters! We have been forwarding your letters to Mr. Chen in Taiwan, and today (Feb. 9), we received a response from him which tried to smooth over what is happening at Chentex. But the situation at the factory is viewed as a major crisis both by the company and the Taiwanese government-as well as by the Nicaraguan union members who have suffered so much injustice from the company. The text of this letter is hard to read, but will be copied at the end of this Alert. 3. CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION OF MILITARY PURCHASES FROM CHENTEX It was uncovered and reported in the New York Times last December that Army and Airforce Exchange Service posts (AAFES) were buying and profiting from jeans made in Chentex. On January 24th, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's staff and Barry Holman, Director of Defense Capabilities and Management for the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), announced the intent to move forward with an investigation into the financial and labor practices of the AAFES. The announcement comes after a December 15th request by Congresswoman McKinney and 14 or her colleagues for a GAO investigation into the government's possible abuse of sweatshop labor. McKinney stated in a press conference on this issue, "American taxpayers deserve to know whether certain US Government operations might break international law or, more certainly, American values. It has long been established that the American people don't want to purchase products made through sweatshop labor or the subjugation of women. The GAO investigation will uncover the full truth by putting AAFES under a much-needed microscope." McKinney went on to say, "The US Government should not put tax dollars in the hands of human rights abusers. I hope this GAO investigation sends a strong message to AAFES that the US Congress will not tolerate unethical and immoral activities carried out in the name of the American people." The GAO investigation will provide information on AAFES policy, monitoring and enforcement with regard to sweatshops along with detailed financial records of AAFES' use of appropriated funds. This investigation will be concluded next week, and tell us how much the military is buying from Chentex. Campaign for Labor Rights will keep you posted on this issue and on the strategy that is being developed around it. 4. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Campaign for Labor Rights has several ideas for strategic directions to take this campaign. Currently, we are working with the union in Nicaragua, as well as with several national and international organizations on the possibility of supporting a delegation of Chentex union leaders that will go to Taipei, Taiwan to meet with government officials and Nien Hsing representatives. But the advent of this delegation is dependent on many factors-not the least of which is the new round of negotiations being launched this Monday, February 12, in Managua. The Nien Hsing campaign is tremendously important, not only because its outcome will have so much impact on the union members who have faced harassment and/or firing from Chentex, but also because Nicaraguan and Taiwanese business interests hope to eradicate real unions for workers in the free trade zone. This has been a long and difficult campaign both for Nicaraguan workers and for human rights activists in the U.S. We should remember, however, that the solidarity campaign also has brought immeasurable stress to Taiwanese business and political interests. Taiwan is looking not only for cheap, powerless labor to produce clothing but also for official recognition by the Nicaraguan government. The difficulties of this campaign should not be mistaken for signs of hopelessness. We and Nicaraguan unionists have sent shock waves through the Taiwanese power structure. This is no time to stop! Because the vast majority of union members and leaders were fired from Chentex last April and May, it is difficult to get reliable information from inside the factory about what is being produced there. For this reason, we are not calling for another round of leafleting actions at Kohl's stores at this time. A new strategy is under development in terms of mobilization targets. We will keep you posted as information from Nicaragua and other sources continues to come in. 5. BACKGROUND The following is an article written by Daisy Pitkin, National Co-Coordinator of Campaign for Labor Rights. In 1999, there were 8 worker-supported, independent maquila unions recognized in Nicaragua-- more than in all the other Central American countries combined. Today, there are only 2. In the last year and a half, factory owners and managers in the Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone outside of Managua, Nicaragua have been engaged in an extensive anti-union offensive, and the struggle over the right to organize a union has become an international campaign. This struggle is on the brink of an historic victory for the over 700 workers fired from the Chentex factory last year-a victory that will set a precedent for labor relations in factories as well as for international campaigns that support the right to organize. The Chentex factory is owned by a Taiwanese business group named Nien Hsing. The factory employs 1,800 Nicaraguan workers who produce 25,000 pairs of jeans each day. 80% of the workers are women, and 50% of them are single mothers. The average pay for Chentex workers is twenty cents per pair of jeans. The jeans are sold in the U.S. for thirty dollars. The Chentex factory is not unique. It is merely one example of tens of thousands of sweatshops worldwide embedded in a complicated web that makes it difficult for consumers to follow the goods they buy back to the production line. These factories are the result of the global "race to the bottom" that finds corporations moving production sites from country to country in search of the cheapest labor. In 1998, Chentex workers formed a union, and in August of that year, they negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that postponed for a year any consideration of wages. After a year, the union again raised the wage issue-requesting an increase that would amount to eight cents more per pair of jeans. After months of campaigning with no response from the factory's management, the workers held a one hour work stoppage in the plant, and later a two-day strike. Chentex management retaliated by firing over 700 union workers and leaders. Nien Hsing, owners of the Chentex factory and of other factories in the Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone, has been subsidized by the Taiwanese government for 7 years. The Taiwanese government also has close financial ties with the Nicaraguan government. These ties include funding the construction of several Nicaraguan government buildings and a $100 million Taiwanese investment in the construction of a new Free Trade Zone in Leon, Nicaragua. The jeans made in Chentex are sold in U.S. retail stores. One of the major purchasers of clothing made in Chentex is the U.S.-based Kohl's Corporation, whose privately owned jeans label, "Sonoma," is produced there. On December 3rd, it was reported in The New York Times that the U.S. Military purchases and profits from goods made in Chentex which are sold in base post-exchanges. Chentex is a picture-perfect case study of the role factories play in the current system of economic globalization. A system in which it is typical to find that the owners of a factory are citizens of one country, the workers citizens of another, and the consumers citizens of yet a third country. The Chentex case is extraordinary only in what its owners found when they arrived in Nicaragua at the end of their "race to the bottom." What they found was the human face of globalization-a group of workers determined to fight for the right to organize a union and an international network of solidarity activists behind them to support their struggle. Several U.S.-based organizations and trade unions including the Campaign for Labor Rights, Nicaragua Network, UNITE!, USWA, National Labor Committee, the Solidarity Center of the AFL-CIO, and others have been involved in Nicaraguan Free Trade Zone organizing for years. So, in 1999, when Chentex workers faced an intensive union busting campaign and asked for international support, consumers in the U.S. were ready and able to respond. Since receiving that call for support last June, U.S. grassroots activists have organized over 400 actions at stores selling clothes made in Chentex. These actions have mostly been educational leafleting in parking lots or on the public sidewalks outside stores. Many local groups have also engaged in letter-writing drives and have reported staging human billboards, banner drops both in and out-side stores, and various kinds of civil disobedience. Delegations of labor and human rights leaders have met with Taiwanese officials in their representative offices across the U.S. At one of these meetings in Washington D.C., Taiwanese Representative, Chien-Jen Chen, (who would be the Taiwanese Ambassador if the U.S. had diplomatic relations with Taiwan) handed delegates a statement saying that the government of the Republic of China would use its political and financial influence to encourage Chentex management to re-hire the fired union leadership. But as Chentex is simply the production end of a larger multi-national operation, the campaign to resist the labor rights abuses that occur there has had to expand to multiple fronts. In October of this year, a group of activists in Taiwan formed the Taiwanese Solidarity with Nicaraguan Workers. This organization has held several demonstrations at Nien Hsing headquarters in Taipei and also disrupted a Nien Hsing stockholder meeting in early November. Their solidarity work has been important for putting direct pressure on Nien Hsing and also in gaining press coverage for the Chentex workers' struggle both in Taiwan and in Nicaragua. Because of the collective efforts of workers in Nicaragua and their supporters in the U.S. and Taiwan, the campaign to gain recognition for the Chentex workers' union seemed on the verge of success in the first week of this year. On January 5, after months of negotiation, a verbal agreement was reached between factory management and union leaders. The agreement provided for the rehiring of two union officers and at least 80% of 128 other union members from among the 700 who were fired last year. It also included the dropping of all legal actions, and the signing of a labor protocol which would cover all Nien Hsing-owned factories in Nicaragua. But the actual signing of this verbal agreement is now unlikely due to actions and statements by Chentex owners. After reviewing the 128 files of the workers to be re-hired, the management now says that it will re-hire only 7 of the union members. This reversal is unacceptable to the union negotiators, and no further negotiations have been scheduled. In response, U.S. grassroots activists have launched a letter writing campaign that targets Nien Hsing's CEO. The goal is to pressure the CEO to force the management at Chentex to sign the agreement. Several national and international organizations are working in coalition to send a delegation of union leaders to Taiwan to further pressure Nien Hsing. A new round of negotiations will be launched on February 12. The signing of an agreement would set a global precedent for labor relations in Free Trade Zone factories like Chentex. And the international, multi-front struggle that secured the would-be victory in Nicaragua will set the tone for anti-sweatshop campaigns of the future. For more information contact Campaign for Labor Rights 202-544-9355, LETTER FROM NIEN HSING TO CAMPAIGN FOR LABOR RIGHTS Dear Campaign for Labor Rights: Thank you for your concern about the ex-workers on our Chentex factory in Managua, Nicaragua. We appreciate your understanding on the negotiation of re-hire process between the union leaders and our representative is still undergoing which has not yet reach the agreement due to their uncertain requirements for their satisfactory situation. I urge your detail investigation on the needs of union leaders' final judgement to help them better for the win-win situation on the job security and career development for them. We are sure they should be soon to resolve the difference and to share with you the good result on their benefit. Once again, thank you for the support to our work and welcome to verify that Nien Hsing has not and never will violate the labor rights in our business operation. Sincerely yours, Ron Chu Chen, Chairman -30- Campaign for Labor Rights, 1247 "E" Street SE, Washington, DC 20003. Phone: 202-544-9355, fax: 202-544-9359 Trim Bissell, National Co-Coordinator Emily LaBarbera-Twarog, National Co-Coordinator, Daisy Pitkin, National Co-Coordinator, Web site: ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-02.14.01-04:40:35-29789