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Guatemalan women workers locked in Labour Ministry |
6th November 2009, Banana Link
Nineteen women plantation workers' leaders who travelled to Guatemala City to hold a press conference denouncing abuses of workers' rights in the farms where they work were locked in and subjected to intimidation by Labour Ministry officials today.
As part of the national campaign for decent work organised by the
Guatemalan Trade Union, Indigenous Peoples and Small Farmer Movement
(MSICG), the women, who produce Chiquita and Del Monte brand bananas,
came to the capital to denounce failure by their employers to respect
maternity rights and to pay social security contributions giving
workers access to the healthcare system.
When security guards and Ministry staff found the women inside the
Ministry and the media waiting outside, they locked the women in the
building and locked the journalists out. They proceeded to photograph
all the women and to abuse them verbally. Only thanks to the action of
some of the journalists and other workers who had come to support the
women were the ninetenn women let out of the building.
As the MSICG notes in its communication, this type of intimidation
against those who stand up to defend their rights in Guatemala “have to
be taken particularly seriously in a country where 34 men and women
members of the organisations which make up the Movement have been
killed since the Colom government came to power last year.”
Source: CUSG/MSICG, Guatemala City.
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