Faced with the shortcomings of a State that cannot guarantee self-determination or resource autonomy for its people, women’s organizations and unions have carried out actions that showcase the kind of economic justice they want to build. Their goal is to address the root causes of their problems and guarantee labor rights and economic justice for women in all their diversity.
Yohana Montenegro was nearly fourteen when she started working at the Cambridge maquila, where she spent the next fifteen years of her life. Then, on March 28, 2008, four hundred workers, including her, were fired from the company.
According to Montenegro, maquilas that manufacture and assemble clothes for export regularly engage in illicit activities to take advantage of Decree 29–89, Law for the Promotion and Development of Exports and Maquilas, , this decree grants fiscal privileges to maquilas that have been operative for up to ten years, which explains why the owners of Cambridge fired their employees, renamed, and relocated their company.
Montenegro recounts how employees were fired with no justification and were denied severance:
Most of them received a pittance. They were given two week’s pay because [the company] wasn’t going to pay them their severance benefits, and the workers had no choice but to accept that.””
In Guatemala, adequate employment is hard to come by. There are hardly any openings in the so-called formal sector, and the ones that do exist are not readily accessible. Employers can demand that applicants have a certain level of educations or that they own specialized equipment, such as a car or a computer. For most job-seekers, regardless of work experience, such requirements are often out of reach.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) in its report “COVID – 19 and the World of Work: Starting point, response and challenges in Guatemala” published in 2020, the unemployment rate for women in the country is 3.5% — slightly higher than that of men, which represents 2%. “The high incidence of informality is an important feature of the Guatemalan labor market,” the study reads, “nearly the entire employed population —75%— has an informal job.”
In addition, it is explained that women are a particularly important group. “As a result of the extensive work that they carry out in the most affected sectors (particularly that of services). 70.4% of women who work do so in the tertiary sector, compared to 36.3% of men. Women have less access to social protection services (only 19.2% have affiliation to social security), they bear a disproportionate workload in the assistance or care economy”.
These figures demonstrate the need to ensure that working women have access to decent employment, self-determination and control over their economic resources, which is seen as part of a broader term known as: “economic justice”. But, although in Guatemala there are laws and agreements that punish discrimination against working women, organizations and unions, they assure that this is not enough to guarantee that there is economic justice.
According to the Association for Women’s Rights and Development (AWID), an international feminist organization that supports movements for gender justice and women’s rights, economic justice essentially involves locating rights, equality and justice at the center of the economy; ensure a fair distribution of resources for all citizens; and achieve self-determination and economic autonomy for women.
Economic justice also includes women being able to control their time, control their economic resources, and have the freedom to make decisions in public and private spaces, explained Flora Partenio, sociologist and feminist activist from the Network in an interview conducted for this report. Dawn in Argentina.
Sonia Escobedo, a feminist economist and former Presidential Secretary for Women (SEPREM), believes that women workers face structural disadvantages that complicate access to economic justice in Guatemala. In her opinion, the main obstacles are non-compliance with the legislation by companies and the fact that the State does not guarantee the protection of their labor rights.
There is a proposal that seeks to reduce the gender gap and the labor and economic inequality experienced by women: the feminist economy. This is an integrative perspective that recognizes that the systems we live in do not meet the needs of everyone. It is presented as a political commitment that questions the classical and hegemonic economy, and an invitation to rethink domestic, care, productive and reproductive work that traditionally falls on women.
The assistance and care work carried out by women is not valued, recognized, well paid, or redistributed. And it is from there that the need to seek changes that make this situation and care work visible is born.
“Feminist economics comes to link usually separate worlds: that of finance, debt and high production and that of everyday life. By bringing these worlds together, it shows that what happens in homes has a lot to do with what happens in high finance”, explains Flora Partenio.
Housework is a lever that could slow down the system. Without domestic work, everything stops: there would be no working class, no factories that would work, because no one would wash uniforms or prepare food. Domestic work is what cushions the crises, ” he adds.
“In contexts of crisis, the State tends to withdraw, to disinvest, to cut spending. They cut policies and social programs such as food, assistance to poverty and others. And then there is disinvestment in public services such as education, health, transport and infrastructure. Four core areas for impact on the social organization of care. When the State withdraws resources for infrastructure, the care centers for disabilities —for example— are women, who assume this workload from their homes”, concludes the sociologist.
The complaint does not always have the expected end
According to the organizations of women workers consulted for this report, there are sectors in which more abuses and breaches of social security are reported, such as the maquilas, agricultural work and domestic work. They also claim to know cases of violations of rights within the same State in which the labor rights of women workers have been violated.
Yohana Montenegro, the woman who was fired from the Cambridge maquila, knows very well what the course of a complaint of this type is. After her unjustified dismissal in 2008, 80 people —76 workers and 4 workers— did not accept that last payment and filed her complaint with the Ministry of Labor. “That cried blood. This process for us had many setbacks and torments, especially for my colleagues who were already mothers, ” recalls Montenegro.
In Guatemala, there are four institutions that register cases of labor noncompliance. The Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (Mintrab), as the governing body for labor issues; the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP), when labor conflicts escalate, cannot be resolved in the General Labor Inspectorate —the civil route— or there are more crimes; the Judicial Organism (OJ), where the labor courts to which the cases arrive are concentrated; and the Guatemalan Social Security Institute (IGSS), which has its own inspectors and which, according to its own organic law, can carry out inspections for possible infringements.
The complaint from the group of employees to which Yohana Montenegro belonged could not be resolved at the Ministry of Labor. The administrative route was not enough for the businessmen in charge of the Cambridge maquila to take responsibility. Therefore, the process was transferred to the labor courts of the Judicial Branch, and five months later —in August 2008— they received a resolution that the employer should pay Q2,028,236 (about 264 thousand dollars), in favor of the and the workers.
That was something big: we made noise, we called the press and we wanted our voices to be heard. In this journey, there were obstacles from the fact that a letter was incorrectly placed until the employer did not receive the documentation, and we even acted as notifiers, all in search of justice”.
Montenegro
However, Montenegro describes this resolution as “a joke and a joke, because winning the complaint remained on paper and we were never paid.” The group of workers and workers tried to comply with what the court ordered, but this only resulted in intimidation by the Cambridge businessmen. In 2009, Yohana Montenegro assures that they were followed for months. She suffered an attempted kidnapping and another person reported surveillance at her home.
In addition, of the 80 people included in the complaint, two women died before receiving any type of justice.
When adversity can be compost
Justice for us workers does not exist. A year later we tried to get a job but we couldn’t because they included us in the Infornet blacklists. We are convinced that this record comes from the Ministry of Labor because only there do they know who filed a complaint,” says Montenegro.
Infornet is a Guatemalan company that has a database where it collects information from “public records, courts, tribunals, business references, and credit card payment behavior” of people, according to its website. This information is made available to companies that can use it to verify a person’s situation before authorizing loans, rents, purchases or even applying for a job. In 2020, a court fined Infornet for disclosing and trading personal data and asked the Public Ministry to investigate possible crimes.
Yohana Montenegro and her colleagues consider themselves “burned out in the job market”, since appearing on such lists has prevented them from getting a job. For this reason, sociologist Flora Partenio believes that Yohana’s story shows various forms of violence that working women face.
On the one hand it concentrates economic violence —by not getting a job— and on the other labor side —by being discriminated against with the lists. But at the same time, her story shows how she leads the fight for the women of her city and her age, who face such tremendous power but maintain reaction and resistance”, Partenio analyzes.
In fact, given these deficiencies of the State and despite the lack of justice being applied, a part of the complainants of the Cambridge maquila organized themselves to overcome this situation. They reached out to women’s organizations and began to receive information on how to build safe spaces for them and learn more about their rights and feminist economics.
Over time our mission and vision, as a group, changed. We realized that what we wanted was for no one to go through the same thing as us. We continue to empower ourselves and learn to support more women. Of 76 that we were initially, 70 remained and we became defenders of labor rights”, explains Montenegro.
In 2010, they founded the Cambridge Committee, an organization that seeks to empower more women through a network of maquila workers, in which they provide support to find employment or to overcome any abuse.
In 2014 they received financial support and began to work harder in monitoring cases of resignations, dismissals, and mistreatment within companies. They also organize demonstrations, press conferences and conduct training workshops around human and labor rights and self-care.
Yohana Montenegro -together with her organizing colleagues- has made these advances for the Cambridge Committee while she also takes on, alone, the upbringing of her son and the treatment of her mother, who suffers from chronic kidney disease.
This is an example of the life that these fighting women lead without stopping caring. While she fights, she sets up an organization and joins other women, and she must continue taking care of others like her mother and her son. And for that she does not receive any type of support or state protection ”.
Flora Partenio
Organized women generate change
The Cambridge Committee is one of several organizations working to defend labor rights and seek to support working women.
Just as Cambridge is mainly a space for maquila workers, there are others such as the Association of Home, Home and Maquila Workers (ATRADOHM), the Union of Domestic, Similar and Self-Employed Workers (SITRADOMSA) and some that carry out more political advocacy such as the Women’s Sector Political Alliance (APSM).
Given the shortcomings of the State, which fails to guarantee the self-determination of women and the autonomy of their resources, this type of women’s organizations and unions have carried out actions where they show the economic justice they want to build. They seek to solve the root problem to prevent situations of employment discrimination from continuing. Or completely rethink the system to generate better conditions for everyone, as proposed by feminist economics.
From ATRADOHM, SITRADOMSA and Cambridge, in addition to providing support and legal advice, they provide workshops for women and young workers about to start their working life, in order to “understand that they are subjects of rights, that they deserve good treatment, wages , compensation, minimum conditions, because they are the contribution to the development, economy and production of this country”, explains Floridalma Contreras, who serves as SITRADOMSA’s secretary of education and training.
In the Women’s Sector Political Alliance (APSM) they also offer training and have an initiative called “emancipatory economic alternatives“, which is a school of feminist economics in which women have met “to talk, feel and debate about reproduction, production, consumption and use of nature”.
According to Marta Godínez, a member of the Women’s Sector, this:
It is an awareness work, a training work so that they know their rights and raise awareness that care work, paid or unpaid, represents a contribution to the economy and should be recognized”.
Through this school and fairs, meetings and workshops, it has been possible, for example, to promote sustainable agriculture, and the organization ensures that it has managed to get several women to start producing for self-consumption. This type of organizations and initiatives of organized working women, in addition to directly supporting and training others, carry out investigations, press conferences and participate in meetings and dialogue tables to demonstrate the conditions and influence significant changes through laws. , programs and public policies.
The APSM, together with more than 100 organizations, have constituted the platform for the Economic Development Law (LeyDem), to seek the creation of better conditions, through traditional processes and presented initiative 5452, which seeks to approve this law. The initiative is presented as a tool that seeks to facilitate development conditions and economic empowerment for women.
Platform for the Women’s Economic Development Law (LeyDEM Platform), is an alliance of more than 100 women’s organizations at the national level that has been established to promote the approval of initiative 5452, the Women’s Economic Development Law that currently It is in the Congress of the Republic.
Dalila Vásquez, from the Mother Earth Women’s Association and part of the LeyDem Platform, explains that this initiative aims to combat economic violence against Guatemalan women.
We believe that if the State invests in women, it would already be recognizing the work we do. And the initiative has three financial programs that are: Emprende Mujer, which consists of seed capital from non-reimbursable public funds; Credimujer, which seeks to give the opportunity to access credit to a population that has historically been denied for not meeting the requirements; and the third consists of a subsidy for women or women’s organizations that already have a consolidated business but that still need technological or production improvements so that they can meet those needs. This is on the financial support side, but we have other programs to make it comprehensive,” explains Dalila Vásquez.
With the creation of a Fund for the Economic Development of Women and the presentation of economic, financial, technical and technological programs, it is intended to promote and implement economic initiatives, productive projects and economic empowerment of women.
For the organizations, this has been an opportunity to get closer to the political classes and decision makers to generate concrete changes in the economic reality of working women. If the law is approved, Guatemalan women could receive financing, technical support and some type of state recognition for the economic contribution they make.
If training and production projects continue -such as those carried out by women’s organizations- and initiatives such as the Leydem and others that seek gender equality are approved, people like Yohanna Montenegro and the women who are part of and participate in groups like the Cambridge Committee will have more tools to get ahead financially.
This article was written by the digital media Agencia Ocote de Guatemala for FCAM.