Key Test for CAFTA Enforcement: Alcoa's Car Parts Factories Bring Job Conditions in Honduras to New Lows

Alcoa Has Lower Wages, Worse Conditions than Neighboring Garment Factories, Says National Labor Committee

NEW YORK, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire - USNewswire/ -- A report released today documents inhumane and illegal conditions in Alcoa's Honduras factory, which produces harnesses for U.S. cars. While the company claims to be very ethical and to pay its workers well, and points out that it is offering "high tech" jobs, workers in the factory are paid less and work in worse conditions than those at neighboring garment factories. The report, "The Wal-Martization of Alcoa," was written by the National Labor Committee. The report finds:

-- The base wage of 74 cents an hour at Alcoa's plants meets just 37 percent of a small family's most basic survival needs. In the last three years, real wages have actually fallen by 13 percent at Alcoa. Like Wal-Mart employees, Alcoa associates in Honduras have to rely upon charity to survive.
-- Often workers have to urinate, or even defecate, in their clothing after repeatedly being denied permission to use the bathroom. The bathrooms are also dirty, lacking lights and toilet paper. Workers who take "too long" may be pulled from the toilet by guards. There have even been cases of women being made to disrobe and lower their underpants to prove they were having their period so they could use the bathroom more than twice a day.
-- With as little as ten minutes notice, workers on the night shift can be ordered to remain working for another six hours, keeping them at the factory from 4:15 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. -- nearly 14 hours. All overtime is obligatory and those who object can be fired.
-- Under Honduras law, factories are required to provide free transportation to their workers, provide daycare and pay for break time. Alcoa refuses.
-- Alcoa will use slightly veiled death threats, mass illegal firings, blacklists and threats to close the plant to block workers daring to exercise their legal right to organize.
-- By early 2007, the Alcoa workers had suffered enough abuse and started a clandestine organizing drive. On June 2, 2007, the workers held their constitutional assembly, formed their union and elected their new leaders. Three days later, after receiving veiled death threats, the fiery woman union leader who had led the assembly was fired. On June 12, all of the newly-elected union leaders were fired and removed from the factory by armed guards. By July nearly 90 percent of the union's founding members -- the vast majority of whom had seniority -- had been fired.

The fired unionists peacefully occupied the local Ministry of Labor offices for two days, chaining the gates shut. They held demonstrations blocking the front of the Free Trade Zone. Their efforts are being supported by labor unions and activists in the U.S., including the United Steelworkers Union, National Labor Committee (NLC), and the Hispanic Caucus of the Teamsters.

Charles Kernaghan, Executive Director of the NLC, said "This is a critically important test case. If Alcoa -- a Fortune 500 company -- can step on Honduran law and treat the government like a Banana Republic, then the race to the bottom in the global sweatshop economy will have reached new lows. If Alcoa can so blatantly ignore the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement and ignore the treaty's worker rights provisions as just so many words on useless pieces of paper, then we need to revisit and renegotiate CAFTA, for something is seriously wrong."

-- Report Available at: http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=447 --

Source: National Labor Committee

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