outsider Trustworthy Freedom Fighter
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
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Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 7:25 pm Post subject: Honduras - Just World? |
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Workers working flat out, and the management increase the productivity rate by 17%, with no increase in wages ($.99cents an hour):
http://www.globallabourrights.org/reports?id=0654
'Executive Summary
Race to the Bottom:
U.S. Free Trade Debacle in Central America
•After 29 years of Free Trade agreements with Central America, Lear workers in Honduras producing Hyundai and Kia auto parts for export to the U.S. continue to earn below-subsistence wages of just 99 cent an hour, while being illegally fired and blacklisted for daring to exercise their legal rights, including the right to organize a union at Lear.
•The Lear, Hyundai and Kia joint venture in Honduras e njoys windfall tariff and other breaks amounting to tens of millions of dollars. These corporations pay no income tax, no state, county or municipal taxes, and are exempt from all import and export duties.
•On the other hand, Lear’s workers in Honduras are trapped in makeshift, dirt-floored huts, lacking potable water, relying on primitive outhouses and cooking with wood, since they cannot afford gas. The workers’ children go barefoot to save their shoes for church and school. Lear workers subsist on rice and beans, and even so, they often must turn to loan sharks to survive.
•Lear, Hyundai and Kia workers are on their feet the entire shift, constantly rushing to keep up with the moving rotary tables and typically performing 6,160 operations per shift, or one operation every 4.82 seconds, connecting circuits on the wire harnesses and binding them together with tape.
•The workers are drenched in sweat, since factory temperatures routinely exceed 95 degrees. Supervisors threaten and curse at the workers to move faster or face dismissal. Many workers report they experience sharp pains in their wrists, hands and fingers from repeating the same motions, nonstop, throughout the day.
•Recently management unilaterally increased the workers’ production quota by 17 percent — with no wage increase.
•Workers have to bring their own toilet paper to work.
•The Honduran Ministry of Labor is not acting in good faith. When corporations like Lear deliberately and arbitrarily block Honduran labor inspectors from entering the KyungshinLear factory in San Pedro Sula, the Labor Ministry’s only “recourse” is to fine the $14.2-billion Lear Corporation between $10.23 and $102.30 in penalties — which amounts to a pitiful slap on the wrist. When it comes to enforcing labor rights, the system is broken.
•Similarly, the U.S. Government’s ironclad commitments to the multinational corporations have blossomed under 29 years of free trade agreements. The multinationals have been lavished with massive tariff and tax breaks, while workers’ real wages are slashed and the workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively are suppressed. This must change. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7. |
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