February 9, 2009

In January, nine labour rights organizations, including MSN, filed a formal request with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) calling for urgent precautionary measures to protect the life of Honduran trade union leader Evangelina Argueta.

“Recent developments indicate a substantial probability that a plot to assassinate Ms. Argueta and/or her colleagues, or otherwise commit violence against them, is already in the works,” says the IACHR submission filed by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), the American Center for International Labor Solidarity of the AFL-CIO, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the US Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP), United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), Sweatfree Communities, the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), MSN, and the CGT.

“The threat is considered urgent,” the submission concludes.

Argueta is the Coordinator of the Maquila Workers Organizing Project of the Central General de Trabajadores de Honduras (CGT), one of Honduras’ largest trade union federations. Since 1988, she has been actively defending the rights of workers in the export apparel industry.

The joint submission details a pattern of political violence against trade union leaders in Honduras – including the brutal assassination last April of Altagracia Fuentes, the general secretary of Honduras’ largest trade union confederation, Confederación de Trabajadores de Honduras (CTH), Yolanda Virginia Sánchez, a former CTH treasurer, and their driver, Juan Bautista Aceituno, who were gunned down in the streets while returning from an evening meeting regarding a recent factory closure.

Ms. Argueta and her colleagues have encountered a series of explicit threats directed against them, coupled with a pattern of surveillance and pursuit by unmarked vehicles.
Tension and hostility towards trade union leaders has been heightened by several high profile labour disputes involving the closure of apparel factories, including the decision by Russell Athletic to close its Jerzees de Honduras factory in Choloma, where the CGT had been attempting to negotiate a first collective bargaining agreement, and the closure of Hanesbrands’ Confecciones del Valle factory.

Although both Russell Athletic and Hanesbrands deny that the closure of these factories is union-related, the WRC has noted numerous reports by workers of factory-level management explicitly blaming the Jerzees closure on the union.
The IACHR petition asks the Commission to instruct the Honduran government to conduct an investigation into the threats against the CGT, and to install security systems including cameras and bodyguards at the CGT’s Choloma offices to ensure the safety of the union organizers.