EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a part of As Equals, NCS’s ongoing sequence on gender inequality. For details about how the sequence is funded and extra, take a look at our FAQs.
Guatemala City
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In the bracing morning air, employees depart their houses in the outer suburbs and hurry towards the industrial buildings lining the Guatemalan capital’s highways.
Some go by foot. Others by motorbike; complete households on the college commute, kids in their moms’ arms. Many extra journey on outdated yellow college buses, imported from the United States after many years of service.
The employees are virtually totally ladies, starting from their late teenagers to early 60s. They stream into manufacturing unit buildings previous heavy steel gates and 10-foot partitions topped with barbed wire.
What occurs inside these garment factories, often called “maquilas” all through Central America, is essentially hidden from public view – despite the fact that they make use of tens of hundreds of employees and are essential to Guatemala’s economic system.
Cameras and different recording units aren’t allowed inside, a number of of the employees informed NCS. Independent inspectors are hamstrung by manufacturing unit bosses, in response to authorities officers. Trade unions are few and makes an attempt to prepare are met with threats, firings and, in some instances, violence, the employees stated.
What does emerge from these factories is field after field of clothes overwhelmingly destined for the US: clothes for a few of the largest manufacturers in North America, equivalent to Carhartt, Target and Ralph Lauren, amongst others.
After many years of nearshoring insurance policies pursued by successive US administrations, Guatemala has turn into an built-in hub for affordable attire – and a few of the penalties for the native workforce have been brutal.
A months-long investigation by NCS gathered dozens of testimonies of office abuse. Workers spoke of public dressing-downs and threats to fireside workers unable to satisfy not possible quotas, wage theft and sexual harassment.
Some maquila employees informed NCS they got each day quotas of hundreds of attire objects, and made to face for as much as 15 hours a day, whereas incomes a minimal wage of lower than $500 a month.
“If you don’t keep up, they flag you out, they discipline you,” stated one employee, Rosa Guerra. “They ask us to hurry up and say that they cannot pay us.”
Others described deplorable working situations: “The (drinking) water was dirty. Sometimes it even had soap or cockroaches in it,” stated Merida Jacinto.
But dissent isn’t an possibility for the overwhelming majority of maquila employees. Of the greater than 850 textile maquilas in Guatemala, solely 76 enable a employees’ union, Labor Minister Miriam Roquel informed NCS. That’s about 9% of factories.
Guatemala has lengthy been an affordable provider for US firms. But maquilas took on an more and more central position throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, when lockdowns meant many containers sat idle in East Asian ports for months – and US producers regarded to manufacturing nearer to dwelling. Between 2019 and 2022, attire imports from Guatemala grew 37%, in response to knowledge from the US Department of Commerce.
The sector now counts for nearly 10% of Guatemala’s GDP, and is so essential to the economic system it was granted an exemption to proceed working throughout Covid-19 restrictions.
Back in Guatemala City, as the gentle begins to fade from the skyline, the maquila employees emerge from their factories. Now, some are able to share their tales of the world inside.
Rutilia Cano had labored for the identical garment manufacturing unit for 23 years – till she was abruptly made jobless in February.
An indigenous girl from the Guatemalan highlands, Cano by no means learnt to learn and moved to the capital as a younger mom in the Nineteen Eighties to flee the violent civil battle between the Guatemalan Army and leftist guerrillas that triggered the demise of tens of hundreds of Maya civilians between the Nineteen Sixties and the early Nineties.
Working in the textile trade was the solely job she may land, and the tempo of labor was brutal. “We were asked to make some 300 t-shirts an hour, but I never managed to,” Cano, now in her late fifties, informed NCS. “I’m old, I could only get to 150, 175 t-shirts maybe, and the managers were always coming after me.”
Her dream was to sooner or later return to her village and buy land to construct a home. But for greater than three many years her dwelling has been a rundown condo with a plastic curtain as a door.
Like a lot of her fellow employees, Cano was by no means in a position to buy the fruits of her labor. The t-shirts, skirts and extra that she made at the manufacturing unit – owned by Korean firm KOA Modas – have been provided to US retailer Target and bought overseas. Throughout her employment Cano was by no means below contract with Target, who – as a third-party consumer – was not accountable for her layoff. Target used an middleman to buy clothes from KOA Modas, a spokesperson informed NCS.
On a uncommon go to to a big division retailer that sells worldwide manufacturers, Cano ran her sturdy arms formed by a lifetime of stitching alongside the hanging rails of clothes. “It would take me days to afford what is on offer here,” she informed NCS.
Most of the garment factories listed here are run by Korean firms, who management virtually two-thirds of investments in the Guatemalan textile trade, in response to a 2022 report by USAID.
In this intricate provide chain, US manufacturers do not need formal relationships with most of the Guatemalan employees who manufacture clothes on their behalf, nor are they legally accountable for the working situations inside the maquilas.
However, they profit from a sample of sub-contracting offers that hold costs down and deliveries operating unabated, advocates have stated.
According to an organization truth sheet, massive US model Ralph Lauren purchases from 17 services throughout Guatemala, a few of that are owned by Korean firms. Ralph Lauren didn’t instantly reply to NCS’s requests for remark on its provider relationships.
Mother-of-three Cano had been trying ahead to retiring sooner or later and spending extra time along with her household. But in February, that future was upended when Cano’s manufacturing unit declared chapter. Labor inspectors informed her the manufacturing unit’s possession had left hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in excellent funds to the Guatemalan welfare company. Cano’s pension was gone.
“I was due some 80-90,000 quetzales ($11,000)… and nothing. I feel so sad because we all lost our jobs, even me, a single mother. It’s just sad…” Cano informed NCS.
A spokesperson for Target informed NCS suppliers are required to adjust to lawful, protected and respectful working situations and that the firm determined to finish the relationship with KOA Modas as a result of the manufacturing unit didn’t adjust to its requirements.
NCS reached out to KOA Modas for remark, however didn’t obtain a response at time of publishing.
After the manufacturing unit closed, Cano joined litigation involving Sae-A Trading, one other Korean firm which used to buy KOA Modas’s attire on Target’s behalf and, after a prolonged authorized battle, pledged to satisfy the overwhelming majority of severance funds.
While Sae-A Trading has no obligation for the employees, it agreed to make a “humanitarian contribution” to these affected by the closure, it stated in a decision doc. Its contribution of $3.3million is “considered a loan,” it added.
Such severances are “by far the largest single sum of money most of these families will ever see in their lives,” Scott Nova, government director at the Worker Rights Consortium, a US-based group that investigates the garment trade, informed NCS.
He stated it was frequent in the trade for employees to not obtain their pension, including “it’s difficult to put into words how financially and psychologically devastating it is to work 20 years to earn this one sizable, real pot of money, and then just have it taken from you.”
When NCS final spoke with Cano in late September, she was nonetheless ready to be paid below the settlement with Sae-A Trading. “I need that money,” she informed NCS, including “at my age I’m struggling to get work – the only thing I could do is cleaning houses but that is very tiring.”
For different maquila employees, merely becoming a member of their manufacturing unit’s commerce union – if it even exists – might be met with trepidation.
Corina Olivares is certainly one of the union representatives at the Texpia II manufacturing unit, additionally owned by Sae-A Trading. She took over after her predecessor, Anastacio Tzib Caal, was shot lifeless exterior of Guatemala City in June final 12 months.
In the months main as much as Caal’s demise, obscenity-ridden threats appeared on the partitions of employees’ bathrooms, which NCS has seen pictures of. “Unionists, son of b****es, resign or we will lynch you,” learn one, with the stylized picture of a revolver mimicking a signature. “Unionist b**ch, go to sh*t don’t mess with the factory, be grateful it’s given you to eat for many years,” learn one other.
While the US Department of Labor implied Caal’s homicide was linked to his union exercise, Olivares wasn’t so sure. However, she added, the threats made her critically query whether or not to run as his successor: “For months, I was genuinely scared to walk to work,” she stated. Olivares informed NCS that the firm blamed the union – which had campaigned for lowered working hours and clear ingesting water being made obtainable between shifts – for a contraction in commerce. The ensuing hostility from different employees towards union members made her really feel unsafe.
A spokesperson for Texpia II confirmed that threatening graffiti appeared between May and June final 12 months however burdened that manufacturing unit’s administration took actions to sentence the threats and assist union actions.
Any type of verbal abuse or private harassment isn’t tolerated at Texpia II, the spokesperson stated.
Elsewhere, VESTEX, the civil affiliation representing the textile export trade in Guatemala, stated in a press release to NCS that the group’s Code of Conduct strictly bans verbal and bodily abuse, together with corporal punishment, coercion and sexual harassment.
Power dynamics and sexual abuse
Inside factories, the steadiness of energy between the male-dominated administration and the principally feminine employees can result in one other disturbing downside.
Worker Laura, who selected to stay nameless, described how one supervisor would contact her inappropriately at work. “I knew it was not okay, but I was too scared to speak out,” she informed NCS. “I didn’t know that inside a maquila, female workers were so exposed to the middle managers, as if a man who thinks he’s superior to us can dominate in such a way,” she added.
Another employee, Alexandra, who additionally most popular to stay nameless, informed NCS of a supervisor who sexually harassed her for years. “He would come toward me from my back in a really creepy way, putting his hands on my neck, touching me in a way that made me very uncomfortable,” she stated.
When she rejected his advances, Alexandra stated the supervisor would change her shifts, and scold and insult her in entrance of different employees.
When Alexandra and her colleagues complained about sexual and office abuse, she informed NCS that the reply from higher managers was all the time that they have been free to go away.
In actuality, Alexandra had few choices however to remain on, telling NCS that she couldn’t afford to be unemployed, and resigning would have meant giving up her severance pay.
Alexandra’s manufacturing unit sells virtually completely to the US market. Past purchasers embrace Carhartt, which informed NCS it parted methods with the manufacturing unit in 2019, although it does proceed to buy from Guatemala extra broadly.
Instead of quitting, Alexandra determined to hitch a employees’ union. The group relayed the abuse to the Guatemalan Ministry of Labor. But when labor inspectors have been despatched to the manufacturing unit earlier this 12 months, the firm’s administration refused to satisfy with them, video seen by NCS exhibits.
Guatemala labor inspectors are denied entry to the maquila.
The following week, all the members of the union have been laid off.
In the months since, the Ministry of Labor has continued to have interaction with the firm, with no outcomes. “(More recently) We tried to enter that maquila with our inspectors to register the workers’ conditions,” labor inspector Silvia Juarez informed NCS. “We simply couldn’t: the management barricaded behind a shut door and we would need police intervention to break through,” she informed NCS, gritting her enamel.
Alexandra’s manufacturing unit didn’t reply to an in depth checklist of questions from NCS. However, the textile factories commerce affiliation VESTEX, informed NCS in a press release that the group works hand in hand with the labor inspectorate to ensure laws are revered.
The Guatemalan president, Bernardo Arévalo, is the first progressive chief to be elected in the nation in many years. His inauguration in 2024, after years of political malaise, raised hopes that rampant corruption and power malpractices may lastly be reined in. But change is taking longer than anticipated.
“What has been lacking in Guatemala is the political will to make public institutions work,” the president informed NCS, a nod to the abuse in the maquila sector that has been notorious since not less than the Nineties.
Arévalo’s authorities raised the minimal wage for maquila employees by 6% and has pledged to do extra to implement present regulation. But as the labor ministry’s incapability to have interaction with exhibits, the state can do solely a lot.
Months after their dismissal, most of the employees fired together with Alexandra informed NCS they have been getting by doing odd jobs and had struggled to discover a new employer – their membership in the union apparently a stain in the eyes of different maquila homeowners.
The future for these maquila employees feels much more unsure as the White House has imposed import tariffs on a number of nations that play a key position in the provide chain, leaving textile employees round the world uncovered. The influence of these tariffs is but to be felt in Guatemala, however different nations equivalent to Lesotho and Haiti are already dealing with a bleak end result.
Prachi Agarwal, a analysis fellow at the ODI assume tank, has written a couple of “gendered supply chain shock” as the overwhelming majority of the workforce in the international garment trade are ladies.
Alexandra in the meantime has determined to chop ties with the sector altogether. She hopes her daughter – who’s learning regulation – could have a brighter profession.
“I will never want my daughter to work in a maquila. Ever,” she stated.
Reporter: Stefano Pozzebon
Editor: Sheena McKenzie
Cameraperson: Lali Houghton
Video editor: Estefania Rodriguez
Field producer: Sofia Menchú
Commissioning editor: Ladan Anoushfar
Copy editor: Andy Raine
Associate Producer: Marta Simonella