Hurricane Devastation - Appeal for Support

#Giving Tuesday 2020

In mid-November, two powerful, contiguous hurricanes battered Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Eta and Iota generated mudslides and flooding, burying villages, flooding homes, and destroying crops. Government responses have been woefully inadequate and many of our Partners have been seriously affected.

CoDev is raising funds for these partners: Artesana, a Guatemalan organization supporting imprisoned women and their families, and the Honduran Women’s Collective, CODEMUH which accompanies workers in the country’s maquila (sweatshop) zones.

Artesana has borrowed a truck and is delivering donations of food, clothing and sanitary supplies (masks, hand sanitizer, basic medicines) to affected families of imprisoned women. Artesana’s share of the donations sent by CoDev will support the truck’s fuel costs and purchase additional emergency supplies.

Seventy homes of CODEMUH’s shop floor advocates have been submerged by the hurricanes. These women received little warning to evacuate and lost most of their belongings to the floods. CODEMUH will use donations to provide them with clothing, bedding, new mattresses, cooking materials, food, sanitary supplies, and tools for cleaning the mud and debris from their homes once the waters recede.

Struggling for Rights in Maquilas

Rosa Dina Rodríguez is 33 years old and has worked for over 9 years in maquilas, producing goods for brands such as Nike, Under Armour, and Gildan and for stores including Walmart. As a result of maquila workplace conditions, Rosa has a disability in her right shoulder, damage to her spine and both her hands. She has already undergone two surgeries in her right hand and is waiting for a third on her left. 

Because of these injuries, Rosa Dina must relocate to a position where she does not perform repetitive movements of the shoulder, avoids movement of the neck and any lifting of items over five pounds.

Though the Honduran Institute of Social Security qualified Dina Rosa’s hands as occupational disease, after her contesting their opinion that it is common, Gildan has yet to meet these demands and has actually demanded an increase in production.

A Win for Labour Rights in Honduras

Liliam Castillo is 36 years old. She was born in La Paz and at the age of 15 moved to San Pedro Sula, in northern Honduras, in search of employment. She is a single mother of two, a fifteen-year-old daughter and an eighteen-year-old son. Liliam has been working for Gildan Activewear, a Canadian multinational in Honduras, for 10 years. 

In 2010, Liliam began experiencing pain in her left arm, spine, neck, and shoulders. A doctor at the Honduran Institute of Social Security diagnosed her with tendinitis, caused by repetitive movements. In 2012, a co-worker invited Liliam to join the Honduran Women’s Collective (CODEMUH), where she joined the training program and the theater group, “The Rebel Transgressors.” In February of 2013, Liliam was dismissed from Gildan and so she began the process of demanding for reinstatement. During this three-year process, Liliam did what she could to make ends meet, including selling goods and cleaning houses.

The lawsuit went through the entire judicial process, from the First Instance Court, the Court of Appeals, to the Supreme Court. After three years, the Court ruled that Gildan immediately reintegrate Liliam in equal or better conditions than she had been previously working in and also to pay lost wages. Gildan refused to adhere to the Supreme Court’s ruling and CODEMUH developed an approach to pressure the multinational corporation and implemented various strategies to demand Liliam’s reinstatement, including sit-ins in front of the company, the use of social media, local, national and international media, and the international solidarity of individuals and allied organizations.

As a result of these actions, Liliam was reinstated in May 2016. She was relocated to “Hygiene and Safety” where she assists the engineer, delivers safety equipment such as masks, ear plugs, and goggles, and ensures that workers are using them. Liliam kept her salary of 1,900.00 lempiras (approximately $100 Canadian dollars) a week, the same amount she earned when she met the production goal at the time she was fired.

Liliam says: “I am greatly grateful to CODEMUH for everything they have done for me. I have been trained, I have learned about my rights, I am a duly informed woman. Thanks to CODEMUH, I have a job, my self-esteem has improved, and I am proud to be part of the Rebel Transgressors group.”