How People & Planet helped Garment Workers win their jobs back

College clothing is big business, and a recent victory in central America is a big step forward for the rights of workers who make sweatshirts and hoodies. We speak  to a woman who took a leading role in the fight for justice securing that victory

Students who wear university and college sportswear and other branded clothes may like to pause for a moment to consider the recent outcome of a struggle by the workers who made them.  Workers at the Jerzees de Honduras factory in Honduras, owned by one of the biggest US athletic clothing retailers, are celebrating the reversal of a decision to close the plant because of their wish to negotiate pay and conditions through a trade union. The closure had thrown 1,200 employees out of work.

Reyna Dominguez is one of the leaders of the struggle for the right to organise, and has recently toured UK universities to drum up support for Buy Right, a campaign by activist organisation People & Planet  to uphold international labour law in the supply chains of the garment industry.

For almost all her working life, Reyna has known little else but low pay, forced overtime and exploitation. The oldest of eight children, she left home when she was just 13 to escape domestic violence. But she faced more violence and sexual abuse in her work as house maid and had to return home. She left again at the age of 16 to work in the maquila – the garment industry.

She says: “I had heard that there was abundant work for young women that paid really well and that I thought would help me to make my dreams come true -  to financially support my mother and brothers and sisters, to study to become a teacher and to buy a colour television. Then I wanted to get married, then buy a small house with flowers in the garden and have children.”

These dreams were soon destroyed. “In my first job, my co-workers and I were paid only 144 lempiras a week ($7.62 USD), forced to work unpaid overtime, given unachievable quotas, often yelled at and were physically pushed and hit,” Reyna recalls. “The conditions were terrible. There was no drinking water, and one bathroom with no running water or toilet paper was shared by hundreds of men and women. We were crammed into dangerously small work spaces.”The factory, Reyna says, had no respect for workers’ rights. Honduran and international labour laws were consistently ignored. When she finally left, her severance pay was well below the legal minimum. Further work at other factories also included exploitation.

In the Jerzees de Honduras factory Reyna and other workers decided to form a trade union to stop exploitation and fight for their rights, but these plans were opposed by the company. Union leaders faced intimidation and threats. Other workers were told that the union was causing trouble. Then the factory was closed.
The Worker Rights Consortium, a respected international organisation which carried out an investigation into conditions at the factory, concluded that the company’s repression of freedom of association was “among the most brazen and systematic” that it had encountered.

The struggle of the workers was supported by students, first in the USA and then in the UK. Campaign group People & Planet joined a US university-led boycott which saw university purchasers cancel contracts worth millions of dollars. People & Planet say this represented one of the biggest and most successful garment boycotts in history. As the protests escalated and the boycott grew rapidly the factory owners, Russell Athletic, sensationally agreed to re-open the plant.

Russell Athletic is owned by the US-based giant Fruit of the Loom which is, in turn, owned by the massive conglomerate owned by billionaire investor Warren Buffet. Russell Athletic has now signed an agreement to open a new factory in the area, re-hire the sacked workers and provide economic assistance to former employees.
Crucially, Russell Athletic has also agreed to allow unions to organise at all of the company’s Honduran facilities and to institute a joint union-management training programme on freedom of association.

A joint statement from the company and the union said the agreement was “intended to foster workers’ rights in Honduras and establish a harmonious” relationship and "represents a significant achievement in the history of the apparel sector in Honduras and Central America.”

Now aged 32, Reyna is a mother of six, four daughters and two sons. The victory at Jerzees de Honduras means she can revive the hopes for her future she remembers from her teenage years.  The victory has strengthened her convictions, though she knows it is not easy being a union activist.
“The only way to address the abuse we face as workers in the maquila is to form strong, independent trade unions,” she says. “But being active in a union can at the very least mean being severely punished. It often means losing your job and the prospect of getting work in the industry in the future.
 “This is why the agreement we have with Russell/Fruit of the Loom is so important. It sets a precedent for the entire industry in Honduras, and is huge step towards justice for garment workers throughout the world.”