Garment Industry: Women workers fight back, need the international solidarity

EL SALVADOR, December 16— More than one hundred women working for Florenzi Industries are occupying the building of this business in Soyapango, in the San Salvador industrial area. These workers took  direct action, occupying their workplace since July 2020 when Florenzi closed its doors due to Covid-19.  owner, Sergio Pineda, refused to pay the workers for four months of labor, including benefits and vacation time.
On March 18 President Bukele ordered the shutdown of 152 maquilas for four months. Pineda, the capitalist and owner of Florenzi Industries, took advantage of the presidential decree to close the factory without paying about $500,000 dollars that he owes the workers. Even worse, he did not pay for the forced confinement due to the pandemic. On the contrary, he used the pandemic as an excuse to declare bankruptcy, while offering the workers compensation of an old sewing machine with an approximate value of $100.00 dollars. Of the 209 workers 97 of them accepted what they were offered, which covered only a minimum of what Pineda owes these workers. Since then, 113 workers decided to face the brutal challenges of Covid-19 and the lack of employment that forces them to go hungry and die.
These workers are experiencing capitalism’s cruel exploitation. The capitalists have stolen all the wealth created by the workers through all the years of long hours of labor, and now they are facing unemployment. The international working-class exposed to these persistent experiences, need a new social and economic system. That’s communism where all the wealth created by the working-class is used to satisfy the working-class and their families’ needs, not to enrich the parasite capitalists such as Sergio Pineda, who is part of the El Salvador government oligarchy.
Florenzi Industries is one of the 152 maquilas operating in El Salvador after the civil war. These factories are distributed in 17 free zones, free of taxation and employ 56,000 workers. The majority are women who are paid the minimum salary with little or no benefits.These brave women demanded from the legislative assembly an immediate solution to the problem. Instead the assembly ordered the labor department to resolve it, but the labor minister claimed not to have the legal tools to resolve the issue, relegating the responsibility to the courts. The workers protested asking for the immediate firing of the labor minister, Rolando Castro, accusing him of protecting the boss. During the protest the workers stopped traffic to put  pressure on the government, yet the corporate media was silent because it is part of and serves the elite capitalists. In August, men in police uniforms tried entering the Florenzi Industries building trying to get the equipment and materials without succeeding.
The workers have learned that government institutions are capitalist servants. Their fight is “against the neoliberal capitalist” where “the poor sew what the rich wear”. The historic international working-class experience has taught us that capitalism of any kind, neoliberal, national or imperialist is a dead end for the workers. Therefore, what the working-class needs is to fight for communism.
In a New York Times article about labor abuses in El Salvador in 2001, Steven Greenhouse exposed the most inhuman abuses against the workers. They included no ventilation, poor hygiene, long working hours, forced overtime, and frequent layoffs, especially targeting those who want to organize, or support a union. Under these precarious circumstances of slave wages the apparel industry in El Salvador, just in the year 2000, exported 1.6 billion dollars of production to the U.S.
From the 1.6 billion produced by the workers, less than 10 percent is for the workers while the factory owners keep more than 90 percent of what workers produce.  This is how the workers in the maquilas become victims of international capitalist exploitation.
The majority of the maquila workforce are women who are faced with labor exploitation, gender exploitation, very low salaries, the worse labor conditions, constant sexual harassment and sexual abuse, and unpaid work at home. It is no coincidence that feminist groups are unifying in the fight with the workers.
It is important to acknowledge the international working-class historic experience of women and men fighting together for communism, particularly in Russia and China. They mobilized millions of peasant and city women workers; they made gigantic and significant progress in social, labor, economic and gender equality.
The Progressive Labor Party fights for communist equality, gender equality and against the racial discrimination of the international working-class. We are in solidarity with the Florenzi industry workers.