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http://womensenews.org/story/labor/150501/guatemalan-domestic-workers-reveal-dirty-business
Guatemala - Domestic Workers Try to Form Union for Rights, but Blocks &
Fears Deter
By Louisa Reynolds* - WeNews Correspondent - May 4, 2015
"It's been hard," says a domestic worker who is struggling to
organize and bring the country in line with the region. "The women are
afraid and they have been told that if you're a labor organizer you're going to
get killed."
A young indigenous domestic worker in Solola, Guatemala – Photo Credit:
Louisa Reynolds
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (WOMENSENEWS)-- At the age of 8, Fidelia
Castellanos had just landed her first job as a domestic worker in Guatemala
City and her tiny hands were already dry and chapped from washing, cooking and
cleaning.
Castellanos had been raised on a coffee and sugar plantation in the
municipality of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, in the southwestern department of
Escuintla, and she had never seen a TV before.
One day, as she cleared the table after dinner, she momentarily gazed up at
the TV screen in amazement. Suddenly, a burning pain in her cheek brought her
back to reality and tears began streaming down her face. Her employer's husband
had slapped her so that she would never again forget that she was there to work
from dawn to dusk and could not remain idle even for a few seconds.
That would be the first of many humiliations that Castellanos would face as
a domestic worker.
Her last employer instructed another domestic worker to search her handbag
before leaving the house at the end of the day. When she dared to complain, she
was fired. Ironically, her employer worked for a well-known human rights
organization.
Women's eNews interviewed Castellanos in her home in Guatemala City.
Despite the hardship she has endured, her tone is upbeat.
Hers is the story of thousands of Guatemalan women.
Centracap, a local advocacy group, estimates 186,000 domestic workers are
in Guatemala and more than 50 percent have emigrated to Guatemala City from
impoverished rural areas. Some earn an hourly wage; others live with their
employers. The latter often work up to 14 hours a day and are usually paid $150
a month, half of the national minimum monthly wage, which is currently $304.68.
What makes Castellanos unique is her determination to fight for better
working conditions in Guatemala, where labor unionism is weak after the
repression of workers' movements under the country's recent history of military
dictatorships.
Trying to Unionize
At the age of 49, Castellanos decided to follow her father's footsteps --
he had been a labor organizer on the plantation on which she grew up -- and
began to seek support from other domestic workers to set up the Domestic and
Independent Workers' Union (Sitradomsa) in 2011. "I don't want other women
to suffer the way I did," she says.
But it's been slow going. After four years, Sitradomsa has 55 members who
pay a monthly quota of $1.20 and almost 100 attend its awareness raising
events. "It's been hard because the women are afraid and they have been
told that if you're a labor organizer you're going to get killed. But that was
before; now we have the right to organize," says Castellanos.
The shocking case of Candelaria Acabal, a 24-year-old Mayan woman from the
town of San Pedro Jocopilas, in the highland municipality of Quiché, reveals
the particularly sadistic forms of abuse that indigenous women can suffer at
the hands of their employers. Her case was widely reported by the Guatemalan
press.
Since the age of 14, according to media reports, Acabal had lived with her
employer, Olga Marisol Natareno Taracena, the wife of former Congressman Adolfo
Manuel RodrÃguez Recinos. She was forbidden to leave the house. She was
routinely beaten and verbally abused. On one occasion, she was forced to have
sex with two men. She was also forced to eat dog feces as a punishment for
allegedly not keeping the house clean.
In 2010, she managed to escape from her employer's home and sought help
from another domestic worker who persuaded her to seek help from the police.
Charges Dropped
Natareno was prosecuted for racial discrimination, bodily harm and
subjecting Acabal to conditions of slavery. However, the case was closed after
Acabal and her family were threatened and she dropped the charges.
In 2009, after intense lobbying from a number of local advocacies, the
Guatemalan Institute of Social Security launched Precapi, a program to enroll
domestic workers. The program offers accident coverage, maternity pay and
medical check-ups for domestic workers' children. Employers are required to pay
$5 a month to enroll their workers and workers pay $2.50.
To date, however, Precapi has enrolled fewer than 1,000 domestic workers
and has only executed 3 percent of its budget because no sanctions are imposed
on employers who fail to enroll their domestic workers and the authorities
haven't reached out to domestic workers to make them aware of their rights.
The coverage offered is also limited because the program doesn't include
sick leave or treatment for sick children, only vaccinations and routine
check-ups to monitor growth.
"We need a law that makes social security coverage compulsory for all
domestic workers," Maritza Velásquez, a spokesperson for the Association
of Domestic and Garment Factory Workers (Atrahdom), said in a telephone
interview. That will only happen, Velásquez says, if Guatemala ratifies International Labor Organization
Convention 189, concerning decent work for domestic workers.
The convention guarantees domestic workers' right to daily and weekly rest
hours, entitlement to a minimum wage and the right to choose the place where
they live and spend their leave, which means employers can no longer force them
to reside in their homes. Ratifying states also have the obligation to protect
domestic workers from violence.
Regional Inspiration
Guatemalan advocates attended the 59th session of the Commission on the
Status of Women, which took place in March this year at U.N. headquarters in
New York City, and were inspired by the example of other Latin American
countries, such as Bolivia, that have already ratified the convention.
Bolivia and Guatemala have the largest indigenous populations in Latin
America and a similar history of racism and discrimination against indigenous
women. However, unlike Guatemala, Bolivia has ratified the convention and in
2012 the Evo Morales administration approved a law to ensure its
implementation.
Many of Guatemala's regional neighbors, including El Salvador, Costa Rica
and Nicaragua, have also ratified the convention.
Guatemala's current labor minister, Carlos Contreras, has shown no interest
in the issue even though a pledge to improve conditions for domestic workers
was included in the 1996 peace agreement.
"Look at the type of government that Bolivia has and look at the type
of governments that we've had, which have been right wing and pro
business," says Velásquez. "They don't care about improving our
conditions."
With an eye on elections in September, advocates are focusing their efforts
on raising awareness of the convention among domestic workers throughout the
country in the hope that they will lobby presidential candidates and force them
to take a stance on the issue.
"Our employers leave us in charge of their house, their children,
their elderly father," says Castellanos. "If we're the main pillar of
the domestic economy, why don't they value our work?"
*Louisa Reynolds is a British freelance journalist. She has worked in
Central America for the past eight years and has reported on justice and human
rights issues, gender, development, crime and violence, politics and economics.