Central America Project
The FLA Central America Project seeks to develop mechanisms and tools that will produce measurable improvement of workplace conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, particularly in regard to the issues involving discrimination, harassment and abuse, and freedom of association in the apparel assembly or maquila sector.
The FLA is seeking to establish these tools in such a way that they will continue to be usable beyond the lifetime of the project. Collaborating with the FLA in the project are Participating Companies including adidas-Salomon, Eddie Bauer, Gildan, Liz Claiborne, Nike, Phillips-Van Heusen and Reebok, trade associations such as VESTEX ( Guatemala), and ministries of labor in the region. The project is funded by a grant from the U.S. State Department and by the FLA.
The Project Coordinator worked with the multiple stakeholders to develop Guidelines for Good Practice in Hiring, Termination, Discipline, and Grievance Procedures in the Spanish language that guard against discrimination and harassment and abuse and promote respect for freedom of association. The coordinator made the guidelines available to zone authorities and participating factories and trained factory and zone authorities, Ministry of Labor personnel, and staff from the PCs on the guidelines and how to incorporate them into their activities. The intention is that the project will create awareness on the part of factory management of the benefits of positive labor relations and an understanding on the part of zone and government officials of the potential long-term benefits of providing a factory base close to the U.S. that has a demonstrable commitment to improved workplace conditions.
In addition, an ombudsman was hired, under an arrangement with the Worker Rights Consortium, to receive, process, investigate, and help remediate complaints brought forth by workers and others, particularly in regard to systematic barriers to freedom of association, such as blacklisting. In Guatemala, requests for training administered by the FLA Project Coordinator have come from the labor inspectorate within the Ministry of Labor, including the specific unit that covers the maquila sector, and Vestex (the apparel exporters association in Guatemala). A request for training has also come from the free trade zone authority in the Dominican Republic (a country not covered by the project).
The FLA sponsored a stand at Guatemala’s Apparel Sourcing Show, the largest such event in the region, and organized a seminar in which speakers from adidas, Reebok, a local Guatemalan supplier, and the FLA participated. The show organizers confirmed that the FLA event had the best attendance of all the seminars on the program, which is an indication of the high level of interest in the area regarding code of conduct compliance. In Honduras the project held meetings with the Honduran Maquila Association and FLA PCs in order to discuss the possibility of cooperation and also held meetings in El Salvador.