Hunger Strike for Labor Rights at Bata Shoe Factory in Cochabamba

If anyone abroad pays a look at Bolivia these days, the chances are pretty good that they won’t get past the main event of 'Evo Politics.'

The Governors vs. Evo. Evo vs. the United States. La Paz vs. Santa Cruz. And on an on. The historic political struggles at the top of Bolivian politics have drawn attention away from other urgent political struggles at the base of Bolivian life, where actually the stakes are higher for most people.

Such is the case today here in Cochabamba as factory workers and union leaders enter the second week of a hunger strike demanding the restoration of labor rights at the Monaco shoe factory. Monaco is the local subsidiary of the Canadian-based global shoe conglomerate, Bata.

Leaders of the Union of Factory Workers here say that labor conditions at the shoe plant in nearby Quillacollo have been deteriorating for years. The union sites, among other complaints:

1. New workers at the Bata subsidiary are forced to renounce their labor rights as a condition of being hired.

2. New workers are not fully compensated for overtime hours worked, as Bolivian labor law requires.

3. Workers have reported threats and intimidation from corporate managers designed to threaten union activity.

4. Workers have been directed by managers to lie about how far they live from the factory, losing access to transportation assistance.

5. The wage gap between factory workers and foremen has grown so dramatically that some workers on the shop floor earn less than 4% of the wages paid to shop foremen.

Union and worker frustration at these developments finally boiled over late last month with the sudden firing of a 54-year-old worker at the plant, Alejandro Saravia. Saravia has worked for Bata's subsidiary for 28 years and was fired seven months shy of becoming eligible for the modest retirement benefits fought for by the union.

Bolivian labor law requires that fired workers be given clear notice in writing of the reasons for the dismissal, which Bata's Bolivian managers have refused to do in the case. According to Saravia, he was summarily fired by a Bata manager in his late 20s after getting into an argument over whether the factory worker was at his assigned post. Saravia, who first went to work at the factory in 1980, disputes the accusation. His firing's close proximity to his becoming eligible for retirement benefits also raises other questions about why Bata's managers acted as they did.

On June 30 Saravia and four others, including Factory Workers Union leader Oscar Olivera, began an indefinite hunger strike to demand Saravia's reinstatement and a response to the charges of labor abuses at the factory. Straddled across worn out old mattresses on the union's floor the strikers also note that the Morales government has failed to come to workers' assistance, despite demands for action made to Labor Minister Walter Delgadillo.

"If neoliberalism left something intact, it was the factory worker movement," said Olivera, writing from the factory workers headquarters that was once converted into a torture facility by the nation's former dictators. "The industrial workers of the cities who, despite all the difficulties of this 25 year of struggle, have managed to maintain our culture and values, tucked inside our hearts and veins and houses and factories and union headquarters."

The union and the hunger strikers are writing directly to Bata's Canadian owners, Thomas and Sonja Bata, calling on them to send a corporate representative to Cochabamba to investigate labor abuses at their factory here.

With research assistance from Boris Rios, Leny Olivera and Aldo Orellana.

Photo Credit: Ukhampacha Bolivia