After four years of solidarity and struggle, a group of workers in Mexico see their comrades being imprisoned with illegal extortionate bail being set. This is how the state apparatus and the corporate world work hand in hand to repress workers demands. This festering cancerous marriage of state and big business will always work to produce a submissive and cheap labour force, useing the full force of the state to intimidate and repress any call for justice.
Here in the West we can see large corporations fill our shopping malls and main streets with a glittering array of commodities, but what they conceal from us is the smell of sweat from over worked, under paid cheap labour which produces this array. The opulence of their premises conceals the miserable conditions of the workers who create all that opulence, and who fill the greedy shareholders fat bank accounts. Our shopping malls are built on a foundation of miserable, and often dangerous conditions, low pay, and at times slave labour. These are the conditions that capitalism fosters and can't live without.
Calzado Sandak, a Bata subsidiary, closed its doors illegally four years ago claiming that the plant was unviable. It has now brought criminal charges against the workers who have been picketing outside the plant ever since, accusing them of ‘extortion’. The General Secretary of the union, Gustavo Labastida Adriano is currently in jail and seven of his colleagues, most of whom have worked at the plant for many years, could be arrested at any time.Read the full article HERE:
“There is a cruel irony here”, says Mr. Raina. “Bata has been able to ignore labour law that protects workers’ rights, and use criminal law to coerce them into giving up their legitimate struggle”.
“In truth, this is a case not of extortion on the part of workers, but of coercion on the part of the company in collusion with the authorities”, explains Mr. Raina. “Although the law says bail for a worker cannot exceed a day’s wages, in this case it has been set at over 2 million dollars. It would take Gustavo 600 years to earn that amount – assuming he still had a job”.
Sign the petition page set up by the Calzado Sandak workers here
