This piece offers a look at a succesful publicity campaign, led by Focus on Globalization, a labor right group in Taiwan, in support of Salvadoran workers, against the Tainan Enterprises, a Taiwan based manufacturer with factories in Central America, as well as in Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, and China, which closed its factory in El Salvador in April, 2002, after the union asked for negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement. Thanks to a tri-national campaign, with the workers in El Salvador persisting in refusing to accept the meager severance pay, and support movements in actions targeting the Tainan Enterprises at its homebase in Taiwan and its Big clients, such as Gap, in US, the company agreed to face-to-face negotiations in El Salvador in July; and this campaign was culminated in an agreement, signed by Tainan Enterprises and STIT (the Textile Industry Workers’ Union of El Salvador) on November 21, 2002, to reopen a unionized factory in El Salvador and to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. Assuming the November agreement is implemented in good faith, the new factory would be the first maquila factory in El Salvador with a democratic union with a collective bargaining agreement. Moreover, while many companies in the Central America maquila sector resort to such maneuver to avoid negotiating a contract by closeing a factory - often reopening with a whole new workforce somewhere else - never before has a union and a company agreed to a reopening. The agreement thus marks a new level of success for the international worker rights movement.

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For details of this struggle please go to the website: http://www.usleap.org/Maquilas/Salvador/AgreementNL12-02.html