About 800 people work there.  There are 8 production lines, with 60 to 63 people in each, plus other sections. 

The work shift is Monday to Friday, beginning at 6:50am.  They give us between 12 and 12:55 for lunch, with no other break.  Leaving time is 7pm.  On Saturdays we worked from 6:50am to 4pm. 

Last year in April we began to work at night.  We worked from Monday to Friday 6:50am to 7pm, and from 7:30pm to 10:30pm.  On Saturdays we worked from 6:50am until 7pm.  And on Sunday we worked from 6:50am to 5pm.  Or, if we weren’t going to work on Sunday, we would work on Saturday all night until 5:00 on Sunday morning. 

The overtime hours, and working on Sundays, was obligatory.  As an inspector, I was required to work all these hours on my feet.  Mr. Chang, a Korean manager, would say to us that we should work until we died.  This continued through December. 

The wage, without overtime, was 538 colones every two weeks.  Overtime hours were paid at 10.50 colones.  The most I was able to earn, working until 10:30pm every day and on Saturdays and Sundays, was 1,300 colones. 

The production goals for the Liz Claiborne pants and skirt were 75 pieces per hour, 750 pieces per day.  Later they increased it to 100 per hour, 1,000 pieces per day.  The goal for one Liz Claiborne jacket was 60 to 80 pieces per hour. 

They affiliated us to Social Security [health care system], but did not give us permission to go to the clinic for an appointment.  When we had an appointment they would only give us two hours, but it usually takes at least 5 hours and they would deduct the hours from our overtime pay. 

There are purified water bottles, but they fill them with tap water once the water runs out.  The bathrooms are not clean.  There are ten bathrooms for women, and ten for men, but most of them are broken so you can’t use them. 

They mistreated us physically and verbally.  They would scream at us and humiliate us, saying that we were “useless, that we were lazy and that if we couldn’t work the way they told us we had better not come in.” They would hit us throwing pieces of clothing at us. 

When a worker is new, they make her take a pregnancy test, and they do lung and blood tests on the women and men.  They bring doctors in to do the exams there.  Then they deduct 48 colones for the test. 

They fired five of us on March 19, after we had spoken with some students from Columbia University.  They were doing a study of wages in El Salvador.  Ernesto Aguilar Sarmiento, the manager of the San Marcos Free Trade Zone, fired us, saying that it was because there wasn’t work.  But the supervisors had already told some of our co-workers that they were going to fire us because we had spoken with gringos on March 13.  The workers who were fired were Betty Josefina, Julio Henriquez Lopez, Santos Mejía Rivas, Miguel Amilcar Vázquez ,and me. 

Later I got a job at Apple Tree in the San Marcos Free Trade Zone.  I started working there on April 5, 1999,  and they fired me on August 13.  I was in the inspection department. 

The labels that they produce are: Anvil, Delta, Basic Editions, KnitWorks and BUM.  Mostly they make sports shirts and T-shirts for men, women, and children – including T-shirts that the students say might be for the universities, but we make plain shirts and they put the design on afterward in the United States. 

Working hours are from 6:45 am to 9 am.  Then we have a break for 15 minutes.  We go for lunch at 11:45, and we work from 12:45 to 7 pm.  But the sewing operators, since they work on a piece rate, have to go in earlier.  Some at 6 am, the majority at 6:30 am.  They come back from lunch earlier and some even don’t eat lunch.  On Saturdays, we work from 6:45 am until 4 pm, and some days we work until 11 pm. 

The production goal for Delta shirts was 7,000 pieces a day per production line of 50 people.  For Anvil, it was from 6,000 to 7,000 pieces a day.  They said that the production goal was less because it was a more involved process. 

I was paid every two weeks the minimum wage of 525 colones plus overtime at 10.50 per hour.  When there was a lot of work, I could earn as much as 900 colones. 

The bathrooms were dirty.  There’s one bathroom per line with a separate set for men.  There’s no potable water.  They fill the water bottles at the tap.  There aren’t any fans. 

They don’t give us permission to go to the Social Security clinic.  Just sometimes they let pregnant women go, but frequently they refuse them.  If you’re absent one day, they deduct that day and the 7th day’s pay, and suspend you for an additional day, even if your absence is justified.  Or, if they don’t punish you, they take you to the office and you have to sign a warning letter, and they reprimand you. 

The supervisors yell at us and humiliate us.  Mr John Ha, the general manager, hit me on three occasions, screaming at me and saying he was going to fire us because we didn’t make the production goal, and refused to sign off on the overtime hours that I had worked. 

I was fired on August 13.  That week, they fired a number of companeros, all from the group of us that wanted to organize a union.  To me they said that it was because I didn’t make production, and because I was putting out poor quality, which was not true.  I always made production, and even the auditor in charge of inspecting the Delta t-shirts told a friend of mine that my quality was good; that that it was not fair that they had fired me. 

Shortly after I was fired, a delegation of students from the United States came to visit me with the National Labor Committee.  When they invited me to give my testimony in the United States, I accepted, because I think that what they are doing is important.  I think they are going to help us so that our rights will be respected.