WRC report on its investigation of labor violations at a Star S.A. factory in Honduras. Includes a description of the company’s response to the charges

Worker Rights Consortium

English

DigitalCommons@ILR

  
5 Thomas Circle NW     Fifth Floor     Washington, DC  20005      
(202) 387-4884     Fax: (202) 387-3292      
wrc@workersrights.org     www.workersrights.org 
 
Case Summary: Star S.A. (Honduras) 
October 1, 2008 
 
Star S.A. is an apparel manufacturing facility in Honduras that is disclosed as a producer 
of collegiate apparel for licensees Nike, New Agenda, and VF Imagewear. The factory is 
owned and operated by Anvil Sportswear.  
 
The WRC’s work on this case has occurred in two phases. In the first phase, the WRC 
conducted a preliminary inquiry in response to a report from the National Labor 
Committee (a U.S. based labor rights organization) in November 2007, alleging that the 
company had illegally dismissed a group of workers who had sought to form a union. The 
WRC’s preliminary inquiry revealed that the factory had indeed conducted an unlawful 
mass dismissal. During the course of several days in mid-November 2007, Star 
management dismissed roughly 55 workers shortly after those workers had become 
founding members of a labor union named SITRASTAR. The dismissals were unlawful 
under Honduran law, both because they were clearly motivated by anti-union animus and 
because they violated a procedural requirement in the law, known as “protección del 
estado,” which prohibits the dismissal of founding union members (for any reason) 
without prior authorization for the Ministry of Labor.  
 
In light of these findings, the WRC recommended to Anvil that the workers be reinstated 
with back pay. Several other organizations, including the National Labor Committee and 
International Textile, Garment, and Leather Workers’ Federation, also weighed in on the 
issue, pressing Anvil, and Nike, the key buyer, to take corrective action. Nike engaged 
relatively quickly, conducting its own inquiry and pressing Anvil to reinstate the workers. 
In December 2007, Anvil reinstated and provided back pay to roughly 55 unlawfully 
dismissed workers. The reinstatements represented important progress.  
 
The second phase of the WRC’s engagement involved a full assessment of labor practices 
at the facility. This effort began with extensive offsite worker interviews. The WRC 
received credible testimony from workers about a number of serious abuses at the 
facility. Workers testified that factory supervisors engaged in verbal abuse of workers 
(yelling at workers and addressing them with vulgar and derogatory epithets), and that in 
some cases, supervisors physically abused workers inside the plant as a means of 
enforcing discipline. Workers testified to instances of serious sexual harassment by male 
supervisors of female workers in the facility. Workers testified that they were forced to 
work overtime and that they were subjected to unreasonable restrictions on their access to 
bathrooms and drinking water. Many workers reported that these conditions triggered 
their desire to organize a union at the plant.  
  2
 
As part of its inquiry, the WRC also sought to investigate another set of alleged anti-
union dismissals. These firings had occurred after the mass dismissal described above 
and were not initially investigated by the WRC. At the time factory management agreed 
to reinstate the first group of fired workers, management also committed to the union that 
it would review the circumstances of this second set of firings in consultation with the 
union and would consider reinstating these workers as well. At the end of 2007, the WRC 
received a complaint from the SITRASTAR union alleging that management had reneged 
on its commitment to review these workers’ cases with the union in good faith.  
 
In February 2008, the WRC contacted Star in order to arrange to review the WRC’s 
findings concerning code of conduct compliance in areas unrelated to freedom of 
association, and to seek cooperation from Anvil in reviewing relevant documentation and 
interviewing managers related to the dismissal of the second group of workers. 
 
Anvil responded by indicating it would not cooperate with the WRC. The company’s 
position was that it was engaging directly with the union at the plant concerning the 
dismissals and the WRC’s role as a monitor of university codes of conduct was therefore 
not applicable to the situation. The WRC responded that there were numerous issues of 
concern in addition to the dismissals. The WRC also noted that, in terms of the dismissals 
themselves, the fact that there was a dialogue between management and the union did not 
exempt the factory from its obligation to demonstrate compliance with university codes. 
If the dismissals were unlawful, the factory had an obligation to remediate this violation. 
 
Repeated efforts to secure the company’s cooperation, over a period of months, did not 
bear fruit – on several occasions, the company indicated a willingness to schedule a WRC 
visit to the factory and then failed to follow up. In May, the WRC contacted Nike to 
request its intervention in securing Star’s cooperation. Nike replied that it had 
communicated with Star and that the company had indicated to Nike that it was prepared 
to meet with the WRC to review the code of conduct compliance concerns. However, 
when the WRC followed up by again requesting a meeting with Star management to 
review the code of conduct compliance issues, the company refused to meet.   
 
Despite Anvil’s failure to cooperate, the WRC was able to gather sufficient evidence to 
assess the legality of the dismissals. This evidence strongly supported the conclusion that 
the workers were dismissed unlawfully.  
 
First, the dismissals in question were illegal in terms of the procedure employed. Article 
117 of the Honduran Labor Code requires any employer who wishes to dismiss a worker 
to provide a written document to the worker in advance of the dismissal, stating the 
justification for it. In this case, Anvil did not provide any of the workers in question with 
a dismissal letter. Instead, factory management simply informed the workers verbally that 
they were being dismissed as part of a general reduction of personnel. On the basis of 
these facts alone, which Anvil could not plausibly dispute, the dismissals were without 
question illegal.  
 
  3
Second, the WRC found strong evidence that the workers were selected for dismissal due 
to their union activism. All of the workers in question were supporters of the independent 
unionization effort at the plant. All of the workers joined the union during the period after 
its founding assembly, but prior to their dismissal. And all of the workers had participated 
in a protest on November 12, 2007 at the industrial park where Star is located. The 
dismissal of workers occurred in most cases just days after their participation in the 
lawful protest (the largest time gap between participation in the protest and dismissal was 
two weeks). Workers testified that members of the factory’s personnel department and 
security personnel from the free trade zone took extensive video footage of workers 
during the protests. Through this footage, management was in a position to know the 
identities of workers who had participated in the protest. Additionally, workers testified 
that, in repeated instances prior to workers’ dismissal, factory supervisors threatened the 
workers that they would be dismissed due to their union activities. In some cases 
supervisors demanded that the workers provide them with the names of union supporters 
as a condition of keeping their jobs.   
 
Anvil provided changing and contradictory justifications for the dismissals, each of 
which lacked credibility. The company’s first justification – given to workers at the time 
of the dismissals – was that there was a need for a general reduction of the workforce 
(e.g. overall downsizing). After being challenged by the workers, the WRC, and other 
organizations, the company provided a second and wholly different justification for the 
dismissals, claiming that the dismissals had in fact been carried out for cause: the 
company alleged the dismissals were justified by poor performance or disciplinary 
problems. However, the company had made no such claim at the time of the dismissals. 
Indeed, in some cases, management specifically said to workers that their performance 
was not the issue, noting that the company had dismissed other workers during the same 
period who had entirely clean records. The fact that the company only began to make the 
just cause claim months after the dismissal, in response to pressure, severely undermined 
its credibility. Importantly, Honduran law makes clear that reasons for dismissals given 
post hoc are not considered valid; indeed, this is the reason, as explicitly stated in the law, 
why employers are required to provide a written dismissal notice explaining the 
justification at the time of the dismissal.1  
 
In light of the evidence described above, the WRC recommended that Nike press Anvil to 
provide offers of reinstatement and back pay to the workers in question.  Nike, which had 
previously declined to act on the issue, agreed to raise the matter with Anvil.  
 
In response to this intervention, management agreed to meet with worker representatives 
concerning the dismissals. A deal was ultimately reached. Under this agreement, signed 
on September 2, Anvil agreed to reinstate each of the ten workers who continued to seek 
reinstatement. The company agreed to recognize the workers’ seniority as of November 
30, 2008 (as mentioned, the company paid severance and accrued benefits until shortly 
before this date). Notably, however, the agreement did not provide for back pay to any of 
the workers, a required remedy under Honduran law2 and international labor standards 
                                                        
1 Article 117 of the Honduran Labor Code 
2 Article 110 of the Honduran Labor Code 
  4
for unlawful dismissals. Thus, while the agreement represented significant progress 
concerning the dismissal issue, it cannot be considered full remediation. It also must be 
emphasized that progress on the issue was only achieved after an unacceptably long 
delay, causing significant hardship for workers.     
 
There has not been verified corrective action with respect to the other violations 
identified through the WRC’s inquiry. The WRC will continue to seek to engage with 
Nike and Anvil to ensure that these violations are addressed.  
 


Case Summary: Star S.A. (Honduras)

WRC report on its investigation of labor violations at a Star S.A. factory in Honduras. Includes a description of the company’s response to the charges.WRC_Case_Star.pdf: 50 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

eCommons (Cornell Univ.)

https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1378&amp;context=globaldocs

Case Summary: Star S.A. (Honduras)

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

DigitalCommons@ILR

eCommons (Cornell Univ.)