Statement from CAT
(Adjunto está el original en el español.)
(Translated from Spanish.)

Atlixco, Puebla
February 12, 2003

DR. REINER HENGSTMANN:

We totally reject the information you put forth in your public statement before the organizations and eyes of the world!

Just over a week ago we met with you in the city of Puebla, México, in an atmosphere of “apparent” trust and mutual understanding. You notified us that you were going to conduct interviews at the factory in order to gain some indication regarding the circumstances of worker exploitation and human and labor rights violations at Matamoros Garment S.A. de C.V.

We expressed our disagreement about the way workers are being intimidated at the factory. You explained that you would undertake an investigation and, when finished with the interviews, make the contents and results public only after consulting with us first.

So what happened?

You made the results of the investigation public without contacting us beforehand, and, what’s more, the morning after our meeting in Puebla we sent you an e-mail to expand on our point about independent monitoring of your investigation and we never received a response from you.

We clearly expressed the CAT’s concern about your approach to the worker interviews and suggested that, at the very least, they should be conducted away from the factory to maintain their objectivity. We insisted on this and you never answered us.

You broke whatever climate of trust might have existed and you betrayed us and the supposed agreement in which you asked us not to say anything about the meeting to John Whittinghill, other organizations, or the press until you concluded your investigation at the factory and let us know the results before publicly releasing them.

Then finally this morning you sent us and the rest of the world the “results” from PUMA’s investigation. You mentioned Matamoros Garment’s website (http://www.matamorosgarment.com/payment) where workers’ wages are published showing that they earn no more than 39.00 pesos for a ten-hour workday. The minimum wage in “Zone C” is 40.30 pesos per day, while the minimum wage for a factory sewer in the professional category is 52.10 pesos for an eight-hour workday (http://www.conasami.gob.mx/indice.htm). Obviously the majority of the workers are sewers, which means that they ought to be classified in the professional category, which is currently not how it is.

So we ask ourselves what type of investigation was this? You clearly are not familiar with the minimum wages in México and are in fact violating Mexican law. We totally reject your statement full of offensive lies to all workers, specifically those of Matamoros Garment.

You are contributing to all of the same injustices that Mexican workers already fall victim to, especially in the maquiladora industry, where they remain unseen and pass unnoticed before the eyes of the world.

From your statement we can clearly attest to your lack of ethics, your complete disinterest and unwillingness to help workers, and the poor moral character it takes to lie and say the CAT agrees with any of your investigation’s results.

We have never retracted, nor will we ever, the statements we’ve made about the working conditions, PUMA, or the situation at Matamoros Garment.

We did not permit you to use the name of our organization so you could simply tarnish it to suit your needs. Doing so devalues and stains the name of the whole working class.

Because of this, we find ourselves obliged to denounce PUMA as a company that no one can trust and as a union-busting corporation to all organizations, the national and international press, and the rest of the world.

Therefore the only way that PUMA can exculpate itself is by assuring that the firm will return to Matamoros Garment, talk with John Whittinghill and the Government of the State of Puebla to recognize the violations against the workers and give them the opportunity to freely choose a union without company harassment or pressure, and terminate the protection contract signed with the Sindicato Francisco Villa of the CTM.

The struggle continues!

CAT
Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador