Labor is Not a Commodity: Rosemary's Story: Fired for being pregnant

[Omaha Steve]

http://laborrightsblog.typepad.com/international_labor_right/2009/05/rosemarys-story-fired-for-being-pregnant.html

THIS STORY IS PART OF ILRF'S MOTHER'S STORIES SERIES THIS WEEK. A NEW STORY OF A WORKING MOTHER AROUND THE WORLD WILL BE DISPLAYED EACH DAY. Click here learn more about ILRF's Rights for Working Women Campaign.

Rosemary was interviewed by ILRF's partner, Associacion Aurora Vivar in Peru.

(Peru recently entered into a Free Trade Agreement with the United States.)

My name is Rosemary and I am 21 years old. I live with my husband and my daughter who is one and a half. I worked at the agro-export corporation APEISA from 2005 to 2007. They fired me on February 5, 2007 for being pregnant. I know other companies where women have lost their babies because they were lifting something heavy and fell and kept working for fear of being fired. In the company APEISA I worked in the asparagus harvest tying it and arranging it into lines. My job was important to help cover costs at home and helped to pay for school.

My job is seasonal. There’s more work during the asparagus, grape, and artichoke harvests. I signed a contract in the APEISA Company, but I never signed a contract with any other companies I worked for. They would just take us in and tell us what to do. During 2008, I continued to work in the non-traditional agro-export industry in other companies, mostly in the grape harvest. I am paid weekly, according to how much I produce. It’s $48 a week in high season, in low season I earned between $13 and $16 a week. There’s no fixed monthly salary, it’s only determined by how much we produce and how much we advance. We would be out working for 14 to 16 hours a day. They didn’t tell us when our break was. You had to ask for a break, only at the point where you could no longer go on working. The company didn’t give us food and we couldn’t bring food so we all had to buy something inside, including water. Sometimes my co-workers didn’t eat or drink water in order to save money!

I worked 9 months in the fields but not continually. I had to stop certain weeks and start again the next week. When there was a lot to produce, I worked all day, 112 hours a week, 448 hours a month more or less, without taking Sundays off, getting paid nothing for overtime because they pay is according to how much we produce. On a normal day, I wake up at 4am, cook, wash up, and go to work before 6 am to get my ride to work. We left work when there was nothing left to produce. My husband would be busy with his work and never helped with the chores. Now it’s even more difficult because I have a daughter, I have to find someone to take care of her when I’m at work. I usually leave her with my mom, she takes care of her.

FULL story and photo at link.

[Warpy]

1. This is why I lend

so that these women can first start a stall in the local market, build their inventory, and eventually open stores or other small businesses, educate their children, and move out of poverty.

With rising expectations for more workers, especially women, these corporate exploiters are going to have to start treating people much better if they want to find enough workers.

I don't want much, just to change the world.

One poor woman at a time.