Thread by @adriennepine

New thread re: Honduran workers building new @usembassyhn protesting atrocious labor conditions by @StateDept contractor @BLHarbert. This one is going to be a doozy, so stay tuned throughout the day. Here: workers starting this AM poignantly, w/national anthem. #Sovereignty

@usembassyhn @StateDept @BLHarbert What are these workers protesting? The list of abuses by contractor @BLHarbert is long. One of the complaints is dangerous working conditions. Apparently @StateDept thinks saving money on building its new fortress is worth quite a few unremunerated Honduran fingers.

Workers tell me ~6 workers have been summarily fired after their fingers were amputated. No severance pay, no healthcare. This is Adam Lance Weiss, onsite Health & Safety Manager w/@BLHarbert, in one shot w/the Washington monument, super appropriate imperialist symbolism.

Just now, workers marched from the new @usembassyhn construction site to the current embassy to continue demanding @StateDept, @USAmbHonduras & @Trabajohn ensure that @BLHarbert begin to respect workers' rights. Lots of energy among the workers & #solidarity from passers-by.

The next few tweets are links to my previous threads on the struggle for justice led by Honduran construction workers building the new @usembassyhn for background; then I'll get back to new stuff. First thread, from July 6:

Second thread, July 7:

Third thread, July 11:

A July 11 conversation I had about the @usembassyhn construction workers' struggle for justice with @MFlowers8 of @PopResistance on @ClearFOGMedia (also featuring a longer, fascinating interview she did with Kim Scipes):

And yesterday's thread:

Okay, back to current updates: workers are now assembled peacefully outside the current embassy. They're requesting a rep speak w/their lawyers. @arieljahner is the labor and human rights representative at @usembassyhn, which has received its Honduran workers w/sharpshooters.

Worker requests to @usembassyhn:
1. Intervene to ask @BLHarbert to come to negotiating table
2. Harbert should respect Honduran law
3. Harbert should pay overtime & compensate workers injured on site as stipulated by law
4. A meeting w/an embassy rep to explain further

@usembassyhn @BLHarbert Some of the signs from @BLHarbert construction workers building the new US embassy outside the current @usembassyhn right now, demanding their rights be respected & quoting articles 550 & 551 of the Honduran Labor Code on the right to strike and the legitimate purpose of strikes.

A few tweets up on this thread I posted photos of @usembassyhn sharpshooters w/their rifles trained on peacefully assembled embassy construction workers. Yesterday the Honduran riot police were similarly called out by @BLHarbert to intimidate its workers:

As workers protest egregious labor violations outside @usembassyhn, @XiomaraCastroZ is meeting w/ @SecMayorkas.

HEY SECRETARY: uncompensated fingerless @BLHarbert workers building your embassy could tell you about security, law enforcement & migration.

@SecMayorkas is also meeting w/Foreign Min. @EnriqueReinaHN, who gave a powerful speech repudiating US interference in Honduras & Latin America @ the Summit of the Americas last month. Abuse of workers building @usembassyhn isn't great US diplomacy either.

Some pics from earlier this morning at the new @usembassyhn construction site, where striking Honduran @BLHarbert workers gathered to march to the embassy. Just like starting the day singing the national anthem, the big Honduran flag takes on extra significance here. #Sovereignty

@BLHarbert had posted at the job site the new "contract" that they unilaterally presented w/o incorporating worker concerns & demands, and which violates Honduran labor law. Workers building the new @usembassyhn were livid, hence today's actions. Here are the first 4 pages:

Here are the last two pages of the offending contract, signed by one Matthew Russell Hill, this young whippersnapper.

Hey! What do all the execs at @BLHarbert have in common? Here's a screenshot of their #leadership web page, for a hint:

So why do @usembassyhn workers find so offensive about the one-sided "contracted" presented to them? Several things. For starters, it stipulates a 9-hour day, when the working day according to Honduran law is 8 hours, w/any extra being overtime, which @BLHarbert has never paid.

In the contract that @StateDept contractor @BLHarbert wants to impose on workers building the new @usembassyhn, workers don't get any vacations. Each worker is also required to start anew with a 60-day probationary period, even those who've already worked there 3 years.

The probationary period of course means that @BLHarbert can continue to arbitrarily fire workers they consider troublesome, just as they've already done to many who have lost extremities in jobsite accidents, or who organize other workers to demand their labor rights.

Curious w/all his @OSHA_DOL training, @BLHarbert health & safety manager Adam Weiss (pictured here on what appears to be @USEmbZim jobsite), seems to think arbitrarily firing workers who've lost extremities is a solution to jobsite hazards, but hey, maybe he's behind on his CEs.

In addition to the illegal "contract" posted by @BLHarbert for workers at the new @usembassyhn jobsite, they posted a similarly offensive (and mendacious) FAQ, and a huge-font reminder that workers don't receive pay while they're on strike.

@BLHarbert @usembassyhn @BLHarbert workers waited outside for ~1 1/2 hrs requesting a meeting w/@arieljahner or any @usembassyhn rep but guards told them no one was available (though @StateDept had plenty of sharpshooters to spare); they asked a guard to deliver their requests.

@BLHarbert @usembassyhn @arieljahner @StateDept Then some of the @BLHarbert workers marched and others rode on motorcycles ~5km to the warehouse site for the new @usembassyhn project, where the smaller group of workers assigned to that site had been told unequivocally that they'd be fired if they joined today's action.

@BLHarbert @usembassyhn @arieljahner @StateDept Some more pictures of construction workers precariously employed by @StateDept contractor @BLHarbert, marching today from @usembassyhn to the warehouse for the new jobsite, where things got sinister...

When @BLHarbert management heard that the workers from the @usembassyhn construction site were headed for the warehouse, they corralled the warehouse workers to prevent the two groups from joining. This video is from protesting construction workers looking into the warehouse.

In this vid (from yesterday) a worker states that 20 warehouse workers were being held against their will & threatened by @BLHarbert Eng. Daniel & Materials Control Manager Cris Evangelista. Workers say they were kidnapped. They were eventually released in response to protest.

@BLHarbert Warehouse workers also complained yesterday that they were sent to work w/o vests or safety helmets under threat of firing as punishment for organizing activity & as a warning (note: time stamp is when text was forwarded to me, not when originally sent). Transl in alt text:

Tangent: in above screenshot, a worker says Eng. Daniel endangered them. Daniel is Honduran, contracted as a foreman by @BLHarbert, w/a real contract & much higher pay than laborers. It's this class of "capataz" who workers hate the most. This brings me back to Prisión Verde...

@BLHarbert The great Honduran novel Prisión Verde (Green Prison, 1945) by Ramón Amaya Amador (ramon-amaya-amador.com) is on the beginnings of revolutionary struggle among workers facing unspeakable violence on US-owned banana plantations. The most hated supervisors? The Honduran capataces.

@BLHarbert Amaya A.'s principal capataz (foreman) character is derided privately by plantation laborers for speaking w/a fake gringo accent & exceeding the oppressor's violence in his pathetic efforts to emulate them & become their peer. Just how @BLHarbert workers describe their capataces.

There's remarkable stability in capitalist colonial processes- Chávez called this class pitiyanquis. Workers say most direct threats & retaliation come from Honduran @BLHarbert Engineers Daniel, Alejandro, Roger, capataces don Jesús, Alejandra, Ryan & the new Mexican architect.

On that note, here’s Engineer Daniel, who @BLHarbert warehouse workers w/ the new @usembassyhn project say forced them to work in extremely unsafe conditions and held them against their will yesterday, with Harbert’s Honduras Health & Safety manager Adam Lance Weiss.

Many Hondurans have asked why @StateDept needs an even bigger, more impenetrable fortress. The @usembassyhn’s history is one I’d love to write ;)
For now please recall that yesterday @USAmbHonduras aimed sharpshooters at & refused to meet lawyers for workers building the new one.

@StateDept @usembassyhn @USAmbHonduras And it *has* acknowledged the dispute—in the most neoliberal, tired union-busting fashion—by attributing the conflict to technical issues (changes in Honduran labor code), saying it's just between @BLHarbert & their workers & implying @Trabajohn's complicity.
(see alt text)

Quick analysis, sentence by sentence.
@StateDept is really going to hide behind the subcontractor excuse? Really??? Even after @BLHarbert's local embassy construction workers have protested abuses in ≥3 other countries (see previous thread) for decades & you keep hiring them?

@StateDept @BLHarbert Lemme get this straight: @usembassyhn thinks @BLHarbert arbitrarily firing workers w/o severance or healthcare b/c their extremities were cut off due to lax safety standards (just to give one example) was cool in the previous labor code? Or morally acceptable, even if it were???

The Honduran Labor Secretariat may have participated in the process—not the same as approving the contract. I don't know whether they did or not, but this language seems carefully chosen & I sure didn't see @Trabajohn's seal on the illegal new "contract" posted by @BLHarbert.

Back to yesterday (sorry, hard to keep everything in order when there's SO MUCH): Here's a video of the 20 @BLHarbert workers @ the warehouse site for the new @usembassyhn being released to comrades after being held against their will & in dangerous conditions by their bosses.

Workers have requested I mention their abuse at the hands of longtime @usembassyhn project manager Shea Sutton. Here's a video of him—yet another white US @BLHarbert Man Boss—with his protesting Honduran subordinates mockingly calling out to him with a gringo accent.

Here's a link to a multimedia piece published by @HCHTelevDigital on the protests a couple days ago:
hch.tv/2022/07/25/con…

Here are some photos of Honduran media interviewing lawyers for the @BLHarbert construction workers building the new @usembassyhn, and of their lawyers examining the illegal contract that Harbert posted outside the jobsite yesterday.

I started a new thread a few days ago and forgot to post here. Here it is:

@threadreaderapp unroll