There is a sense of hope among Guatemala’s small labor movement of better days ahead following the election of President Bernardo Arévalo in 2023. While workers continue to face a dire situation, there is hope as the Arévalo administration and the current Labor Minister Miriam Roquel are taking steps to improve working conditions in the country.

In a major shift from previous administrations, in February 2024, the Labor Ministry quickly recognized the formation of a new union formed by the workers of the Reforestadora de la Palmas de El Petén (REPSA) Palm Oil Company in Petén. The union is largely made up of young workers and is the result of years of organizing by the Guatemalan organization Consejo Nacional de Desplazados de Guatemala, or CONDEG.

This is the first union in the world to represent palm oil workers.

As Luis Fuentes, a labor rights activist in Guatemala City, tells The Progressive, previous administrations could take years to officially recognize unions. But under the new administration, the union, Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Empresa Reforestadora de Palmas de el Petén y Empresas Anexas (SITRAREPSA), was recognized six weeks after the registration.

“The Ministry in the General Directorate of Labor regularly takes between one and two years to register a union, when the law says that it is twenty days,” Fuentes explains. “It’s a change that serves as an indicator that things are improving.”

The African Palm Oil industry in Guatemala historically has been marked by extreme violations of both labor and human rights. As a result, the success of forming a union in one of the country’s most conservative companies, has brought a lot of expectations.

“The conditions of the African palm workers are horrible—exhausting hours and low salaries and many times without non-compliance with benefits established in the law,” Fuentes says. “So there are many expectations for the union to grow and become an inspiration for other workers, not only in African palm but also for other workers in the export sector.”

But Guatemala has seen a degradation of the labor movement in the last three decades. This is the result of a systematic anti-union campaign by Guatemala’s business elites to destroy and dismantle the labor movement, often utilizing violence and targeted assassination of labor leaders to silence workers.

Fuentes estimates that unions in the private sector have seen their numbers decrease from representing 2.1 percent of workers a couple years ago to around 1.5 percent of workers belonging to a union. He says that there are only around fifty unions within private companies, with many forming in companies that produce bananas for export. But the vast majority of these unions have very low memberships, with even the historic Coca Cola union, Stecsa, having only about 1,000 members.

The Guatemalan State’s ability to guarantee the rights of workers has also remained limited over the past decade, with the Labor Ministry only employing around 100 inspectors to guarantee workers’ rights. But owners often get away with failing to pay minimum wages and regularly forcing workers to work longer hours than is permitted by regulation as the result of corruption and the limited ability to carry out oversight of private companies.

As a result of the attack, Guatemala is listed on the yearly Global Rights Index prepared by the International Trade Union Confederation as one of the world’s worst countries for workers. These conditions help explain why people migrate to other countries, especially the United States. Another country that has become a major source of emigration listed in 2023 is Ecuador.

The labor crisis in Guatemala is similar to the conditions that were present seventy-nine years ago when Guatemala’s President Bernardo Arévalo’s father, Juan José Arévalo, took office. The country was facing a crisis brought about by the policy of forced labor of the previous dictator, Jorge Ubico. There were no labor unions and the oligarchy controlled the country through their monopolies.

“About eighty years ago [Guatemala was] in very similar conditions,” Fuentes says. “But the revolution that implemented changes that had never been seen in the country, for example in 1947 the birth of the Labor Code was an event that continues to have its positive effects.”

But as Guatemala sees rare positive news for the labor movement, Central America in general is marked by precarious labor conditions, low pay, and a rising cost of living. The variable minimum wage, which changes per sector, along with the poor working conditions have contributed to the decision of many in the region to migrate to the United States.

In El Salvador, the minimum wage in 2024 currently sits at roughly $450 per month, while the cost for essential groceries was $256.74 as of early 2024. In Honduras, the minimum wage is around 13,156.53 Lempiras, or about $533, with the essential grocery items costing 13,600 lempiras.

Guatemala’s minimum wage varies between sectors and between the department of Guatemala and the other twenty-one geographic departments of the country. As of 2024, the monthly minimum wage in the department of Guatemala is between 3,343 Quetzales for maquila—or export manufacturing—workers and 3,517 Quetzales for non-agricultural workers, or between $430 and just about $450. The rest of the country has a minimum wage of between 3,172 Quetzales for maquila workers and 3,478 Quetzales for non-agricultural workers, or between $410 and about $450. But it is all too common that companies fail to pay this minimum wage. As Fuentes explains it, “the minimum wage is really the maximum wage.”

In addition, Alejandro Giammattei’s administration utilized the basic cost of living to hide poverty in Guatemala. In less than a decade, Giammattei’s government adjusted the calculation three times.

According to the 2023 adjustments to the calculation, an individual living in an urban area needs 846.30 Quetzales per month for food, and an individual in rural areas pays 654.30 Quetzales per month. But these adjustments consider cheap, nutrient-poor foods like instant soup as key food items, and the cost ignores the real costs of living in the Central American country.

“The minimum wage does not even cover the basic food basket,” Fuentes says. “So that is a reality that shows us that even if they change methodology, the situation will remain the same and that has its effects on the decision of many Guatemalans, especially from the interior of the country, to decide to migrate to the United States.”

He adds, “[With] the situation of poverty that exists, the only way out for the majority of people is to migrate to the United States—despite the risks that it implies, despite the debts—because of the enormous amounts of money being paid [in the United States].”

(Jeff Abbott is an independent journalist currently based out of Guatemala. “The Other Americans” is a column created by Abbott for The Progressive on human migration in North and Central America. Courtesy: The Progressive Magazine, an American magazine and website of politics, culture and progressivism with a left-leaning perspective.)