Marielena Marte
When Marielena started working at TOS she was told she would work four machines. However the factory increased the workload to six machines. The heavy workload gave her serious health problems, including heavy menstrual bleeding three times a month and anemia. When she was sick, the nurses and supervisors didn’t allow her to leave. Finally, her coworker came to help her, he was reprimanded for leaving his work and the TOS filed a complaint against him with the Secretary of Labor. When Marielena was still sick she went to the Secretary of Labor so that they could hear what happened and see how sick she was, but they refused to take her testimony. When she returned to work she was fired, and is still waiting to receive her legally mandated severance pay.
In her own words:
When I started to work at TOS I didn’t think the work would be like this. It was my first job and I didn’t know that much about free trade zone work. Before they used to pay better, but then they lowered the wages to almost nothing. With what we make from working there, you can’t get by. In your days off you have to look for other work, because unfortunately this work does not provide enough to live on. After paying for insurance I’m left with about 2,000 pesos ($61.00), and you have to pay for the insurance because you always go to the doctor in your days off because the work is so hard.
When I started working there we signed a contract saying we would work four machines, maybe maximum five, but then they started giving us six machines to work, which was too much for us to handle. When I started working six machines, I began to have menstrual problems because of the workload. I would get my period with very bad pain three times a month. Since I’ve been fired and am not working there it has gotten better and my period went back to normal. It was bad only because of the work; I had never had anemia and heavy bleeding before. That is eventually why I had to leave the job, because we cannot handle working so many machines. There are people who need the work so badly that they stay quiet so they don’t get fired even when they have to work seven machines. They are trying to put the work of two people on one person so that there are fewer employees so they are in a better situation economically
One day I was very sick and needed permission to go home. I went to the supervisor and he sent me to the nurse. I arrived at the nurse’s office and she sent me back to the supervisor. At that point I had no more strength and I was about to faint. This was around the 12:00 break; that is where I found Manuel my coworker, who took me to the office to see what was happening. They were waiting for me to faint before they would let me leave. It was there that we ran into Meisin, the supervisor who told Manuel that he had no right to involve himself in the situation, that his job was to work the machines and he shouldn’t be involved; she said many other things to him. She just started to say these things to him without even being part of the conversation.
They accused Manuel at the Secretary of Labor, but they never asked me for my testimony. We went to the Secretary of Labor to give our testimony because the company said it happened in a way that it didn’t. I went to testify even though I was very sick; my throat was almost closed up from the lint in the air at work. I could barely speak I was so hoarse, but I went to give my testimony so that they could see for themselves how sick I got from the conditions at work, but when I went to give my testimony, they told me they no longer needed it. They wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say. They spoke only with the supervisor, Meisin, Ely Urena, the human resources director, and the nurse, but they never tried to find out what really happened from me. They put in what they wanted to put so that it favored them and not what actually happened. They should have interviewed me because I was the person involved, but they didn’t take me into consideration at all.
They took the nurses testimony but she never believes that workers are sick unless they faint. There was one case with a woman at work who said she was sick, and the nurse didn´t pay any attention to her and sent her back to work. When they had to take her out she was purple in the face and could barely breathe. The fabric and lint in her lungs had given her bronchopneumonia. It had to get to that point for them to give her permission for to leave. There sometimes are not enough people to get the work done, and so even when you are sick they leave you there to work. They care more about production than the people. On top of that, they don’t pay for medical leave. You get sick at work and they don’t pay you anything. When I got sick at work they never paid me anything for medical leave. In any other job they pay at least half of your wage when you get sick, it’s just there they refuse to pay. By law they have to do it, but they think the laws don’t affect them.
Later, I got medical certification that I could no longer work six machines, so they send me to Ely Urena’s office where they made me wait three hours until she felt like attending to the matter. When I went there she said the minimum workload was six machines and if I wasn’t going to agree to that I should know there was no work for me. They asked me to bring the certification, and when I did they gave me a dismissal letter. It was an abuse, they don’t care about the people who work there and just fire us like that.