As a part of its permanent struggle for decent labor, the Guatemalan Union, Indigenous and Peasant  Movement –MSICG- has presented today two criminal actions against the Tributary Administration Superintendent, MIGUEL ARTURO GUTIERREZ ECHEVERRIA and the General Labor Director, MARIO IVAN ALFARO VILELA for the possible commission of the following crimes: Economic violence, discrimination, collusion, attribution usurpation, resolutions that violate the constitution, non compliance with duties, material falseness, ideological falseness, and abuse of  authority, with the general aggravating circumstance of futile or heinous motifs, aforethought, premeditation, abuse of authority and disregard of the offended, all committed during the procedure of inscribing a workers’ union and the antiunion dismissals executed against workers of the Tributary Administration Superintendent’s Office –SAT, by its initials in Spanish- which took the decision of forming an autonomous union, out of the control of SAT’s authorities.

These actions have been taken independently to the complaints that will in du time be presented against the State of Guatemala for the violations of agreements 87 and 98 of the International Labor
Organization –ILO- and of Chapter XVI of the Free Trade Agreement signed between the Dominican Republic, Central America and the United States of America, DR-CAFTA.

The denounces spring from the evident anomalies that exist in the procedures of asking for the inscription of the union organization, which make evident the traffic of information, the influences that caused improper access of the Tributary Administration Superintendent’s Office to the file of the union’s formation, the execution of patron and State actions interfering with the exercise of union freedom as well as the antiunion discrimination and the economic and social consequences that such actions have had for the workers due to the exercise of their constitutional right to organize as a union to promote and defend their legitimate labor interests.

MSICG states that the struggle for decent labor in the country requires not only of actions that demand recognition or defense of those guarantees acknowledged by the national laws as well as International Agreements that have been ratified by Guatemala, but also of a struggle to effectively punish those who violate such fundamental guarantees, especially when they are public officials whose duty is precisely to respect and enforce the guarantees that they themselves are braking. The State of Guatemala cannot warrantee the dignity of the person if it doesn’t warrantee first the state of the law, and that in itself is a vitally important principle.

MSICG expects the Public Prosecutor’s Office to guarantee the speed and effectiveness of its compliance with its duties, since such behaviors are documented even in official files, and that it will not add an accomplice attitude to the antiunion behavior that its own authorities have executed internally in the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and it expects that the courts of law administer quick and
proper justice, both regarding the criminal processes and the reinstallation orders that are being issued by the labor and social prevision courts.

“What persuades about the law is not its text, but its quick and proper actions”

Guatemala, September 14th,2012

POLITICAL COUNCIL
GUATEMALAN UNION, INDIGENOUS AND PEASANT MOVEMENT
MSICG