Guatemala: Violating workers’ rights to feed themselves on the coffee estate Nueva Florencia

For more than nine years, 32 workers of the coffee estate Nueva Florencia have been living a precarious situation: They were illegally dismissed in March 1997 for organizing a labour uinion. They won all court procedures up to the Constitutional Court of Guatemala. The final judgment gives orders to reemploy the workers and pay them their salaries which had been withheld since 1997. In spite of this judgment the affected families are still without work and the means to feed themselves. The owners of the estate, the family Bruderer Berger which is related to the current President of Guatemala, refuses to follow the court order thereby resisting the rule of law.