Chichigalpa, 29 de mayo del 2009.

The Honorable
Jeannette Chavez Gomez
Minister of Labor
Hand delivered

Dear Madam Minister:
On behalf and in representation of the workers of Ingenio San Antonio and Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua S.A., and with the respect that you deserve, we hereby express the following:
In recent months, the legally organized unions of the aforementioned companies have been slanderously attacked by groups that do not represent any worker of these companies. This does not worry us because our only concern is to guarantee the best benefits and labor stability to our co-workers, as evidenced in the collective agreements we have been signing in the past decades, in which the Ministry of Labor has served as guarantor.
Madam Minister, our Unions and all workers of Ingenio San Antonio and Compañía Licorera are very concerned by the direct attacks fueled by two organizations called Nicaraguan Association of Persons Affected by Chronic Renal Insufficiency (ANAIRC) and International Union of Food, Agriculture, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Association (UITA), which have initiated, at both national and international levels, a slanderous and defamatory campaign against the products produced by these two large companies, especially the Flor de Caña mark.
Our organizations recently signed and distributed a press release expressing our position against this ill-intended campaign of UITA and ANAIRC and we address this letter to you, signed by the unions of both companies, because we are very concerned that campaigns against products that we produce with our sweat, without any technical and scientific basis, will adversely affect our jobs and the benefits we have been receiving over the years, as well as other workers who benefit indirectly, including, among many others, pop and mom stores, recreational centers, transporters, grocery stores and the government itself that collects tax revenues on these products and on the raw materials that are used to manufacture them.
We give faith that these companies carry out their production processes with great responsibility and in compliance with our national standards and international food and environmental quality certification programs, such as ISO 9000, ISO 14000 and HACCP.

We know there are many persons with chronic renal insufficiency in our country and therefore we kindly ask you to support, as our representative before the government, the reactivation of research activities to determine the cause of this disease, thereby preventing our co-workers from being manipulated and, more importantly, from being kept in the precarious conditions in which they find themselves right now. We also call upon your good offices to arrange for a meeting with the President of the Republic, Mr. Daniel Ortega Saavedra, to inform him about all this, which we reiterate is a great concern for the working class.

Having no other matters of reference, we wish you success in your work.

Sincerely,

LIC. CARLOS VALLEJOS BAUTISTA         LIC. HUBERT ANTONIO PAIZ
SECRETARIO GENERAL DEL                      SECRETARIO GENERAL DEL
SINDICATO RONAL ALTAMIRANO         SINDICATO SALOMON BORREL PÉREZ.                             
SR. MARVIN ANTONIO GUZMAN              SR. ANGEL ALI ALTAMIRANO
SECRETARIO GENERAL DEL                       SECRETARIO GENERAL DEL
SINDICATO DE TRABAJADORES               SINDICATO DEMOCRATICO
DEMOCRATICOS DE TRABAJADORES.

SR. FRANCISCO MOLINA
SECRETARIO GENERAL DEL SINDICATO
“FAUSTINO MARTINEZ”

See original file