Programs

Victory! United Methodist Church Divests from Private Prisons

The United Methodist Church has divested from Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group!
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Prison Industry Divestment Campaign

National Day of Action
Join the Fight Today
Enlace, in partnership with community groups and unions across the US, is calling on all public and private institutions to divest their holdings in Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, America’s largest private prison corporations which have profited from billions in taxpayer money. Watch the Campaign Video.
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Peer Trainer Program Grows

The Enlace Institute’s Peer Trainer Program, is showing a 41% increase in enrolled participants in its second two-year training series.
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The SITESABES Struggle 2004-2005

SITESABES Campaign, 2004-2005: One of Enlace’s happiest successes was the SITESABES union election campaign. Mexico has the highest percentage of workers without benefits in the world. When a group of workers in Mexico wants to form a democratic union, they must first overcome many obstacles placed by their employer and the government, for example, the process for a union election. Voting takes place on the employer’s property and in general, the place is filled with representatives from the employer and from charro (corrupt and employer-oriented) unions, with only two representatives from an independent worker union. To vote workers are escorted into the voting room by thugs hired by the “charro” unions - under this intimidation a worker must openly and publicly vote. And even if there is a union and a contract, it is common for workers to feel obliged to sign blank contracts.

Advanced System for High School Degree and Higher Education (SABES) is a program in Guanajuato, started in 1996, to support secondary education in the rural areas of the state. In January 2003, with the help of the Authentic Work Front (FAT), the teachers formed the Independent Union of Workers and Employers of SABES (SITESABES). But the governor (the employer) responded immediately by signing a collective bargaining agreement with a “charro” union belonging to a small group of workers with ties to the government. By August, the employer had fired the first SITESABES leader, and by January 2004 it fired ten more leaders. Enlace joined the campaign and trained the leaders in planning and ongoing evaluation, helped promote the struggle, searched for allies, and supported tours and actions until SITESABES won the right to the first secret-ballot union election ever.

REPORT ON SITESABES ELECTION

On May 30 - 31st 2005, a team of nine international observers participated in the first secret ballot election ever ordered by a labor board in Mexico. The decision by Lic. Libia Gomez Padilla, the president of the Junta Local de Conciliacion y Arbitraje in Leon, Guanajuato, to hold an election by secret ballot was unprecedented and a major step forward. The general practice in Mexican labor board elections is that workers are required to express their choice out loud in front of the labor authorities and representatives of the employer and competing unions. This is obviously an extremely intimidating and often risky proposition, as workers are subjected to psychological and often physical violence.

The independent union, SITESABES, lost the election. The vote was 571 to 374 with 237 ballots challenged by SITESABES because the workers had been hired after the date the election petition was filed—the legal cut off date under Mexican law. The election took place in four major cities and SITESABES won a majority in two, but lost in the two larger cities where there was a major presence both of SABES (the employer) and STESABES (the incumbent union).
This defeat was not surprising under the circumstances: the long delay between the time the petition was filed and the actual election; the discharge of 25 leaders and activists; and some serious procedural deficiencies in the election process.

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