Association for a More Just Society (AJS) - Security Guard Stands Her Ground

A Security Guard Stands Her Ground for What's Right—and Wins

Security guard Dilcia Soto refused to let her abusive employers undermine the law or her dignity.

Have you ever met a person who against hard odds stood their ground to fight for what was right? Meet Dilcia Soto, a woman who refused to quit her job at ESPA security company despite harassment. With the help of the AJS-supported Labor Project she also didn't have to give up seeking justice either.

“Some gossip was passed on to company owner, Luís Armando Zuniga by one the supervisors and he began to pressure me to quit my job,” recounts Soto. "During that time he changed the location where I was assigned to without prior notice almost everyday so that I would get tired and quit."

As a single mother coming home at all different hours after being volleyed back and forth from the 1^st and 3^rd shift without anyone to take care of her 5-year old daughter, Dilcia began to feel the toil. She arrived at the offices of sister organization ASJ after some advice from a fellow co-worker. “ I advised her not to quit,” says A JS-supported lawyer Felix, who took her case. Honduran law leaves the proof of burden on the employee if they quit. If she quit, Dilcia would be left with little chance of receiving the severance benefits she was legally entitled to.

Although tired from the ever-shifting schedule, Dilcia wouldn’t quit. She now knew that her employers were attempting to undermine the law and her dignity. “In the end, they got tired and fired me,” she says.

Unfortunately, Dilcia’s case is not unusual. According to reports received by the Ministry of Labor, ESPA security company forces workers to work 24-hour shifts without overtime pay and refuses to pay them an educational bonus, extra pay for working on national holidays, anddouble salary payments in December and June—all of which the guards have a right to according to Honduras’ Labor Code.

In July 2008, the 2^nd Labor Court made a non-appealable decision obligating ESPA to pay Dilcia all the severance benefits ordered by the law. Dilcia reports that ESPA didn’t even pay her the 3,200 lempira ($169.30) minimum monthly wage. But thanks to Felix’s persistent efforts over four months to track down Dilcia's employeer to present him with her demand, she was awarded a total of 22,792.23 lempiras ($1,200).

Dilcia’s case is one of few stories that end happily. Because of their lack of knowledge of the law and their rights, as well as their limited resources for hiring a lawyer, most of the cases of workers in unspecialized jobs like security fast-food, and janitorial services never reach court. Bosses who disregard the law are left in impunity.

With the money won from her case, Dilcia plans to finish paying off the plot of land for which she was slowly making small payments. She says, “Now I will even be able to buy some construction materials to start building!” In the meantime, she is selling corn at the market, happy that can spend more time with her daughter until she finds another job.

Thanks to the persistence of the Labor Rights Projects, Dilcia didn’t have to quit either her job or on believing that the legal system could bring justice for her.

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