This morning Heidi and I were talking to the lawyer who’s helping us out with the legal formation of the Just Apparel Partner Artisans’ group. Specifically, we were discussing the contracts that we had asked him to draw up between the artisans’ association and Dolores, our general manager, and Natalia, our quality control specialist. Natalia works for JA part time at an hourly wage of 10 quetzales, which is more than double what she made when she worked at a textile factory in Guatemala City and about one and a half times the Guatemalan minimum wage computed hourly. We expressed that we were hoping to formalize that relationship and give Natalia the benefit of being a contractually employed worker. And that’s when we stumbled inadvertently into the labyrinthine mess that is Guatemalan labor law.
You see, if I understand our conversation correctly, there’s no such thing as a part-time job in Guatemala. The minimum wage is not computed hourly, but rather monthly, and there’s no provision for someone who works less than eight hours a day six days a week to earn a prorated salary that varies by hours worked. That monthly minimum salary is Q.1310 ($175). But, naturally, there’s also a government-mandated “bonificacion incentivo” (incentive bonus) that each worker has to receive. The last time I checked, a mandatory bonus isn’t an incentive. It’s a raise. So that brings the monthly salary to Q.1560 ($210). In addition to the mandatory monthly bonus, the law also requires a mandatory bi-annual bonus of one month’s salary. So, for every twelve months of work, the law requires fourteen months of salary. That means that over the course of a year, a worker is legally entitled to Q.21840 ($2950).
Now, from the perspective of the US, that sounds pitifully small, right? A family of six (average for Guatemala) with two workers would still only earn $3.70 per person per day, which isn’t exactly the makings of a life of material comfort. As someone working to promote grassroots development efforts in Guatemala, I would love nothing more than to see everyone here earning more than the minimum wage. There’s just one catch. With all the bonuses and the like, the Guatemalan minimum wage comes out to be 118% of the estimated 2007 GDP per capita. As a point of comparison, if the US were to mandate a minimum wage that large, the minimum annual salary would be $54,100. Using the 55-hour work week that’s common in Guatemala, that would compute to a minimum hourly wage of around $18.90, or 2.75 times the federal minimum wage once it rises this summer.
Given the level of income inequality in Guatemala (the wealthiest 10% of Guatemalans earn over 43% of the country’s income), it’s currently impossible for everyone who works to earn minimum wage. There’s simply no way. It appears that the Guatemalan state may have let its good intentions get ahead of what is realistically possible. I have to ask if perhaps it wouldn’t be better for the government here to lower the minimum wage a little, allow for an hourly minimum wage for part-time employment, and bring a larger percentage of the population into the formal labor force, thereby at least granting those people basic labor rights, even if they weren’t earning an exceptional salary.
On a public health mission I went to the town market with two municipality officials and one of the centro de salud staff to see what recommendations we could make. Santiago´s market appeared to me fairly typical for a market in Central America. Crowded, full of people sitting on the floor selling fruits, nuts, crabs, fish, fish heads, and pretty much anything else that you could need. 
But on this trip, we focused on the stands that sell food. Picture a booth at a carnival or farmer´s market where you can buy a plate of tortillas, beans and rice. Or soup and a soda.
The town of Santiago is starting a new program in improve the sanitation of the market so our task was to go from stand to stand and make suggestions to them about how they could prepare food more safely. At every stand we asked to see their official permit allowing them to sell food, and the ‘Tarjetas de Salud’ (health cards) which every employee is supposed to carry stating that they have tested negative for TB. And at almost every stand people told us ‘Oh yes, we have those, but we keep them at home.’ I was actually surprised at how many store owners told us honestly ‘No, we don’t have those.’
The other recommendations were pretty basic. My major contribution was to point out that no one had any real way to wash their hands (definitely needed my master’s to notice that one) and that maybe the best place to store the vegetables wasn’t on the ground.
But here is the really funny thing: When I got back home I realized that the stands we visited probably weren’t the main threat to public health in the market. A much greater nidus for infection and vermin is probably the unrefrigerated fish, fruits and vegetables sitting on the ground. And those are the poorest vendors, who don’t pay license fees and who couldn’t afford to if they were charged. So I wrote my notes up for the centro de salud and in it I explained this, but it is a hard line to walk because on the one hand I don’t want suggest taking away the livelihood of the poorest people in the market, but reforming the rules for who can sit on the floor and sell without doing so would require money from somewhere.
Ma’jo’n is the Tzutujil word for ‘there isn’t any’ and this week it’s been the most common word I’ve heard at the centro de salud.
Coming from the US there are things that I don’t understand immediately about health care here. The centro de salud is a government run organization, and every week sends its requisition forms in requesting the medicines that they need. But they don’t actually always get them. In fact, a good percentage of the common medicines we give out daily we are currently out of. We have been out of albendazol syrup (for treating parasites in kids too little to take pills) since I arrived. This week we ran out of amoxicilin pills, trimethoprim pills and syrup. In fact the only antibiotics we have are donated amoxicilin syrup, donated cipro, and a few courses of a cephalosporin. We ran out of folic acid last week (which we need to give to every pregnant woman) but were luckily able to get some donated.
The donations come from private organizations such as Save the Children, and I honestly don’t know what the centro de salud would do without such donations. But running a clinic with donated medicines has its problems. For one thing, the doctors never know what they have to offer. For another, there coordination between supply and demand is far from perfect. While we have very little in the way of antibiotics we have quite a lot of alka selzer, zyrtec and osteo bi flex.
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