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21 August, 2025IndustriALL Global Union is boosting the strength of its affiliates in Guatemala through a series of workshops and high-level meetings with government officials and union leaders.
The initiative supports the Federation of Food, Agro-Industry and Related Workers of Guatemala (FESTRAS) and the INDE Workers' Union (Stinde), with the aim of reinforcing organization and collective action. A regional delegation led by Latin America and Caribbean regional secretary Marino Vani and trade union and human rights advisor Julieta Ávalos Abusharekh met with authorities and unions in the industrial sector.
A key moment was a workshop titled Dialogue and steps for planning trade union actions based on a work plan, where FESTRAS’ 2026–2027 work plan was developed collectively to guide future union strategies.
At the institutional level, Mario Vani met with Guatemala’s deputy minister of labour, Damarys Nohemí Oliva García, to discuss the standardization of collective agreements, union training in public policy, and the protection of acquired labour rights, which face growing threats in the country.
Meetings were also held with several unions:
- Stinde discussed strategies for negotiating a new collective agreement with the state-owned energy company, after 13 years without updates.
- SITRATERNIUM, part of FESTRAS, outlined steps toward a strategic plan to negotiate a new collective agreement for 2026–2029, with support from the Tenaris Ternium workers’ network.
- SIEMHOSSIER, representing workers at Hoosier Manufacturing, agreed with IndustriALL and FESTRAS on concrete actions to advance unionisation, improve conditions, and strengthen social dialogue.
"These actions consolidate the path towards a stronger, more organized trade unionism with a real capacity for social and economic transformation and better working conditions for industrial workers in Guatemala,”
says Mario Vani.