Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Virtually all historians agree that the Great Strike of 1954 was the most important episode in Honduran labor history. Following the long dictatorship of Tiburcio Carías Andino (1933–49), Juan Gálvez Durón became president of Honduras. Although he had previously been a lawyer for the Boston-based United Fruit Company (UFCO), the most powerful and richest corporation in the country, he began his presidency by courting labor in an attempt to build a populist base for his presidency. An 8-hour workday law was passed, which also stipulated that employees were to be paid on holidays. UFCO and the Standard Fruit Company, however, chose to ignore these reforms. On May 1, 1954 UFCO dockworkers in Puerto Cortés, choosing Luis García as their spokesman, requested double pay for work on Sunday. When UFCO officials said they would consider the request, the workers returned to their jobs, but only to find that García had been fired for being an “agitator.” When company officials ignored workers' demands that García be reinstated, the dockworkers went out on strike. All 25,000 UFCO laborers, along with 15,000 from Standard Fruit, soon joined them. Mine, textile, tobacco, and brewery employees soon followed suit. The General Strike paralyzed the whole north coast of Honduras. The strikers demanded a 50 percent increase in wages (in 1954 the average worker earned $1.68 per day), better working ... log in or subscribe to read full text