─【El Salvador Journal】Story Outline

Can workers run their own factory? When a factory is in danger of closing down, what can the workers running it do?

In the Central American country of El Salvador, there is a company called Just Garments. Originally, it was owned by an enterprise from Tainan, Taiwan. In 2002, the Tainan company closed the factory without any warning, and the livelihood of the factory workers was in peril. After the workers protested to the downstream affiliate, Gap, the Tainan company did an about-face. It negotiated with the labor union, and together they established a garment factory managed and operated by the workers themselves. This factory quickly came to the attention of people concerned with the issue of globalization, because throughout the world’s 1800 export processing zones, this was the only case in which a new plant was established through negotiations after the plant owners fled. The key person promoting this world first was Chen Hsin-Hsing, an associate professor at Taiwan’s Shih Hsin University.

In the spring of 2007, Just Garments met with unprecedented problems in operating. Chen Hsin-Hsing decided to go to El Salvador, to negotiate a strategy with his faraway friends, and to work by their side. He had only gotten off the airplane when his good friend and representative of the factory workers, Gilberto Garcia, told him that because the factory was behind in its rent, the landlord had locked the plant’s gates. The union leaders held a crucial meeting, discussing how to proceed. Would the factory close? What plans did the workers have?

This documentary’s production team traveled along with Chen Hsin-Hsing from Taiwan to El Salvador to film this story. From Chen Hsin-hsing’s journal, and from the 748 correspondences between him and Gilberto Garcia, we glimpse this friendship spanning the Pacific Ocean.