In Chile, a simple stroll sets of a storm
Chile’s domestic workers union sued, and an appellate court on Jan. 5 granted an injunction suspending the uniform rule.
The administration of El Algarrobal II did not respond to requests from the AP for comment, but in an e-mail to Pinto’s employer, British shipping executive Bruce Taylor, it argued that maids, nannies, waiters, gardeners, construction workers and pool cleaners must ride the minibus to keep them from “committing robberies or providing information relevant to the privacy of other neighbors on their way to the house where they say they work.”
There are more than 250 luxury homes in the complex, one of many gated communities in Chicureo, which 15 years ago was a bucolic rural town just north of the capital. Now, Chicureo has expensive private schools, a private health clinic and a walled-off toll highway that links it to other wealthy sub- urbs without exits to surrounding poor- and middleclass neighborhoods.
It’s not easy to reach the town using public transportation, so the gated communities provide a refuge of sorts from the turmoil, traffic and crime that Chileans in other parts of the sprawling capital suffer. Still, as many as 700 workers a day enter El Algarrobal II. And until this month, each paid the equivalent of 60 cents each way for the minibus ride.
News about Pinto’s complaints prompted the administration to suspend the fees.
Pinto’s latest act of civil disobedience in December wasn’t her first. Taylor said that several months earlier, she and his gardener, Claudio Marquez, refused to wait for the minibus and began to walk, “but the guards shoved her into a security vehicle, and kicked Claudio, who decided to quit” rather than submit, Taylor told the AP. Before that, still another gardener had been beaten by the guards and forced into a vehicle, he said in court papers.
Taylor has sued to overturn the bylaw against letting servants walk in the community, but judges have turned him down, saying the administrators have not acted illegally or arbitrarily, and that the rules were supported by a majority of the residents.
While Taylor has lost in court, guards in recent weeks have allowed Pinto to walk to work, though others remain forbidden and she fears her exception will disappear once attention dies down.
The Chilean labor rights group Justa Causa — “Just Cause” — has now joined Pinto’s cause. The group’s lawyer, Nicolas Pavez, said Saturday that its last appeal has been turned down in the courts. Now it plans to accuse Chile before the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights of violating anti-discrimination treaties.
Meanwhile, other maids are coming forward, and Justa Causa is preparing lawsuits for them as well, Pavez said.