After more than a year and a half of fruitless negotiations during which SABMiller arrogantly lived up to its reputation as an antiunion company, displaying devious and contradictory behavior, STIBYS has finally decided to declare a strike.

 On Friday, December 28, 2007, a delegation of the Union of Beverage and Related Industry Workers (STIBYS), accompanied by a representation of the Labor Inspection Office, gathered at the gates of Cervecería Hondureña S.A. to officially present a document declaring the strike.

With the excuse that there was no officer at the plant with sufficient rank to receive such a document, all day the company refused to receive the delegations, despite the fact that they remained there throughout the morning and the afternoon.

As a result, the Labor Inspection Office summoned the company to appear on the morning of Wednesday, January 2, but the brewery company failed to show, prompting the Labor Inspection Office to instruct the Police to escort the union delegation and force SABMiller to receive the communication declaring the strike.

However, this extreme measure was finally not necessary as the company -“mysteriously” tipped off- phoned the Ministry of Labor and announced that it would receive the unionists at 3:00 pm that day. So that afternoon Cervecería Hondureña was officially informed that, in observance of the mandatory six days’ warning established by law, the union will be launching the strike next January 11. The company had no alternative but to accept the document, though it continued to argue that the union had still not complied with all the legal requirements for declaring a strike. Now the company has 48 hours to answer the List of Demands presented by STIBYS.

On the morning of Thursday, January 3, STIBYS held a press conference attended by Honduras’ leading media, where it informed the public of its reasons for calling the strike and of the process leading up to this unfortunate situation, holding SABMiller responsible for the inevitable shortage of supply that will affect the local market.