Duro workers assemble gift bags for Hallmark and Neiman Marcus. Duro is privately held, family-owned, and based in Ludlow, Kentucky. Workers put up their strike banners on June 12 in order to establish an independent union and to force the reinstatement of their elected leaders who were illegally fired. They have been occupying an encampment in Rio Bravo's town plaza since that day. The workers demand the right to negotiate better working conditions, life insurance, bathroom breaks, basic safety equipment and sanitary conditions in the bathrooms and cafeteria.
Mexican law states that workers have the right to strike and to close production facilities.
Recently, the workers won a hearing that will allow them to hold a union election. On Valentine's day of this year, hundreds of activists sent Hallmark e-cards from its own website urging the company to use its influence to ensure the workers a fair election. Research team leader, Esther de Haan said Lesotho was also not getting much out of the investments made by the Taiwanese factories as very little of their profits stayed in the country. Their profits are repatriated along with the wages of supervisors. She reports that labor conditions in Lesotho textile factories were slave-like because there was compulsory overwork, workers could not leave the factory, they could not unionize, and wages were not enough to live on.