Delta Apparel response on workers' complaints about alleged labour rights violations during the Covid-19 pandemic
...Delta Apparel, Inc. appreciates the opportunity to make a reply to these allegations to our Delta Apparel Honduras facility...In March, 2020, the Honduran Government issued a decree for a complete lockdown in the country, which forced Delta Apparel to stop all operations on March 16, 2020. Following this date, Delta Apparel Honduras voluntarily paid all of its employees under the regular payroll cycles through March 22, 2020, thereby providing every employee with one week of pay without production (a total of L$2,616,975 lempiras)...As the Honduran Government extended the lockdown period, the Company wanted to do what it could to help our employees and worked diligently to find ways to provide support. Delta Apparel Honduras and the Union “SITRADAHSA” were in frequent communication on the situation and signed a payment agreement for the period of time from March 23, 2020, to April 12, 2020 which served to keep money flowing to the employees...When the Honduran Government decided to extend the decree for the complete lockdown past April 12, 2020, the Company had no other option but to make the difficult decision to present the suspension of labor contracts for a period of 120 days in accordance with Article 100 number 2 and 5 of the Honduran Labor Code...Delta Apparel Honduras continued to fund the Social Security fees of both the employer share as well as funding the employee portion of Social Security fees to ensure that all employees had access to medical attention they needed...While Delta Apparel never likes to make the difficult decision to reduce our workforce, we had to make the difficult decision to reduce our Delta Apparel Honduras facility by 420 people in order to sustain our business and maintain employment for the remaining nearly 3,400 employees in Honduras and over 7,000 production workforce in Central America and Mexico...