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U.S., Jordan Trade Pact Worthless as Worker Abuse Escalates in Jordan |
Last month, news reports described the brutal working conditions of foreign workers in Jordan’s textile factories—forced to work 15- to 20-hour days with no pay, physically abused and even jailed when they ask for their wages. An article in The New York Times, based on a report by the National Labor Committee (NLC), cited examples of a plant where workers received no wages for six months despite being forced to work 109 hours a week.
Bangladeshis working in Jordan told the NLC they paid $1,000 to $3,000 to work in Jordan, but when they arrived, their passports were confiscated, restricting their ability to leave the country and tying them to jobs that often pay far less than promised and far less than the country’s minimum wage.
The bitter irony is that the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement was the first and only U.S. trade agreement to include enforceable workers’ rights.
What went wrong?
Trade experts say sweatshop conditions and other egregious abuses of worker rights in Jordan have escalated because neither government is committed to enforcing the rights they signed off on in the free trade agreement.
Speaking at a Center for American Progress panel discussion this week on the abuse of workers in Jordan, Thea Lee, AFL-CIO policy director, said:
The workers’ rights provisions in the US-Jordan Free Trade Agreement represented an important step forward at the time the agreement was negotiated. However, these provisions don’t work if they aren’t enforced.
Jordan has experienced tremendous economic development because of the treaty, but that growth has come at a heavy price, says Mazen al Ma’ayta, general secretary of the General Federation of Jordanian Trade Unions. But al Ma’ayta says Jordanian workers are determined to fight for their rights:
We are calling for Jordan’s labor laws to be reformed to conform to international standards. Right now, huge categories of workers, including migrants and Jordanians working in the public sector, are not allowed to organize unions and represent their own interests. The Jordanian labor movement will continue to fight for justice for both Jordanian and migrant workers, and the protection of their rights.
Workers will not enjoy full protections without being organized. This must include the migrant worker population, particularly since Jordanians are being pushed out of jobs by foreigners that will work for less pay in worse conditions. Without improvements in organized labor, the benefits of foreign investment will bypass Jordanian workers.
More than a year ago, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center commissioned research on the serious worker rights abuses in Jordan and in December 2005, released the comprehensive report, Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Jordan.
The report illustrates how workers, especially job-seeking migrants from such countries as Iraq, Syria, Bangladesh and China, are treated like slaves. As the report says:
Men and women…are forced to work long and arduous shifts or below-poverty wages…bosses withhold their paychecks and passports…the workers become virtual prisoners far from home.
Migrant women often end up in the informal economy as domestic servants, a condition one scholar calls “contract slavery…they often work under employment contracts that are not respected [because they face a combination of abuse and violence, denial of freedom to move and communicate]. Employers often imprison domestic workers….They may starve, beat, and rape workers or even falsely accuse them of crimes.
The Solidarity Center report points out neither country has applied the labor provisions in the treaty—and it is not likely they will be:
Before Congress voted on the Jordan FTA, the U.S. Trade Representative [which enforces trade agreements] under the Bush administration exchanged letters with the Jordanian government in which both agreed that they would not “expect or intend” to use trade sanctions to enforce any provisions in the agreement. This virtually ensures that sanctions will not be applied. The letters demonstrate a lack of willingness on the part of both governments to test their own agreement, although the labor provisions could be used in the future (the exchange of letters did not alter the text of the agreement itself and therefore will not be binding on future U.S. administrations).
The AFL-CIO and the union movement continue to push for free trade agreements that include enforceable workers’ rights clauses as corporations—many of them American—seek to move jobs to countries with the lowest possible labor costs and weakest worker protections. Even if the jobs are not shipped overseas, corporate executives use the threat of moving to coerce concessions from their U.S. workers.
As Center for American Progress President John Podesta said during the panel discussion:
In the global scramble for cheaper goods, access to markets, and foreign investment, decent jobs are often neglected. If the Jordan Free Trade Agreement is going to be a successful model for progressive globalization, in addition to agreement, there must be commitment.
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