Labor, Environmental Activists to Protest World Bank’s CAFTA Tribunal
Pacific Rim Cayman LLC, the mining company determined to extract gold along the banks of El Salvador’s Lempa River, is seeking to use the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) to force the Salvadoran government to allow it to have its environmentally disastrous, gold-digging way. Since 2009, four activists opposed to Pacific Rim’s mining plans have been killed.
Tomorrow, the AFL-CIO will join the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and activists from a range of labor and environmental groups to converge on the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a noon protest in opposition to a CAFTA case being brought against the Salvadoran government by Pacific Rim. The AFL-CIO has long called for ending CAFTA, whose absence of labor protections leads to the abuse of Central American workers.
As part of the action, participants will attempt to deliver an open letter to World Bank officials, calling on the bank and presiding officials to dimiss Pacific Rim’s CAFTA complaint, which seeks $77 million from the Salvadoran government for calling a halt to the company’s potentially devastating gold mining operation. Read the rest of this entry »
Join STITCH’s Delegation to Learn About CAFTA’s Impact
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Join the human rights advocacy group STITCH and the women of its Central America Network of Women for Social and Economic Justice on a 10-day delegation July 27 to Aug. 6, 2011, to Honduras to see firsthand the impact of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) five years later.
Women workers are hit particularly hard by the global economy because they are concentrated in low-wage jobs and are often the least likely to belong to a union. Participants will meet with women union leaders in various industries, including teachers, nurses and women in the textile and banana sectors.
You will hear how the 2006 passing of CAFTA has affected the lives of women in the past five years and the challenges facing women workers throughout the region. You also will experience the unique methods used to empower and organize women in their unions and workplaces in an intense two-day retreat with nearly 40 women from Central America.
U.S. Steps Up Pressure on Guatemala to Enforce Labor Laws
The Obama administration announced yesterday that because Guatemala has not taken sufficient steps to effectively enforce its labor laws, as required under the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), it is requesting a meeting of the Free Trade Commission.
The meeting would be the second step in the process outlined under the DR-CAFTA, to compel a nation to enforce its labor obligations under the agreement. In July, the U.S. requested consultations with Guatemala. But as U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk says:
We have identified a significant number of apparent failures by the government of Guatemala to enforce its labor laws. While Guatemala has taken some positive steps over the past several months, its actions and proposals have been insufficient to address what we view as systemic failures.
Kirk says Guatemala has failed to enforce labor laws regarding the right of association, the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively, and acceptable working conditions. Read the rest of this entry »
Big Insurance, Pharma, Wall Street and John Boehner
Stacia Haley in Seattle worked all her life and raised a child as a single parent. Yet she has no retirement income other than Social Security.
[Social Security] is all many of us will have, if we live long enough to retire.
Stacia is right. Some 64 percent of America’s retirees rely on Social Security for 50 percent or more of their income.
Yet the man Wall Street wants to make speaker of the House supports raising the retirement age for Social Security, lowering the hammer even more on low- and middle-income Americans, who die earlier than the rich. (And what about that income gap? Well, never mind.)
This is just one of the extreme positions John Boehner holds while he salivates in the wings as House minority leader, angling for a Republican takeover of Congress bought and paid for by corporate America.
Anti-Union, Far-Right Groups Push and Pay for Republican Agenda
They come with patriotic-, populist- and even progressive-sounding names and deep, deep pockets. But Americans for Job Security, FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity and other groups whose election ads are strangling the airwaves are part of a far-right, anti-union, special-interest group cadre trying to buy the election.
These organizations—nothing more, really, than a hit team for corporate and extreme conservative Republican interests—are spending tens and tens of millions of dollars to enact an agenda that would set working families back by decades:
- Attacking collective bargaining rights and opposing the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
- Enacting job-killing “free” trade deals like NAFTA and CAFTA.
- Cutting taxes for millionaires while leaving the rest of us behind.
A new report by American Rights at Work lifts the curtains and shines the spotlight on who is really behind these groups, how much they are spending, their track records and corporate connections.
For First Time Ever, U.S. Moves to Enforce Labor Rules in Trade Deal
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The U.S. Labor Department announced on Friday the United States will request consultations with Guatemala’s government under the labor chapter of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). This is the first such action by any U.S. administration against a trading partner.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement that the announcement “demonstrates the strong commitment of the Obama administration to enforcing our trade laws, including the obligation to respect workers’ rights.”
More than two years ago, the AFL-CIO and six Guatemalan unions filed a complaint with the Labor Department outlining the systemic failure of the government of Guatemala to enforce its own labor laws or to take reasonable action to prevent violence against trade unionists.
Take Action Today to End Violence Against Guatemalan Trade Unionists
Since the Bush administration pushed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) through Congress in 2005, Guatemala has become the second most dangerous country for trade unionists in Latin America, trailing only Colombia, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
The ITUC reported nine trade unionists were murdered in 2008, in addition to two trade unionists murdered in 2007. In the two years leading up to CAFTA’s approval, no trade unionists were murdered in Guatemala. According to the ITUC’s 2009 Annual Survey:
the situation [in Guatemala] has worsened for trade unionists. Anti-union violence is constant, with assassinations, threats, harassment, shootings at people’s homes, raids and attacks on union offices, and assaults and harassment of trade union leaders and their families.
Report: The Struggle for Workers’ Rights in Guatemala
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For decades, workers in Guatemala have been unable to fully benefit from the wealth in the country or to share the profits of their own labor. The nation’s 36-year armed conflict, which ended in 1996, involved savage repression of workers and indigenous people.
Although the fighting long has ended, the war generated a climate of corruption, violence and impunity that continues to grow, according to a new report by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.
Released today, ”Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Guatemala” chronicles the courageous struggle of Guatemala’s workers to build better lives, often against deadly odds. Another report, the “Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights,” released a week ago by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), lists Guatemala as the second most dangerous country for union members in 2008, after Colombia.
Trade Experts: Renegotiate NAFTA
Trade experts from throughout the Americas say U.S. trade policies must be completely revised and existing agreements renegotiated and agree with the Obama administration’s proposal to renegotiate part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that allowed unsafe Mexican trucks to drive on U.S. highways.
In a forum hosted by the International Labor Rights Forum, the Global Policy Network and the Economic Policy Institute, trade union leaders from the United States, Mexico, Central America and Colombia said that existing and proposed trade agreements have failed to live up to their promise and have actually made things worse.
