Documentary: CAFTA Led to Workers’ Rights Violations in Honduras
Ever since it was passed five years ago, the Central America Free Trade Agreement-Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR) has led to an increase in unemployment, violations of worker rights and discrimination against women in Honduras, according to an about-to-be-released documentary.
In late July, members of the advocacy group STITCH hosted an all-women’s labor solidarity delegation to Honduras to assess the impact of CAFTA-DR on women in the region. During the 10-day delegation, participants met with women union leaders in various industries, including women in the textile and banana sectors, as well as women leaders from the Honduran National Resistance Front.
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.
Workers Rally to Shut Down School of Americas
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Hundreds of union members joined religious and human rights activists in a vigil and rally outside the gates of the School of the Americas (SOA) last weekend to demand that it be closed.
Graduates of the school, operated by the U.S. Department of Defense at Fort Benning, Ga., have been linked to human rights violations and suppression of popular movements in the Americas, according to the activist group SOA Watch.
Many targets of assassination and torture in Latin America are trade unionists. More union members are killed each year in Latin America than in the rest of the world combined, primarily due to extreme anti-worker violence in Colombia, according to the International Trade Union Confederation.
Union members, young activists and religious groups joined in a labor caucus Nov. 22 and heard Colombian trade union members describe the dangerous conditions they live under daily. When 14 Colombian unionists were in the United States receiving training through the AFL-CIO over the past two months, four of their union colleagues back home were killed.
Trumka: Free Elections Not Possible Now in Honduras
The continued repression of trade unionists by the regime set up in Honduras after a June 28 coup makes it impossible to hold free and fair elections, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a Nov. 13 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Trumka points out that delegates to the AFL-CIO Convention in September passed a resolution calling on the U.S. government to suspend military aid to Honduras until President Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected leader, is returned to office and human and trade union rights have been restored.
Click here to read the convention resolution on Honduras and here to read Trumka’s letter.
With an illegitimate government in power, scheduled elections later this month cannot be fair, free and open, Trumka says.
Violent Repression Continues in Honduras
In the wake of the June 28 coup in Honduras that forcibly deposed and expelled President Manuel Zelaya, thousands of trade unionists—following the call of the three national labor centrals (CUTH, CTH and the CGT)—joined tens of thousands in nonviolent protests, demanding the immediate restoration of democracy in their country.
In response, the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti directed the military and police to violently repress the legitimate protests. National and international human rights organizations report widespread human rights violations by state security forces, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, severe beatings, sexual violence, imprisonment and torture, and killings of Zelaya’s supporters.
Following the president’s return to the capital city of Tegucigalpa on Sept. 21, the situation deteriorated rapidly. The de facto government stepped up its offensive against democratic civil society organizations, including the trade union movement. A report by Honduran Radio Progreso confirmed the killing of a trade unionist from the National Agrarian Institute shortly after Zelaya’s return. Three members of the teachers union—Felix Murillo Lopez, Roger Vallejo and Martin Florencio Rivera—were killed while mobilizing trade union opposition to the coup.
AFL-CIO: Honduras Coup Is ‘Unconscionable’
The AFL-CIO today called on the U.S. government and the international community, particularly the Organization of American States and the United Nations, to “make every effort” to restore constitutional order in Honduras and reinstate democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a military coup Sunday.
In a statement, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called the coup “an unconscionable attack on the fundamental rights and liberties of the Honduran people.” He urged governments to condemn the coup and withhold recognition of the current government. Zelaya was ousted after pushing for a referendum on proposed changes that would allow the president to run for re-election and create new procedures for amending the constitution.
The recent internal conflict relating to the proposed constitutional referendum cannot in any way justify the extra-constitutional measures undertaken by the armed forces. These measures are a flagrant violation of the most basic democratic principles and of the rule of law.
91 Unionists Killed in 2008, 49 in Colombia Alone
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A total of 91 union members were killed worldwide last year, the same number as in 2007. But more than half (49) were killed in Colombia alone, 10 more than last year, making it once again the most dangerous country for trade unionists, according to the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC‘s) “Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights.”
The Colombian government has not vigorously investigated or prosecuted the killing of trade union members. At the current pace of investigations and trials, it would take 37 years to prosecute the backlog of cases. And the caseload is growing—the rate of killings, which had fallen for a few years, jumped sharply last year by 25 percent, says José Luciano Sanin, director of Escuela Nacional Sindical (National Union School), a leading Colombian think tank.
Students, Workers Urge Georgetown to Defend Workers’ Rights
Students at Georgetown University today called on the school to honor its ethical commitments and cut ties with an apparel manufacturer that students say busted a union and violated workers’ rights at a plant in Honduras.
At a rally on the university’s campus in Washington, D.C., Moises Elias Montoya Alvarado and Norma Estela Mejia Castellanos, who work at Russell Athletics’ Jerzees de Honduras factory—which produces Georgetown logo apparel—described how the company closed the plant this past weekend and shipped the work to cheaper nonunion plants. The Jerzees de Honduras factory, located near Pedro Sula, Honduras, is the only unionized Russell plant in the country.
“We have been campaigning for a year and a half to end the abuses in our factory and ensure that we are treated with dignity and respect,” said Montoya Alvarado.
