Rulings In Two Countries Affirm Immigrant Workers’ Rights
John See of AFT’s Public Affairs Department reports on two important rulings that protect the rights of immigrant workers.
Teachers across the globe are fighting back against abuse and exploitation. With the assistance of AFT and partner unions in the Philippines, the rights of teachers who came to the United States on temporary visas were affirmed recently in rulings in two countries.
The rulings involve more than 300 teachers who were recruited to come to Louisiana from the Philippines to teach in public schools. AFT began assisting the teachers last year and helped them file complaints with the U.S. Labor Department and Louisiana state labor officials. In the complaints the teachers said their passports were held by Universal Placement International (UPI), the recruiter that brought them to the United States, and they were threatened with deportation unless they paid thousands of dollars in excessive and illegal fees.
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.
