Costa Rica’s High Court Restores Longshore Union Leaders
 |
||||
|
||||
Longshore workers in the United States and Costa Rica are celebrating a ruling by Costa Rica’s high court that restored the democratically elected leaders of the SINTRAJAP longshore union who had been ousted in a government-backed illegal union election.
The ouster prompted the International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s (ILWU’s) Coast Longshore Division to charge Costa Rica with “serious and repeated failures by the government of Costa Rica to effectively enforce its own labor laws” in an 18-page complaint with the Department of Labor’s Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA).
“The return of the legitimate union leadership is a victory for hard-working people everywhere, who count on having the democratic right to join a union and improve their standard of living, ensure their safety and strengthen their communities,” says ILWU President Robert McEllrath.
It’s an important step forward in the never-ending battle to protect workers from forces that would like to return to the days before union rights, when poverty and unsafe working conditions in the workplace were considered an acceptable cost of doing business.
ILWU Files Labor Rights Complaint Against Costa Rica
|
||||
|
||||
Jennifer Sargent, communications director of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s (ILWU‘s) Coast Longshore Division, reports on the union’s complaint against Costa Rica under the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA).
The ILWU hopes a recent announcement that the U.S. Department of Labor is responding to a trade complaint against Guatemala for labor violations bodes well for its own recent filing of a complaint against Costa Rica.
On July 20, the ILWU Coast Longshore Division charged Costa Rica with “serious and repeated failures by the government of Costa Rica to effectively enforce its own labor laws” in an 18-page complaint with the Labor Department’s Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA). Less than a week after the ILWU’s filing, the Department of Labor took steps to initiate its first-ever case under DR-CAFTA against a trade partner for labor rights violations by responding to a petition the AFL-CIO filed against Guatemala in 2008 DR-CAFTA.
ILWU Urges Action to Help Costa Rica Dockworkers
 |
||||
|
||||
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is calling on the U.S. government to take immediate action to stop Costa Rica’s attack on SINTRAJAP, that country’s dockworkers union.
In a letter to President Obama, ILWU President Robert McEllrath said the Costa Rican government is carrying out a plan to undermine and eventually eliminate the dockworkers union in order to privatize two of the country’s ports.
In January 2010, the state-owned agency that administers the ports of Costa Rica unilaterally removed the democratically elected leadership of SINTRAJAP and replaced them with a government-backed board of directors.
Global Unions Condemn Mexico’s Move to Bust 44,000-Member Union
The global union movement is accusing Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, of systematically trying to bust independent unions and is demanding that he respect the rights of workers to form unions.
The latest example of Calderón’s anti-worker bias is the takeover last month by federal agents and police of the country’s second largest electrical power distributor, Luz y Fuerza (Central Light and Power). Calderón used an executive decree to dissolve the utility, but, in doing so, he also fired the entire 44,000-person workforce and disbanded their union, the 95-year-old Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union (SME), a frequent critic of the government’s policies.
ILWU Members Pitch in to Help Samoan Tsunami Survivors
After the recent tsunami in Samoa and American Samoa, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) helped provide aid in a big way. When members of the Samoan community in Southern California asked union workers if they would help send a massive shipment of tsunami relief supplies to the two islands, the workers did what union members do best: They came together to help those in need. The Sept. 29 tsunami killed more than 200 people. Thousands of Samoans are homeless and hundreds are injured.
The ILWU members volunteered to donate their time to load 15 containers of supplies for the tsunami victims. Union officials, led by ILWU President Robert McEllrath, worked with industry leaders to secure donated containers and to get the shipping company to waive the $45,000 fee that is ordinarily charged for such a load. The ship left for the islands Oct. 14.
