First CAFTA Complaint Filed; Upsurge in Violence Against Guatemalan Unionists Denounced

On April 23, the AFL-CIO and Guatemalan trade unions filed the first CAFTA worker rights complaint since the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 2006.

The complaint uses five case studies to demonstrate a pattern of worker rights violations in Guatemala, including a rise in violence against trade unionists. At least eight trade union-related murders have been committed in Guatemala since the implementation of DR-CAFTA on July 1, 2006. In the two years prior to CAFTA implementation, no trade unionists were reported murdered.

The CAFTA complaint was filed by the AFL-CIO and five Guatemalan trade union organizations. A two-page fact sheet on recent violence released simultaneously by the AFL-CIO summarized the eight murders along with one attempted murder, two drive-by shootings, and one gang rape as evidence of a sharp increase in violence against trade unionists in Guatemala.

No one has been arrested or prosecuted in any of these cases, which date back to the January 2007 murder of Pedro Zamora, General Secretary of the union of Puerto Quetzal and a July 2006 attempted murder of another port worker union leader.

The International Trade Union Confederation also released a special report on Guatemala worker rights, in March 2008.

Colombia FTA Implications

The upsurge in violence against Guatemalan trade unionists could have important lessons for the Congressional debate about the pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, where pro-FTA supporters point to a decline in murders in 2007 and 2006 as evidence of progress. In an April 3, 2008 press release, USLEAP warned that passage of an FTA with Colombia could follow the pattern in Guatemala and lead to a reversal of the decline in murders, noting that “while CAFTA was being negotiated, killers of trade unionists in Guatemala put away their guns. But once CAFTA was in the bag, the guns have come out again, with a fury.”

Weakened U.S. Leverage

USLEAP believes that the experience in Guatemala since CAFTA was passed also demonstrates that the U.S. government’s ability to bring pressure to bear in support of worker rights has weakened compared to trade laws that existed prior to CAFTA. Before, under the Generalized System of Preferences, the U.S. government had the ability to initiate an investigation into violence against trade unionists and place a country’s trade benefits on probation and did so, with significant effect, when a probation led in 2001 to the first modern-day convictions for violence against trade unionists. Now, under CAFTA, the U.S. can only initiate lengthy dispute settlement resolutions proceedings that can at most lead to fines that are then returned to the Guatemalan government to improve labor law enforcement.

The Guatemala complaint provides the Administration with its first test to demonstrate that the labor chapter of CAFTA can be effectively used to advance worker rights. Based on the repeated failure of the NAFTA labor chapter to achieve positive results, worker rights advocates are highly skeptical.