Andean Trade Programs (ATPDEA and ATPA)

The Andean Trade Partnership and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA) provides duty-free trade benefits to the Andean countries of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. ATPDEA represents an expansion in 2002 of the Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA).

Like other U.S. trade preference programs for developing countries (e.g. the Generalized System of Preferences and the Caribbean Basin Initiative), ATPDEA has worker rights provisions that by law condition benefits on the exporting country making progress on respecting internationally-recognized worker rights. These worker rights provisions would be terminated by the passage of the Free Trade Agreements with Andean countries.

Andean trade benefits expired at the end of June 2007 but were extended for eight months, until February 2008.

Ecuador: USLEAP, along with Human Rights Watch and the AFL-CIO, have urged the U.S. government to enforce the worker rights provisions of the Andean trade programs with respect to Ecuador, especially its need to reform Ecuadorian labor law to enable workers to organize. Ecuador has not yet done so but trade unions in the country are hopeful that a new constitution that would improve worker rights will soon be written.

Before Ecuador was declared eligible for the expanded ATPDEA program in October 2002, the government of Ecuador promised to take steps to address worker rights concerns/ It subsequently failed to do so, prompting USTR to accept worker rights petitions filed by USLEAP, the AFL-CIO, and Human Rights Watch in September 2003. USLEAP and Human Rights Watch filed similar petitions on Ecuador in 2004 and again in 2005. Letters signed by members of Congress in 2003, 2004 and in 2005 have urged Ecuador to reform labor law, address child labor violations on banana plantations, and end impunity with respect to those who attacked banana workers in 2002. As of May 2007, Ecuador had not reformed its labor law, passing only one provision ostensibly to limit the ability of employers to use contract workers to avoid unionization. The law has so many loopholes that it is largely useless. A new congress elected in 2007 is expected to begin work work on a new constitution which trade unionists hope will improve legal protections for worker organizing.

Colombia: Members of Congress have signed letters urging that the government of Colombia address impunity and violence against trade unionists or face possible loss of U.S. trade benefits. However, formal worker rights petitions have not been filed on Colombia. Some elements of the Colombian trade union movement are opposed to using a U.S. trade law on the grounds that doing so would compromise Colombian sovereignity. In any case, the pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia provides a greater source of leverage to push for advances against impunity and violence.