The following is an overview of the key issues USLEAP focused on this year, including important political developments that impacted workers.
Trade and Worker Rights: Pendulum Shifting
Growing public concern about the impact of globalization on workers at home and abroad and a new Congress in January led to significant developments in 2007. These included the:
Together, these represent a meaningful change in the rules for globalization that have been characterized for the past decade by trade agreements that effectively ignore protections for workers.
In a close vote charged with irregularities, a referendum in Costa Rica narrowly backed the Central America Free Trade Agreement in October, paving the way for approval by the last remaining country in Central America of the highly controversial trade pact.
On Ecuador, pending worker rights petitions previously filed by USLEAP, Human Rights Watch, and the AFL-CIO were put on the political back-burner as Ecuadorian trade unionists asked petitioners to give the relatively new government of Rafael Correa an opportunity to reform the constitution to strengthen basic rights of workers.
Meanwhile, the Peru FTA was passed in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and was signed before Christmas. In spite of many problematic aspects of the new trade model, the Peru agreement passed easily in both houses of Congress.
The U.S. government issued an August 2007 report on a 2005 complaint brought by Mexican workers under NAFTA procedures and backed by USLEAP. The report provided evidence to corroborate the use of a protection contract system that denied workers their right to form an independent union at the Rubie’s factory while simultaneously underscoring the ineffectiveness of NAFTA labor protections.
Banana Workers: Active on Many Fronts
Dole remained public enemy number one for the Coordination of Latin American Banana Workers Unions (COLSIBA) and the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF), whose global campaign against the company entered its second year. The campaign, headed by USLEAP in the U.S., accuses Dole of leading the race to the bottom in the industry while hiding behind a “smokescreen” of alleged corporate responsibility.
Chiquita also came under pressure in 2007 when COLSIBA asked for international intervention, which led to a series of high-level meetings that began to resolve enough issues to, so far, avoid a major international campaign.
No organizing progress was made with the totally non-union Bonita/Noboa banana company in Ecuador while Del Monte became a target in September 2007 after the murder of a trade union leader in Guatemala.
A new congress and president in Ecuador, the world’s largest banana exporter, offer some hope for labor law reform and a political opening for worker organizing in the banana sector. Ecuador’s non-union, low-wage banana export sector continues to drive down wages and conditions at unionized plantations elsewhere in the region.
An initiative between the leading U.S. Fair Trade group, Transfair USA, and COLSIBA under which union-backed bananas would be sold under the Fair Trade label stalled in 2007 pending resolution of key issues. USLEAP continues to accompany the deliberations.
Coffee Workers: Starbucks Review Scheduled
USLEAP began discussions with Starbucks to undertake an independent evaluation of the impact on Guatemalan workers of the company’s 10-year commitment to improve working conditions for coffee workers. While Starbucks has become the largest U.S. retailer of Fair Trade coffee that benefits small farmers and coops, most of its coffee from countries like Guatemala come from plantations that can employ hundreds of workers.
Starbucks sourcing guidelines, now called Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices, trace their origin to the company’s agreement in 1995 with USLEAP (then US/GLEP) to adopt a code of conduct for growers from which it buys.
Colombia: More Violence, Big Change in Aid
The rate of murders of trade unionists in Colombia appears to be dropping in 2007 but not nearly enough to keep Colombia from still being the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists. Progress on impunity has been minimal, with convictions in only three cases in the first half of 2007.
Human rights advocates achieved major gains in reshaping U.S. foreign aid to Colombia, altering the balance of the overall aid package to increase the economic side at the expense of the military side while strengthening protections for human rights. USLEAP organized a U.S. trade union sign-on letter backing the shift, an important development in U.S. policy towards Colombia.
Violence against trade unionists became the central issue for congressional opponents of U.S. aid and trade policy towards Colombia. A major focus of USLEAP’s work in 2007 was documentation of continuing violence and impunity to counter misleading information spun by pro-FTA lobbyists. USLEAP’s reports were cited and/or used by major media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, and others. USLEAP also briefed policy makers in Washington and conducted fact-finding investigations to Colombia.
Maquila Workers: Bad Year for Unions
Several major victories were reversed in 2007, as unionized factories closed throughout the region. Among the victims was the BJ&B factory in the Dominican Republic, which had been one of the biggest anti-sweatshop victories, led by the U.S. student movement. Nicaragua’s oldest unionized maquila, Fortex, closed, as did KB Manufacturing where workers had been organizing. In Guatemala, one of only two unionized factories, Cimatextile, closed in September.
The most painful closing for USLEAP was that of Just Garments, a factory that had been resurrected after Tainan Enterprises closed its operations in El Salvador in 2002 rather than negotiate a contract. Just Garments, founded in 2003, was the only unionized maquila with a contract in El Salvador but its business model of producing for the sweatfree market in the U.S. proved unsuccessful.
In Mexico, one of the country’s largest jean producers defied major brands and an international campaign to oppose an independent union that won a November election at the Vaqueros Navarra plant. Similarly, Hanesbrands refused to negotiate with an independent union in the Dominican Republic despite a determination by the government that the union represented a majority of the workers.
Flower Workers: New Campaign Launched
The most important union organizing effort in Colombia’s flower sector came to a bitter end when Dole closed what had been its largest and most heavily unionized flower plantation. Another union organizing effort was squashed through violent intimidation, death threats, and illegal firings at the Bochica plantation.
In the fall, a new campaign to support Dole workers began, focused on the Fragancia plantation. USLEAP support work in 2007 included co-authoring a special Valentine’s Day report covered on National Public Radio, a strategic planning workshop in Colombia, press work, and an alliance with the Flower Worker Committee in Miami.
Colombian non-governmental organizations report that independent unions have not been able to win a single contract in the 100,000 worker Colombian flower sector, which provides 60% of all flowers sold in the U.S.
Violence and Impunity
Violence against trade unionists surged in Guatemala in 2007, with four trade unionists murdered, the highest total in years. Trade unionists were also murdered in Panama and El Salvador. Impunity continued unabated, with no arrests in the high-profile murders of Pedro Zamora and Maro Tulio Ramirez in Guatemala. Nor was any progress made in tracking down those responsible for the November 2004 murder in El Salvador of visiting U.S. trade unionist Gilberto Soto. Having fled Guatemala in 2006 after a near-death experience, trade unionist José Palacios won political asylum in the U.S., with USLEAP support.