Free Trade Agreements and Trade Policy

In this season's review of maquila struggles in Central America, workers face more factory closings, continue to push for negotiations, and fight against economic hardship.

According to a report released this spring by the Escuela Nacional Sindical, Colombia’s leading source for data on anti-union violence, there was a notable increase in murders of trade union members

The status of the highly controversial US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement was in limbo as of mid-May, following an April furor when, in an unprecedented move, the Bush administration submitted the bill

Violence against trade unionists in Central America has surged this year, with at least four trade union-related murders and a gang rape in Guatemala since the beginning of 2008, a top union leader

Senator Sherrod Brown and Representative Mike Michaud announced the introduction of the TRADE Act on June 2nd at a news conference on Capitol Hill.

On April 24, the general secretary of the Workers’ Confederation of Honduras (CTH) was shot 16 times by six masked men and killed, along with another trade unionist and her motorcyclist on a well

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.

Getting permission to use the restroom at the La Fragancia flower plantation in Colombia “is like winning the lottery,” according to Dora Acero, the Secretary of Education for the union at the

President Bush sent the highly controversial Colombia Free Trade Agreement to Congress on April 7th.

The Chicago Trade with Justice Working Group delivered a letter to the offices of Illinois Senators Durbin and Obama this week, signed by 30 Chicago-area o