The AFL-CIO and Guatemalan labor unions first filed a labor complaint under the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement in 2008. In the nearly five years since the complaint was filed, the situation for workers has not improved. They still struggle to organize their workplaces without retribution, they still fight to receive the pay promised for work performed and they continue to be targeted with violence, including murder, for standing up for the most basic of internationally recognized labor rights. The International Trade Union Confederation reports that 10 unionists were murdered there in 2011—the most recent year for which statistics are available. It is long past time for the government of Guatemala to change or for the U.S. government to proceed to arbitrate the case. Justice delayed is justice denied—and for far too long, justice has been denied for Guatemala's workers. 

Outside of hardcore trade policy wonks, few in the United States or Canada have ever heard of the impending Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (commonly referred to as TPP) or know much about it—and it's time that changed. The TPP is a trade agreement based around the current "P-4" (Chile, New Zealand, Brunei Darussalam and Singapore). 

On Tuesday, Oct. 2, the United States Trade Representative convened hearings on labor rights in Fiji and Iraq in response to petitions the AFL-CIO filed.

As developing countries, both Fiji and Iraq receive tariff benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences. In order to keep the benefits, countries have to comply with a number of conditions, including the requirement to take steps to ensure their workers can exercise internationally recognized worker rights, including freedom of association, collective bargaining and freedoms from forced labor.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA) has issued a report on the 2010 SINAUT-SUNAT submission under the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that represents the resolution of the first case under the so-called “May 10” agreement—an agreement that raised the bar for labor obligations in U.S. FTAs. The U.S.-Peru FTA was the first to require parties to “adopt and maintain in its statutes and regulations, and practices thereunder,” the rights stated in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-Up, including the right of collective bargaining.

With reactionaries like Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker leading attacks on working people, Andrew Kersten, a University of Wisconsin-Green Bay history professor, says  famed 19th and 20th century labor lawyer Clarence Darrow would remind us that “labor rights are civil rights” and are “fundamental to the quest for equality, equity and freedom.”