Today, workers from Central America and the U.S. were dismayed to learn that the Bush administration refused to respond to petitions filed last year to withdraw trade benefits from countries that violate core workers’ rights. In the face of inaction and missed deadlines from the administration, labor rights advocates were forced today to file new petitions on each of the Central American countries they had filed against last year.

The AFL-CIO, International Labor Rights Fund, U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project, and Washington Office on Latin America originally filed the petitions in cooperation with unions and labor rights advocates from the Central American region in December 2004, and re-submitted the petitions today. The petitions, which were filed under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), argue that Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras fail to meet the GSP program’s conditions on workers’ rights and that trade benefits for the countries must be reviewed, and withdrawn if necessary. Normally, the GSP decision is made within about six weeks of the initial filing date. Six months have passed since the original petitions were filed.

“Today the Bush administration showed its true colors when it comes to workers’ rights in Central America,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “This administration simply refuses to enforce the labor rules that already exist in our trade programs, and now they are sending Congress a trade agreement with Central America that actually weakens protections for workers’ rights, despite overwhelming evidence of rampant violations and abuse in the region.”

Opposition to CAFTA is growing, in large part due to the agreement’s backtracking from current workers’ rights rules, a point likely to be the subject of lively debate as the House Ways and Means Committee considers draft implementing legislation for the accord today. CAFTA only requires countries to enforce their own labor laws, no matter how far short of international standards those laws may fall, nullifying the GSP program’s requirement that countries take steps to afford internationally recognized workers’ rights. Nearly every single important labor law improvement in Central America in the past two decades has resulted from the leverage that the GSP petition process provides.

In Guatemala, for example, labor laws were reformed in 2001 to maintain GSP eligibility. According to Ricardo Changala, a Guatemalan labor rights lawyer who served in the United Nation’s verification mission to Guatemala, “The GSP program provided the necessary leverage for Guatemala to realize labor law changes that had been repeatedly urged by the ILO, and to improve the capacity of the Labor Ministry to punish labor law violators.”

Yet in 2004, after the negotiation of CAFTA, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala struck down many of these reforms, including a law empowering the Ministry of Labor to assess administrative fines on labor rights violators. Despite the climate of impunity the court decision creates, the Bush administration has turned a blind eye and allowed Guatemala to maintain full GSP benefits. “By refusing to answer the GSP petition, the administration has given Guatemala and its employers a free pass to continue business as usual,” says Jeff Vogt, Senior Associate for Rights and Development at the Washington Office on Latin America. “Given Guatemala’s track record, the Bush Administration should suspend Guatemala’s trade benefits until it fixes its workers rights violations,” said Stephen Coats, Executive Director of U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project. Both organizations joined together to re-submit the GSP petition on Guatemala today.

The administration’s refusal to act flies in the face of overwhelming evidence from the International Labor Organization, independent human rights organizations, and the administration’s own State Department that Central American countries fail to uphold minimum international labor standards in both law and practice. Bama Athreya, Deputy Director of the International Labor Rights Fund, explained, “The fact that we have to re-submit these petitions all over again – after six months of foot-dragging from the administration – is a slap in the face to workers in Central America who have depended on the GSP petition tool to bring some positive changes to a region that remains overtly hostile to workers’ human rights.”

The administration’s refusal to exercise the leverage that the GSP program provides in order to advance workers’ rights is exacerbated by its attempt to eliminate this leverage altogether with the passage of CAFTA. If approved, CAFTA would take away the GSP petition tool for good and replace it with a much weaker mechanism, abandoning millions of workers in the region who fight every day for a voice at work.

Contact:  Sarah Masey (202) 637-5018

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