Today’s announcement by the U.S. trade representative that negotiations have concluded for a free trade agreement with Central America represents another frontal attack on workers by the Bush administration. This is yet another job-destroying free trade agreement that will undermine workers’ rights here and around the world. Clearly, this administration has no interest in creating new rules for the global economy which work for working people, both in the United States and in other countries.
In a last-ditch effort to claim a success on trade this year, the administration announced the conclusion of negotiations even though Costa Rica walked away from the negotiating table until next month, and a number of difficult issues appear to remain unresolved.
The accord, which would expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Central America, comes at a time when American workers have already lost more than 2.5 million manufacturing jobs under President Bush, and hundreds of thousands of jobs to unwise trade agreements. After the failure of WTO talks in Cancun and hemispheric trade negotiations in Miami earlier this year, the Central America agreement is the first in a series of smaller bilateral accords the administration is pursuing in an effort to push forward its stalled trade agenda.
In Central America, employers pay young women poverty wages to labor for long hours in unsafe conditions. When these workers try to organize to try to win a voice at work, they face intimidation, threats, dismissal, and blacklisting. Employers are allowed to violate workers’ rights with impunity under Central America’s weak labor laws, which have been repeatedly criticized by the International Labor Organization, the U.S. State Department, and independent human rights organizations. Yet the Central American agreement does not require any improvements in labor laws, and actually contains weaker workers’ rights protections than existing rules for trade with the region enacted by Congress.
Together with our union brothers and sisters in Central America and our allies in the U.S., we will do everything in our power to defeat this deeply flawed agreement.
Contact Guillermo Meneses 202-637-5018
