ISDS Case Map
labour | workers' rights
A secret deal that saw Brussels blamed for ‘forcing’ Britain to take in 12,000 Indian workers – despite high unemployment – was supported by a lobbying push from British financial services companies.
Interview with Lourdes Castro, chief officer of Grupo SUR and representative of Alop, Aprodev, Cifca and Oidhaco.
As the media swarmed over the scandal surrounding the Secret Service’s alleged carousing with prostitutes in Colombia, another questionable financial transaction slipped quietly through the backdoor of hemispheric diplomacy.
Late last month, the umbrella coalition of US unions, the AFL-CIO, linked up with major workers groups from Honduras to file a petition with the Department of Labor in Washington, DC. The petition censured the government of the Central American country over its failure to enforce provisions of the labour chapter of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) with the United States.
Japan has agreed to accept nurses and caregivers from Vietnam under a bilateral economic partnership agreement on condition that they pass a Japanese language test, officials said.
At the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, US President Barack Obama announced approval of Colombia's supposed progress in protecting labor rights, allowing the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement to take effect next month. US trade representative Ron Kirk said at a Cartagena press conference that the agreement provides "an opportunity to help stand up for the rights of workers... This is a significant milestone."
The United Steelworkers, the AFL-CIO and the Colombia labor movement firmly believes the US pronouncement that Colombia has complied with the Labor Action Plan -- a move which will allow for implementation of the Free Trade Agreement starting next month -- is premature as unionists continue to be killed in Colombia at a rate of 30 slain in 2011, and six already this year.
This week the AFL-CIO joined the main Honduran trade unions to file a petition with the United States Department of Labor’s Public Office of Trade & Labor Affairs (OTLA) concerning the failure of the government of Honduras to effectively enforce its labor laws and comply with its commitments under the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA).
Rebuilding a strong, vibrant and innovative manufacturing sector in Canada by signing more free trade agreements is like saying our society can be healthier if only we ate more chocolate. It’s backwards logic.
According to labor-rights activists as well as a recent US State department report, many Colombian co-ops function as glorified temp agencies providing companies with cheap and docile non-union workers.
