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CAFTA Rolls Back Worker Protections

By Political Affairs


Related stories: Globalization
6-27-05, 10:02 am

Despite public opposition, the Bush administration and the congressional Republican leadership plan a big push to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in the next few days and weeks. The trading partners governed by CAFTA would be the United States, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and possibly the Dominican Republic.

According to some press reports, the administration is pulling every favor, making any deal, and twisting many arms to get a passing vote on CAFTA, especially within its own party.

CAFTA has brought out important differences among the Republicans as some key congressional districts and states with Republican members have been hard hit by free trade deals. Across the political spectrum, critics of free trade have blamed previous free trade agreements for the loss of jobs and declining agriculture, especially NAFTA on which CAFTA has been modeled.

Republican members especially from industrial states like Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and agricultural states like North and South Carolina are going to have to deal with constituents who see that another "free" trade deal is going to cost them quite a bit.

For Democratic critics of the agreement, the elimination of labor standards and environmental protections makes the agreement too difficult to pass.

Despite the administration’s claims that CAFTA would create strong labor standards, a careful reading of the provisions of the deal show that enforcement of labor standards would practically be stripped of any meaningful power.

According to analysis of the agreement provided by the AFL-CIO, CAFTA removes existing labor protections that allow workers to petition for elimination of trade preferences for governments that do not protect the right of workers to collectively bargain through their unions.

Additionally, specific sectors and producers who violate workers’ rights under current agreements and trade law can be targeted for such petitions to withdrawing preferential trade status. Withdrawal of preferential trade status is an important device for pressuring governments and businesses to abide by international standards of worker protections.

CAFTA eliminates the petition for withdrawal of preferences process, reducing penalties for worker rights violations to small fines that would in fact allow the violating government to continue the abuses.


And since CAFTA prevents workers for pressuring companies or sectors of the economy by doing away with the current processes for filing grievance claims, governments can simply pay small fines to subsidize bad corporate behavior and anti-worker policies.

To top off the meaninglessness of the fines, CAFTA orders that fines not be paid to workers who were abused, or to governments that brought complaints, or to a third party with oversight, but to themselves. That’s right, the offending government pays itself the fine.

Imagine if drunken drivers were ordered to pay a fine to themselves for their dangerous behavior. Would they stop?

Under current trade agreements, also known as the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), workers in Central America and here have been able to some extent to pressure governments to improve labor law and enforce workers’ rights. While uneven and imperfect, GSP petitions have used trading preferences to pressure labor law reform and improved conditions for workers in specific industries. Petitions can be initiated by workers and their unions.

Under CAFTA the government is the only authorized entity allowed to make complaints about workers’ rights and labor laws.

While the current GSP operates on numerous levels to influence and pressure governments to adhere to international labor standards and with enforceable and potent means of achieving those goals, CAFTA turns full responsibility over to government who have proven to be uninterested in protecting workers’ rights - including the Bush administration.

Not only are basic things like a higher standard of living and the economic benefits of having a well-paid workforce at further risk with CAFTA, but so are the very notions that people in their own countries have a right to say what their governments do, or more generally that working people from different countries have a right to aid one another in a struggle for a better life.

This trade agreement strikes right at the heart of democracy, turning oversight over trade and the rights of working people over to big corporate government, business-oriented bureaucrats, and their politicians.

Working people have very much to fear from a deal that cuts them out of the picture and intends to cut their futures to pieces.


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