Thread: CAFTA HURTS WOMEN OF THE AMERICAS

Congressional Record: June 20, 2005 (House)]
[Page H4787]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr20jn05-73]


CAFTA HURTS WOMEN OF THE AMERICAS

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Marchant). Under a previous order of the
House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5
minutes.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, many people do not think of trade agreements as an issue particular to women. But a briefing I held last week along with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis), and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman) made clear how disproportionately the proposed CAFTA agreement will negatively affect women.

We tend to forget about women in forgotten places like the sweat shop
zones in Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Costa Rica. But let me tell some of their stories.

One worker, woman in Guatemala describes the way supervisors treat
workers in the maquiladora, the sweat shop where she works. She says,
``Sometimes the supervisor grabs a piece of cloth you're working on and
throws it in your face. Once when a supervisor did that to me, I
finally grabbed the piece from him and threw it back in his face. I did
not cry. If I had cried, I wouldn't have been able to answer him.
Instead, I told him that he needed to start respecting the women that
worked for him. I could have accepted it if he had just said the piece
was no good, but to throw it in my face, I won't stand for that.''

How about the thousands of women who work in the banana packing
plants? Who speaks for them?

For the treatment that the woman in the textile company received, she
earns $68 every 2 weeks including over time and bonuses, working many
more than 8 hours a day. She goes on to say, ``The trousers we make
cost about $39.50 each. In 2 weeks we earn enough to buy 2 pairs. But
do you know how many pants we have to produce every day? Our quota is between 400 and 700 trousers per day.''

Another worker describes efforts to organize a union to represent
women. She says, ``The company used to fire workers without any cause.

They did not always pay the workers their full salaries and there were
lots of other problems, so the secretary-general said it would be a
good idea to place an injunction. That's when the company started to
intimidate the workers. The situation got really bad . . . when someone
shot at one girl while she was buying tortillas and hit her in the ear.
From then on everyone was afraid and did not want to continue
fighting'' for an organization to represent the women, an actual union.

Last year, a U.S. union official organizing in El Salvador was
killed. No independent trade unions have been registered there in 4
years. In Guatemala only two collective bargaining agreements exist
among more than 200 textile factories.

Now, U.S. Trade Ambassador Portman claims that poor enforcement is
the only problem with Central America's labor regimes, not inadequate
laws. Yet there are dozens of serious deficiencies in Central American
labor laws. CAFTA does not require compliance with international labor
standards like the freedom to associate and to bargain collectively,
nor does it protect women against outright discrimination. And CAFTA
offers no protection against weakening, gutting, or eliminating
existing laws in the future.

We need trade that serves women and workers in all of our countries,
not agreements that force women into these awful conditions and places
a downward pressure on the wages and working conditions that women in
America have fought so very hard for from the very beginning in the
mid-1930s, women like my own mother who was the first member of my
family ever to earn a living wage when she struggled for the formation
of the first union at an auto parts plant in our community.

We do not want CAFTA to roll back standards for women of this
hemisphere and this continent. Women of the Americas should not stand
for it. CAFTA would devastate family farmers just like it did in Mexico
under NAFTA when over a million and a half peasants were forced off
their land and forced to migrate somewhere just to try to find a better
way of life. And they end up working in these sweat shop zones or
fleeing across our border, working under the table, not having a decent
labor agreement under which their lives, and indeed their livelihoods,
can be guaranteed.

Already over 60 percent of the workers in Central America in their
factories, in the banana packing houses are women. They work in very
low-skill, low-wage jobs with absolutely few labor protections. CAFTA
would do very little to protect their labor rights in the sweat shops
in which they spend the majority of their young years.

Women have reported forced pregnancy testing, sexual harassment, and even physical abuse in this sector where women assemble clothing, pack bananas, and try to eke out a living for themselves and their families.

I want to thank STITCH, a small organization that supports the voices
of these women being heard here in the Congress of the United States.

Well said Ms. Kaptur!