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Critical CAFTA Report Stifled by Labor DepartmentJuly 6, 2005 The labor movement has been saying for years that a proposed free trade agreement with Central American countries would not only cost Americans jobs, it would further exploit workers in the poorer nations. But would the U.S. government take our word it? Of course not.Labor department officials contracted with a group that was paid $937,000 and came to the same conclusions. So they stifled it, by squashing its public release for more than a year, then attacked the contractor for bias. The contractor, the International Labor Rights Fund, completed a study of working conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, interviewing more than 1,500 cane cutters and sugar refinery workers. The group found recent and ongoing abuses of the workers and concluded that the governments of the countries were doing little to stop them. A press release from the ILRF said the group initially supported NAFTA because of its labor side agreement but withdrew its support when those protections proved weak and unenforceable. "The reports present new evidence of the failures of Central American governments to effectively enforce labor protections, despite these governments' repeated promises and public statements that they would improve their domestic labor laws," the group said in its press statement. "ILRF believes that the CAFTA labor chapter is even weaker and less enforceable than NAFTA's." Among the study’s findings were evidence that:
The Associated Press reported that in spring 2004 the Labor department instructed the ILRF to remove the reports from its Web site, retrieve paper copies before they become public, banned release of new information from the reports and said the organization could not discuss the studies with outsiders. Then it initiated a smear campaign against the group, calling its reports "unsubstantiated" and "biased, not the facts." Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) led the year-long fight to get the report released, filing multiple Freedom of Information Act requests and threatening to introduce a congressional resolution of inquiry to force the release of the taxpayer-funded documents. "The fact that the administration insisted on keeping these reports from public view for so long signals a further acknowledgment that labor standards do matter in trade agreements," Levin said. "I favor a CAFTA, but not one based on a double standard harmful all around for our businesses and workers." An AFL-CIO study shows CAFTA will give more incentives to U.S. employers to ship jobs overseas and displace many subsistence farmers in Central America, creating widespread job loss. The lack of enforceable workers’ rights in CAFTA will create downward pressure on wages and working conditions in the United States as employers use the threat of moving jobs out of the country to block workers’ freedom to form unions. Labor unions are not the only ones against the agreement. Twenty-three business groups, including the U.S. Business and Industry Council and the National Textile Association sent a letter to Bush, urging him to withhold CAFTA "as the first step in creating a wholly new U.S. trade policy – one that promotes, not decimates, domestic manufacturing and the middle class along with it." CAFTA is President Bush’s top trade priority. The Senate approved the trade pact on June 30. It is expected to move to the House of Representatives this month. The main point of contention over the trade deal by U.S. interests? American sugar growers worried about the cheap Central American imports.
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