December 2006

In November, nine labor leaders and activists from the Pacific Northwest visited Colombia and Venezuela in a delegation organized by the Portland Central America Solidarity Committee (PCASC), and jointly facilitated by Global Exchange and USLEAP. The delegation included members of SEIU, ILWU, AFSCME, NEA, and an organizer from the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers.

The election of Rafael Correa in Ecuador's November 26th run-off for president may have sounded the death knell for a free trade agreement (FTA) between Ecuador and the U.S.

The November congressional elections are expected to delay if not kill Congressional approval of more Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), including an agreement with Colombia officially signed the day before Thanksgiving. Democratic leaders have stated that pending FTAs would have to be renegotiated to include enforceable worker rights conditions, which have been opposed by the Bush Administration.

In a bitter blow culminating a two-year campaign against flower workers organizing for justice, Dole has announced that it will close its largest, most unionized plantation in Colombia. While the company defended the action as part of a general restructuring of its money-losing flower business, Dole has refused repeated requests for documentation to substantiate its claims that the decision to close the plantation, Splendor Corzo, was based solely on economic grounds.

In 2005, USLEAP challenged Starbucks to begin documenting and reporting on concrete advances for workers as a result of the company's 10-year effort to improve working conditions for workers. At the end of 2006, Starbucks indicated that the company would report in early 2007 on the impact of its sourcing guidelines on workers. While Starbucks has become the largest retailer of "fair trade" coffee which benefits small farmers and coops, most of its coffee from countries like Guatemala come from medium and large-scale plantations that can employ hundreds of workers. The sourcing guidelines, now called Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices, trace their origin to the company's agreement in 1995 with USLEAP (then US/GLEP) to adopt a code of conduct for plantations from which it buys.