Trade and USLEAP

USLEAP's Focus on Trade and Worker Rights

USLEAP campaigns for effective global trade rules to protect workers, especially those who organize to improve their wages and working conditions.

Trade Agreements

USLEAP opposes free trade agreements that do not protect workers and supports efforts to strengthen protections for workers in trade agreements.

USLEAP currently has a special focus on supporting efforts to defeat the pending Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia.  For years, more trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia each year than in any other country and, in some years, more than the rest of the world combined.   Over 97% of the murders go unpunished by the government.

USLEAP also supports efforts to block negotiation of more Free Trade Agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA.  In 2007, worker rights advocates succeeded in defeating a renewal of "fast track." "Fast track" is the authority granted by Congress to the President to negotiate trade agreements that cannot be amended by Congress. "Fast track," formally known as Trade Promotion Authority, expired at the end of June 2007.  USLEAP opposes a renewal of "fast track" without major changes that would represent a fundamentally new approach to rules for global trade and globalization that protect not only workers, but consumers, farmers, and the environment.

Passage of "fast track" legislation in 2002 led to a strong push by the Bush Administration to negotiate new trade agreements around the world, including the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Colombia, Peru, and Panama.  The Peru agreement passed in 2007; the Colombia and Panama agreements remain pending.

The workers rights protections in CAFTA and NAFTA represent a huge step back from those in current U.S. trade programs and the trade programs that governed U.S. trade policy with Central America and Mexico prior to passage of CAFTA and NAFTA.  First, the standards under current U.S. trade programs are higher than in these trade agreements.  And second, the sanctions are more severe under current U.S. trade programs than those in NAFTA and CAFTA. The newest trade agreements, with Panama, Peru and Colombia, contain significant improvements in protections for workers compared to NAFTA and CAFTA but they remain untested and do not far enough and do not represent a new model for global trade.

Using Existing Provisions of Current U.S. Trade Programs

USLEAP has sought to enforce existing provisions of U.S. trade programs that condition eligibility for special U.S. trade benefits on respect for worker rights.

U.S. trade programs, like the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) and the Andean Trade Preference programs, require countries to improve their track record on worker rights as a condition for receiving increased access to the U.S. market through low or no duties. These conditions have been the single most effective source of leverage against Latin American governments that fail to respect basic worker rights and enforce their own labor laws. The U.S. government generally does not use these worker rights conditions to much effect unless pressured by U.S. groups including USLEAP as well as the AFL-CIO, Human Rights Watch, the International Labor Rights Forum, the Washington Office on Latin America, and others.

Principles of Action

USLEAP believes that applying trade pressure from the U.S. (e.g. threats of losing U.S. trade benefits or opposition to specific trade agreements) must be done only with the support of workers from the region. Otherwise, trade pressure from the U.S. that cites concerns about workers abroad can appear to be (or may in fact be) motivated by protectionist interests in the U.S.

USLEAP (and others) have used trade pressure as a tool to support specific organizing campaigns (Phillips-Van Heusen, Choi and Shin) as well as general improvements in the worker rights situation in Latin American countries (reduced violence in Colombia, labor law reform in Ecuador).

Passage of Free Trade Agreements is eliminating the leverage provided by the worker rights provisions of U.S. trade programs, lowering standards and weakening enforcement mechanisms.

USLEAP focuses on worker rights but supports in principle the need for global trade to protect not only workers, but consumers, farmers, and the environment.  See the USLEAP trade resource section for groups who focus on these aspects of global trade.

Changes in two multilateral trade agreements will have a profound impact on workers in Latin America. The end of the Multi-Fiber Agreement on Dec. 31, 2004 completed the phase-out of quotas for clothing and textiles that have protected these industries in many countries in the South and has put downward pressure on wages and rights in Latin America. The January 1, 2006 end of banana quotas for imports into the European Union is also expected over the longer-term to accelerate the race to the bottom for banana workers.