AMERICAS-LABOUR: Unions Protest Exclusion from Free Trade Talks

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil, May 14 1997 (IPS) - The “unjust and anti- democratic” character of the negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has been aggravated by the exclusion of a Union Forum, vetoed by Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Costa Rica, trade unionists meeting here protested.

A document approved by representatives of union federations from some 20 countries from the Americas after two days of debate criticises the “discrimination against and exclusion of workers and unions” from the talks which, it points out, will include a Business Forum.

The document was presented Tuesday to Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia, who is to take it to the third ministerial meeting of trade ministers from the 34 countries involved in the FTAA process.

The meeting, to run Thursday and Friday in this eastern Brazilian city, will smooth the way for formal negotiations, to be launched in 1998.

The unionists, convoked by the Inter-American Regional Workers’ Organisation (ORIT) – which represents 45 million Latin American workers – say the talks on the FTAA “do not reflect a real commitment toward integration for the economic and social development of the people.”

They argue that “unemployment soared in Latin America with the freeing up of trade,” which led to even greater concentration of wealth and aggravated social marginalisation, poverty and urban violence.

The document admonishes “the merely commercial format” that the FTAA is taking on, and demands that the negotiations incorporate not only the Union Forum, but also a Working Group on labour issues.

One of the aims of the unions is a Charter on the Social and Labour Rights of citizens of the Americas, to be approved by all the countries involved in the talks.

Other demands put forth by the workers are “recognition of the social dimension of trade,” and mechanisms to enforce the rights of workers, environmental protection, agrarian reform, increased access to information and democratic control of transnationals.

“Neoliberal-style integration processes” have had “disastrous consequences” for the people of the Americas, the document contends, adding that trade accords should be subordinated to “a strategy for balanced and sustainable social integration.”

That is especially necessary, the unions underline, in a continent where the United States accounts for three-fourths of all products and services, with competitiveness, technology and capital that far outstrip the capacity of its neighbours.

The union federations meeting here want a social clause included in the trade accords which would contemplate at least five basic points: the prohibition of and efforts against slave and child labour and discrimination on the basis of gender, race or religion, the right of labour to organise freely, and the recognition of collective labour conventions.

The U.S. government is the only one that approves of such a clause.

Brazil, which proposed and supports the creation of a Union Forum in the context of the FTAA talks, is opposed to social requisites being included in trade accords, fearing that they could be used as protectionist instruments.

Foreign Minister Lampreia said that for the Brazilian government it was important “to hear all the relevant sectors of society, and previously discuss” all the issues.

Brazil’s attempt to include leaders of three union federations as observers in its official delegation was opposed by the four countries opposed to the Union Forum, as well as the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Honduras.

The general secretary of ORIT, Luis Anderson, told IPS that the countries that vetoed the workers’ forum were characterised by a lack of union freedom. “Strikes are illegal in Mexico, and more than 1,000 unionists have been killed over the past six years in Colombia.”

Victor Baez, ORIT’s secretary of Economic and Social Policy and Integration, said he feared the FTAA would have “a disastrous impact” on large and small countries alike, due to the enormous economic inequality.

While North America accounts for a full 88 percent of the continent’s gross domestic product, Mercosur (Southern Common Market – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) represents eight percent, and the rest of Latin America makes up the rest, he pointed out, asking “what can a Central American country do in the face of the United States?”