Labor & Employment Law

ILWU Files Labor Rights Complaint Against Costa Rica

By admin

Costa Rican police took over the SINTRAJAP union hall in May.

Jennifer Sargent, communications director of the  International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s (ILWU) Coast Longshore Division, reports on the union?s complaint against Costa Rica under the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA).

The ILWU hopes a recent announcement that the U.S. Department of Labor is responding to a trade complaint against Guatemala for labor violations bodes well for its own recent filing of a complaint against Costa Rica.

On July 20, the ILWU Coast Longshore Division charged Costa Rica with ?serious and repeated failures by the government of Costa Rica to effectively enforce its own labor laws” in an 18-page complaint with the Department of Labor’s Office of labor and Trade Affairs (OTLA). Less than a week after the ILWU’s filing, the Department of Labor took steps to initiate its first ever case under DR-CAFTA against a trade partner for labor rights violations by responding to a petition the AFL-CIO filed against Guatemala in 2008 DR-CAFTA.

“We hope that the announcement that the United States government wants Guatemala to take specific and effective action to curb labor rights violations is just the first of many steps that the Obama administration will take to pursue the failure to enforce labor laws among trade partners,? said ILWU President Robert McEllrath.

The AFL-CIO’s petition to the Department of Labor sat for more than two years without action. The ILWU’s petition against Costa Rica should be dealt with swiftly and decisively, in order to protect workers from further abuse, and to stop the systematic elimination of the labor organizations that protect them.

The ILWU’s recent complaint was filed in conjunction with two Costa Rican unions: the Sindicato de Trabajadores de JAPDEVA (SINTRAJAP) and Asociación Nacional de Empleados Públicos y Privados (ANEP).

You can download a copy of ILWU’s complaint here.

Among other violations, the Costa Rican unions? complaint charges

The conduct of the Costa Rican government includes a government-run media campaign to discredit the union, removal of the democratically elected leadership of the union and imposition of a government-backed employer-run board of union directors, freezing of the union’s bank accounts, militarization of the ports in the run up to a complete takeover of the union, directing the police to raid and occupy the union’s business office, and entering into an unconstitutional multi-million dollar deal with the government-backed employer-run board of union directors to entice workers to leave the union and accept privatization of the ports.

The ILWU’s Coast Longshore Division has been assisting the SINTRAJAP longshore union since shortly after the government replaced the democratically elected leadership of SINTRAJAP in the middle of a two-year term and replaced it with a government-backed group in February. The Coast Longshore Division has placed full-page advertisements in Costa Rican newspapers to inform Costa Ricans of the government’s abuses,. It also sent a delegation to interview workers, meet with public officials, and document the abuses.

American longshoremen work for many of the same major shipping carriers and stevedoring companies as the ones operating in Costa Rica.

Dockworkers at Costa Rica’s Pacific port of Caldera were subjected to a similar privatization scheme in 2006 and are suffering mightily for it,” said McEllrath.

Ninety percent of longshore workers lost their jobs, those remaining saw their pay cut by two-thirds, and precarious working conditions have led to 46 waterfront deaths. Costa Rica must be held accountable for its ongoing and deliberate abuse against workers and their union rights.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on August 06, 2010 (boomark / email).