Documents Guatemala 10 results

"This article revisits and critically analyses the panel's decision and reasoning in the dispute between the United States and Guatemala under the labour provisions of the Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement vis-à-vis the treaty interpretation rules under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. It further seeks to draw implications for the construction of labour provisions of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The article sheds light on the normative and theoretical rationales that underlie tradelabour linkages in general, and the labour provisions under such free trade agreements in particular. Ultimately, the paper makes a case for the dual structure of conditionality-based labour provisions, a legal characteristic that demands that each of them pursue two different goals, first, protecting labour rights as human rights (social goal) and second, securing the condition of fair competition in trade/ investment and preventing a race to the bottom in labour regulation (economic goal). With this proposal, it attempts to put the long-overlooked, deontologically normative value that labour provisions pursue in its right place without prejudice to their role of levelling the playing field."

"Since at least the 1980s, global supply chains of major brands have spread to countries where governments have demonstrated little will or capacity to regulate the many workplaces that enter into business relationships with these brands. In such places, labor laws often are weak or poorly enforced, workers' rights are not recognized and workers effectively are blocked from organizing unions and engaging in collective bargaining with employers to bring wages above poverty level. Basic safety and health standards and human rights at many of these workplaces routinely are violated. Locating production in these most precarious parts of the global supply chain has become a standard means for international brands to maximize revenues and press for an edge on their competitors by driving production costs ever lower.



This report ( English , Español ) digs underneath the façade of social auditing and certification schemes to reveal a deeply disturbing abdication of responsibilities on the part of both governments to protect human rights at the workplace and of companies to respect these rights by exercising due diligence regarding the impact of their business activities and their business relationships."

"In recent decades organized labor in the United States has responded to restructuring of the global economy by increasing its commitment to international solidarity, providing moral and material support for the organizing efforts of workers abroad. The international labor solidarity strategy appears to be designed to lessen the competition among places over investment, plant location, and jobs by uniting workers in different countries on the basis of their shared class interests. Yet international solidarity programs may serve to benefit one geographically distinct group of workers over another without challenging capitalism's allocative mechanisms. I develop criteria for differentiating between the latter kind of solidarity campaigns, which I call accommodationist, and transformatory solidarity, which attempts to prevent capital from using space to weaken workers' organizations, thereby altering the labor-capital relationship in fundamental ways. I then examine the work of an organization of union members and workers in the United States committed to forming relationships of solidarity with workers in Guatemala. I look at the history, philosophy, and activities of the U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project (US/GLEP), which provides an informative case study of the opportunities and dangers of international solidarity. The limitations of international solidarity campaigns are identified, and I suggest ways to overcome these barriers."