This week marks the first anniversary of the filing of a CAFTA labor complaint on Honduras on March 26, 2012.  The complaint, submitted by two dozen Honduran unions and NGOs along with the AFL-CIO, documents the failure of the Honduran government to enforce its own labor laws, providing multiple cases of violations in the maquila, agricultural export, and port sectors. 

The complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, which initially moved on it relatively rapidly, agreeing on May 22, 2012 to investigate the complaint.  But a report of its findings, due 180 days after beginning an investigation, has not yet been issued.  Worker rights supporters say that progress on the ground has been limited, primarily to some improvements in the operations of the Labor Ministry.  These include the opening of four regional offices, increased training for labor inspectors and a somewhat faster process for approving the formation of new unions.

In January, Honduran trade unions released a report summarizing key violations and proposing recommendations on what steps should be taken by the Honduran government to address the CAFTA labor complaint.  They include increasing sanctions for violations, strengthening the Labor Ministry, addressing subcontracting abuses, enforcing minimum wage laws, and creating a Prosecutor’s Office for Labor Rights.

USLEAP has prepared a summary of the complaint on Honduras and a table of contents.

The experience of CAFTA labor complaints to date is not encouraging.  A complaint filed on Guatemala nearly five years ago remains pending, with the Guatemalan government refusing to agree to a “Labor Action Plan” to address violations identified in the complaint that was filed by six Guatemalan unions and the AFL–CIO in April 2008.   Threats by the U.S. government to take Guatemala to arbitration have so far failed to yield an agreement, strongly suggesting that the threat of arbitration does not much sway.  Under CAFTA, the strongest sanction against a violating government would be the payment of a $15 million fine, to be used for labor law enforcement, i.e. a fine that would likely be transferred from one arm of the government to another.

USLEAP has long argued that the worker protections under CAFTA are weaker than those that existed under U.S. trade policy prior to CAFTA, with lower standards and weaker sanctions.