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Ecuador: U.S. Caves on Labor Rights
(New York, November 7, 2002) The United States has granted Ecuador enhanced trade benefits under the U.S. Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA) even though Ecuador has failed to comply with the Act's labor rights requirements, Human Rights Watch said today. The decision came on October 31, 2002, the eve of the Western Hemisphere's trade ministers summit, hosted by Ecuador.


Related Material

Ecuador: Escalating Violence Against Banana Workers
HRW Press Release, May 22, 2002

Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador's Banana Plantations
HRW Report, April 2002



"Ecuador has played a game of smoke and mirrors with the United States and won."

Carol Pier Labor Rights and Trade Researcher


 
"The United States should have demanded real improvements in labor rights before granting Ecuador this prize," said Carol Pier, labor rights and trade researcher for Human Rights Watch. "Instead, the United States has rewarded inaction."

According to the U.S. law, before granting ATPDEA benefits, the United States must take into account "the extent to which the country provides internationally recognized worker rights, including . . . the right of association; the right to organize and bargain collectively . . . [and] [w]hether the country has implemented its commitments to eliminate the worst forms of child labor."

Prior to receiving the trade benefits, Ecuador made several general commitments to the United States, including improving deficient labor law enforcement and reviewing laws on freedom of association, which fall far short of international standards. Ecuador failed to commit to hire more labor inspectors or to propose legal reforms, however, without which the country cannot fulfill ATPDEA labor rights criteria.

Ecuador also agreed to send seven labor rights-related international law instruments to its congress for future ratification. Of these seven, however, two were already ratified by Ecuador, and one does not even exist. Therefore, only four of the instruments could, in practice, be submitted for ratification.

"Ecuador has played a game of smoke and mirrors with the United States and won," said Pier.

On September 25, 2002, the United States granted ATPDEA benefits to Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, but not Ecuador. At the time, Ecuador faced considerable international pressure to investigate the anti-union violence on the Noboa Corporation's Los Alamos banana plantations, a company owned by presidential candidate Alvaro Noboa. At approximately 2:00 a.m. on May 16, 2002, some two hundred armed individuals attacked striking workers on Los Alamos, looting their homes, beating many of them, and shooting at least one. Around 6:00 p.m. that same day, the armed men allegedly shot eight more workers and a policeman.

In October, Ecuador concluded a sorely inadequate investigation of this case. According to a report by the prosecutor handling the case, obtained by Human Rights Watch, only 16 of the assailants were charged with any crime. The events of 2:00 a.m. were never investigated. No attempt was made to identify who hired the armed individuals, nor were any workers interviewed. The investigation examined only the case of the injured policeman and mentioned that a newspaper had reported that one worker was also shot.

Also in October, the government decreed a new "System for the Inspection and Monitoring of Child Labor." However, this initiative is insufficient to address the country's egregious failure to enforce its child labor laws, as documented in the April 2002 Human Rights Watch report, Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador's Banana Plantations. For example, the new system does not provide for new labor inspectors, but shifts existing inspectors charged with enforcing other labor laws to this new bureaucracy.

"The solution to lax enforcement of child labor laws is not to stop enforcing other laws," said Pier.

After delaying Ecuador's trade benefits, partly on labor rights grounds, it made no sense for the United States to grant those benefits when little progress had actually been achieved, Human Rights Watch said.