Textile Business Association Joins with Unions to Fight for Jordanian Work

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/09/21/textile-business-association-joins-with-unions-to-fight-for-jordanian-workers%e2%80%99-rights/

Textile Business Association Joins with Unions to Fight for Jordanian Workers’ Rights

by James Parks, Sep 21, 2006

The AFL-CIO union movement has joined with the National Textile Association (NTA), which represents U.S. textile producers, to file the first workers’ rights case ever submitted under the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement (Jordan FTA). The action also is the first time ever a business association has formally joined in filing a workers’ rights case under a trade agreement. The complaint calls on the Bush administration to invoke the labor provisions under the treaty to force Jordan to stop gross workers’ rights violations occurring in that country. (Click here to download the complaint or the executive summary.)



The Jordan FTA was the first U.S. trade agreement to include enforceable workers’ rights—the deal with Cambodia was the second. But trade experts say sweatshop conditions and other egregious abuses of workers’ rights in Jordan have escalated because neither the U.S. nor the Jordanian government is committed to enforcing the rights they signed off on in the free trade agreement.

Announcing the joint effort today, NTA President Karl Spilhaus said, “It isn’t just labor that has an interest in protecting workers’ rights around the world. U.S. producers are also hurt when unscrupulous employers violate the rights of their workers abroad or when governments fail to enforce their labor laws.”

The egregious abuses reported in Jordan—100-hour workweeks, unsafe working conditions, and unpaid wages—distort labor-market conditions globally. Just as we press our government to aggressively enforce the antidumping and subsidy elements in our trade agreements, we also call on our government to uphold the labor rights provisions that we have negotiated in our FTAs.

A report by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center in December revealed serious worker rights abuses in Jordan. Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Jordan documents the ways in which workers, especially job-seeking migrants from such countries as Iraq, Syria, Bangladesh and China, are treated like indentured servants.

FULL story at link above.