Action for Community and Ecology in the Regions of Central America GREEN PAPER 3: Freedoms That Are Abolished

Table of Contents Introduction 1) Trade and Investment: a little history 2) What is in the FTAA Agreement? Biotechnology and the FTAA Protecting Intellectual Property Free Flowing Capital What about Free Flow of People? Militarization and Globalization in the Americas Free Trade and Economic Developmen 3) Making the FTAA a Reality Corporate Globalization in the Americas Dry Canal Megaprojects and the FTAA Dry Canal Megaprojects and the FTAA 4) The FTAA and the Future of the Hemisphere Protecting Corporate Profits FTAA Attacks the Forests 5) Is THIS What Democracy Looks Like? The FTAA's Threat to Democracy North American First Nations: Going Corporate? Free Trade and the Proliferation of Sweatshops 6)THIS is What Democracy Looks Like Free Trade and the Proliferation of Sweatshops 7) What You Can Do Sources Acronym List download this document (488k). ACERCA

Free Trade and the Proliferation of Sweatshops by Daisy Pitkin Campaign for Labor Rights Supporters of the FTAA claim that it will provide much-needed jobs to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean by promoting foreign investment. It is argued that the FTAA will give foreign investors certain guarantees and this will make them more likely to invest. The model of promoting development by extending further guarantees to multinational investors is not new to the Americas; in the last two decades, it has been pursued aggressively through the creation of "Free Trade Zones." But the jobs created in Free Trade Zones often deny workers a living wage, humane working conditions, and the right to organize a union. The FTAA, by extending the guarantees to investors while giving no guarantees to workers, will spread the abuses of "Free Trade Zones" to all of the Americas. Nicaragua's experience shows how "free trade" permits and encourages sweatshop abuses. In the last year and a half, factory owners and managers in the Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone outside of Managua have been engaged in a vigorous anti-union offensive. The Chentex factory, owned by Taiwan's Nien Hsing business group, employs 1,800 Nicaraguan workers who produce 25,000 pairs of jeans each day. Eighty percent of the workers are women, and half of them are single mothers. In 1998, Chentex workers formed a union. The average pay for Chentex workers is twenty cents per pair of jeans. The jeans are sold in the U.S. for thirty dollars. The union's demands for a wage increase amount to eight cents per pair of jeans. After a year-long campaign to negotiate the wage increase, the workers held a one hour work stoppage in the plant, and later a two-day strike. Chentex management retaliated by firing over 700 union workers and leaders. Under the FTAA, the Nein Hsing consortium would be given even more power to bust the union in Nicaragua. FTAA rules would allow Nien Hsing to register a subsidiary in an FTAA country and sue the Nicaraguan government for profits lost due to the workers' campaign. This would tighten the pressure on the Nicaraguan government to permit foreign companies to violate Nicaraguan workers' rights.