Guatemala, Honduras under international pressure following labour activist murders

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Mynor Rolando Ramos Castillo, a municipal worker in Jalapa, a city in south-east Guatemala, was shot and killed in front of his home on 24 September 2015. His family detained the killer and turned him into the police. The killer confessed to accepting the hit for 1,500 quetzales (roughly US$195).

While Ramos Castillo is the first union activist murdered in Guatemala this year, more than 70 worker activists have been killed since 2007 in a country where tensions have long simmered between authorities and trade unions.

Ramos Castillo was a member of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Municipalidad de Jalapa (SITRAMJ), the city workers’ union, and was among 183 workers disputing illegal termination who had won a labour court’s order of reinstatement.

Ramos Castillo had been laid off, reinstated to his job and laid off again within the past two years, and was waiting for the city’s mayor to comply with the order to reinstate the workers and pay them back wages.

Union leaders say Ramos Castillo and other laid-off city workers were targeted and harassed by city officials because they were active union members. He is the sixth member of his union to be assassinated.

Last year, transport union leader Luis Arnoldo Lόpez Esteban was murdered in Jutiapa in May. Marlon Dagoberto Vásquez Lόpez, 19, a member of the young trade unionists’ network and the construction workers’ union, was murdered in January 2014.

This year, Guatemalans waged months of public demonstrations, turning out in unprecedented numbers to demand transparency, democracy, accountability and access to justice.

As a result, in September, President Otto Perez Molina was forced to step down and was arrested. In addition, more than 15 high-ranking government officials have been implicated in a widening corruption scandal.

At local government levels, municipal workers say pervasive corruption results in routine wage theft, harassment of workers organising to improve their workplaces and illegal terminations and reprisals.

 

Ongoing violence

Despite ongoing violence against union members—murder, torture, kidnappings, break-ins and death threats—few perpetrators are brought to justice. In an unprecedented move, the US government last year agreed to take Guatemala to international arbitration for violating worker rights under the US-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

The action was the first time that a country has sought international arbitration against another for a violation of labour standards and followed Guatemala’s failure to implement an 18-point enforcement plan to address worker rights violations. The case first arose in 2008, when six Guatemalan unions and the US national trade union centre, the AFL-CIO, filed a complaint with the US Office of Trade.

Similarly in Honduras, where this year one union leader was murdered, another forcibly disappeared and presumed dead, and several others threatened and harassed, union activists say their government is not complying with CAFTA provisions.

In March 2012, the AFL-CIO and 26 Honduran unions and civil society organisations filed a complaint under CAFTA’s labour chapter, which the US Department of Labour’s Office of Trade and Labour Affairs accepted in 2014. In a February 2015 report, the US Trade and Labour Affairs office said Honduras has made virtually no progress since then.

In denouncing Ramos Castillo’s murder, the Confederaciόn de Unidad Sindical de Guatemala (CUSG) said it would submit the case to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Administrative Tribunal. The tribunal is meeting in November to discuss charges that Guatemala is failing to comply with ILO standards ratified by the country, including Convention 87, the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise.

The CUSG also echoed the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) call for creation of an ILO Commission of Inquiry to “help to open up needed space for debate and consultation.”

The ILO sets up such a commission when a member state is accused of committing persistent and serious violations and repeatedly has refused to address them.

The ITUC said that such a commission is justified because the government “has no effective preventative mechanisms in place to protect workers from acts of violence or to credibly and effectively investigate and prosecute those responsible.”

 

This article was first published on the Solidarity Center website.