<<previous  | index  |  next>>

II. PRINCIPAL RECOMMENDATIONS

To remedy El Salvador’s failure to uphold internationally recognized workers’ human rights, address the actions of corporations that benefit from this failure, and ensure that trade between El Salvador and the United States leads to greater respect for workers’ rights, Human Rights Watch makes the following principal recommendations. More comprehensive recommendations are set forth at the report’s conclusion.

• El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly should amend laws governing anti-union discrimination generally to require immediate reinstatement of workers fired or suspended for legal union activity; to mandate immediate reinstatement of fired trade union leaders, unless prior judicial approval for their dismissal was obtained; and to prohibit employer failure to hire workers due to their involvement in or suspected support for organizing activity.

• As recommended by the ILO, El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly should amend the Labor Code to reduce the mandatory minimum number of workers required to form a union; eliminate the requirement that six months pass before workers whose application to establish a trade union is rejected can submit a new application; explicitly permit workers in independent public institutions to form industry-wide unions; and allow all public sector workers, with the possible exceptions of the armed forces and the police, to form and join trade unions.

• The Ministry of Labor’s Labor Inspectorate should fulfill its legal obligation to enforce national labor laws and abide by legislation governing its operations. As required by law, the Labor Inspectorate should conduct inspections, upon request, on any matter legally within its jurisdiction and determine compliance with or violation of the law in question; ensure that workers or their representatives participate in worksite inspections; prepare an official document at the conclusion of each inspection and provide all parties a copy of these inspection results; and conduct re-inspections to verify that an employer has remedied all identified violations within the allotted time period and, if not, initiate and conclude without delay the sanctions process.

• The Ministry of Labor’s Labor Directorate should uphold its legal duty to facilitate the formation of labor organizations by abiding by its obligation to provide workers fifteen days to remedy any legal defects with a union registration petition and by fully investigating and allowing workers to respond to employer claims regarding founding union members’ eligibility for membership.

• El Salvador should ratify the two key ILO conventions governing freedom of association—ILO Convention 87 concerning Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise (ILO Convention 87) and ILO Convention 98 concerning the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining (ILO Convention 98).

• The United States, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua should ensure that a U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement contains strong, enforceable protections for workers’ human rights. CAFTA should require that countries enforce their labor laws and that those laws meet international standards and should include a phase-in mechanism that ensures that trading partners do not fully enjoy the accord’s benefits until they, in practice, effectively enforce their labor legislation.

• All exporting, licensing, licensee, and distributing corporations, in coordination with their local suppliers, should ensure that international labor rights are respected throughout their supply chains. Corporations should adopt effective monitoring systems to verify that labor conditions in supplier facilities comply with internationally recognized labor standards and relevant national laws. In cases where the facilities fall short, the corporations should provide the economic and technical assistance necessary to bring the local suppliers into compliance within a reasonable time. Only if such assistance fails should the corporations abandon their business relationships with the suppliers. The status of such efforts should be reported publicly at least annually.