|
<<previous | index | next>> Failure to Protect Women Workers against Discrimination in Law or PracticeA key shortcoming of D.R.-CAFTA is its failure to address workplace discrimination. D.R.-CAFTA requires countries to implement existing labor laws, providing that “[a] Party shall not fail to effectively enforce its labor laws, through a sustained or recurring course of action or inaction, in a manner affecting trade between the Parties.”14 Although D.R.-CAFTA’s definition of “labor laws” includes statutes or regulations governing five explicitly enumerated “internationally recognized labor rights,”15 it excludes those laws related to the elimination of employment and workplace discrimination—one of the core labor rights identified by the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.16 Therefore, under D.R.-CAFTA, states are not required to ensure that their domestic anti-discrimination laws comport with international standards, nor even to enforce their existing laws. Discrimination is not a hypothetical concern for workers in the Central American D.R.-CAFTA countries and the Dominican Republic. These countries have a history of pregnancy-based discrimination and sexual harassment, particularly in their free trade zones. For example, as recent Human Rights Watch research has established, pregnancy-based discrimination is widespread in the Dominican Republic. Nearly two thirds of the thirty-two women free trade zone workers with whom we spoke reported being subjected to mandatory pregnancy testing as a condition for access to work or maintaining their jobs. An official from a private laboratory in northern D.R. explained to us that he is contracted by companies in nearby free trade zones to carry out post-hire pregnancy testing on workers so that, in his words, the companies can “see if they can fire them.”17 According to the 2004 edition of the State Department’s “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” the Dominican Republic is not alone in turning a blind eye to widespread sex discrimination. The reports note pregnancy-based discrimination and/or sexual harassment as a problem in four of the five Central American D.R.-CAFTA countries, as well as the Dominican Republic, with Costa Rica as the only country for which the problem is not cited. Under the current D.R.-CAFTA, these countries could continue to fail to address systematic sex discrimination and face no consequences. [14] D.R.-CAFTA, art. 16.2. [15] Ibid., art. 16.8. CAFTA defines “labor laws” as those statutes or regulations “directly related to”: the right of association; the right to organize and bargain collectively; a prohibition on the use of any form of forced or compulsory labor; a minimum age for the employment of children and the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor; and acceptable conditions of work with respect to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health. [16] International Labour Conference, ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, 86th Session, Geneva, June 18, 1998. [17] Human Rights Watch, Pregnancy-Based Sex Discrimination in the Dominican Republic’s Free Trade Zones: Implications for the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), April 2004.
|