The International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) is deeply concerned about ongoing labor rights violations in Central America. The current, neo-liberal economic model forces developing countries to compete against one another to attract new investment by offering low wages and foregoing enforcement of labor and environmental laws. Indeed, such competition is the greatest barrier to the enforcement of labor laws, as countries legitimately fear that multinationals will move to the country offering the greatest freedom to operate with impunity from national law.
Petition submitted by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP) before the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on December 13, 2004, to remove Guatemala from the list of beneficiary developing countries under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) and from the list of beneficiary countries under the Caribbean Basic Economic Recovery Act (CBI).
Pineapple production in the Atlantic and South Pacific Regions of Costa Rica: Characteristics, organization, and labor conditions
A careful reading of the Costa Rican socio-economic context of the past several years reveals the change from a model oriented towards the internal market, to a model aimed at inserting the country into the world market. In this context, export activities were strongly promoted,
Una cuidadosa lectura al contexto socioeconómico costarricense de los últimos años da cuenta del cambio experimentado por un modelo, que en esencia ha pasado de estar orientado al mercado interno a ser dinamizado y fortalecido para insertar al país al mercado mundial. En este marco, las actividades de exportación recibieron un fuerte impulso y al interior de estas, un conjunto de productos agrícolas denominados no tradicionales se erigieron en estrellas de un firmamento productivo volcado sin reparos a conquistar los mercados internacionales.