Peru: Trade agreements bolster exploitation
Analysts say policies initiated under the Free Trade Agreement with
the U.S. have taken away labor rights for hundreds of thousands of
working class Peruvian citizens.
Thousands of employees in the textile and agricultural industries are
now working in precarious conditions due to the Free Trade Agreement
with the United States, Peruvian labor unions announced on Thursday.
Labor union leaders claim that since the treaty was signed in 2009
worker’s rights have been increasingly under attack. Those textile and
agricultural workers attempting to organize themselves into unions have
been punished with group firings without termination benefits, the
leaders say.
Lorena Chavera, a textile worker who says she was fired for becoming
an active member of a labor union, told teleSUR English that she
originally thought the signing of the free trade agreement with the
United States was an opportunity to increase jobs.
However, after she started working with the textile company Camones,
she got a startling wake-up call. Chavera said she and 204 other workers
were fired because they were organizing protests demanding improvements
of working conditions.
“The company stopped paying utilities on top of all the other labor
violations that they were committing like not paying for overtime when
we worked for longer hours,” she said.
- Protests against abuses of Topy Top textile exporter | Photo: teleSUR / Cesar Moreno
