This image from Costa Rica's Frente Amplio party shows members of ANEP, the local equivalent of the AFL-CIO, rallying against privatization recently in Costa Rica. At the microphone is member of Parliament José María Villalta.
Costa Rica is once again charged by workers’ organisations as well as some governments and employers at this year’s 99th International Labour Conference in Geneva, of being in systematic violation of core international labour standards. In an intervention on behalf of the British Trades Union Congress, the AFL-CIO of the USA and other European trade unions, the British workers’ representative pointed out how the Costa Rican government has proved highly resistant to the repeated requests from the ILO to supply more information about the action it is taking to:
- Bring its law into compliance with core ILO conventions, and in the case of this latest report, specifically with Convention 98;
- Inform the ILO and others how the justice system is changing to speed up the processing of legal cases brought by trade unionists and workers for unfair dismissal;
- Demonstrate how policies such as the fostering of non-union ‘direct settlements’ and the so called ‘solidarismo’ system is not directly undermining real trade unions.
In its report published today, the International Trade Union Confederation’s Annual Survey of Trade Union Rights, notes that in Costa Rica “the outlook for trade unions continues to deteriorate. [..] Governments, such as that of Costa Rica, have used the crisis as a pretext for further weakening trade union rights“.
Click here for the full speaking note read by the British workers’ representative, on behalf of the British Trades Union Congress, the AFL-CIO and other European trade unions.
For more information about the ITUC’s 2010 Annual Survey of Trade Union Rights, see the news article on its website here. For the full report, click here.