1. Governments throughout Latin America, with pressure, funding, and support from international financial institutions and multinational corporations are increasing their implementation of the neoliberal economic model. Key elements of the model include structural adjustment programs, low-wage export-oriented production (maquiladoras), the privatization of public services, the gutting of the state and its regulatory capacity, anti-worker labor flexibility policies, lessening restrictions on capital flow while increasing restrictions on the flow of labor, and union busting.

2. Free trade agreements, such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act, and the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), are a crucial element in guaranteeing US political and economic domination of Latin America. This market-driven integration process is causing the loss of jobs, reduction of wages and social services, and the erosion of fundamental principles of democracy.

3. Six years of NAFTA has shown it to be an unmitigated disaster, resulting in massive dislocation of jobs, and the driving down of wages in Canada, the US, and Mexico. While the border areas have seen intensified industrial activity, Mexican workers there often make less than the minimum wage of $3.40 per day. The percentage of people living in poverty in Mexico has skyrocketed since NAFTA.

4. Under the FTAA, exploited workers in Mexico will be leveraged against even more desperate workers in Haiti, El Salvador or Brazil by companies seeking tariff-free access back into US markets.

5. The ongoing liberalization process also includes the destruction of the agricultural sector and the loss of food self-sufficiency. This has led to massive rural migration and the loss of hundreds of thousands of agricultural jobs throughout Latin America.

6. The policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are destructive to workers globally, by placing free trade over workers’ rights. The voices of Latin American countries are continually marginalized by the corporate and non-transparent structures.

1. With the expansion of free trade zones in Central America and the Caribbean, one of the region’s only advantages within the competitive globalized economy is its pool of low-wage labor that the region’s governments make available to investors by setting up zones where companies pay no import or export taxes for up to ten years.

2. In a constant search for lower production costs in order to maximize profits, US retailers and manufacturers shift contracts and orders from maquila to maquila and country to country. The contractors, in competition to offer the lowest costs, push their workers to produce as fast as possible for the lowest wage possible while cracking down on any attempt to organize trade unions. While national laws (which are often quite good) are supposedly in force in the free trade zones, local authorities are reluctant to enforce them.

3. Wages in the free trade zones rarely cover even half the costs of a basic basket of consumer goods (including beans, rice, and laundry soap, but not rent or children’s shoes) for a family.

4. Free trade zone factories often allow chemicals to pollute lakes, rivers, streams and the land around the factories. Cotton dust, chemicals, noise, long hours, bad seating and ventilation all lead to health problems among workers and unborn children.

5. Eighty percent of maquiladora workers are women, most of them between the ages of 16 and 26, and many of them are single mothers of small children.

6. International Financial Institutions have defined the paid work that women do as merely "income generating activity" rather than labor deserving a full wage, based on the assumption that a woman’s income is supplemental to her husband’s income. This definition of women’s labor as supplemental allows their wages, and wages overall, to be forced even lower. In fact, in many countries, the majority (and perhaps only) breadwinner is a woman. Labor unions, also using this assumption, have failed to recognize the importance and potential of organizing women workers.

1. Privatization (or selling off) of state-owned enterprises is a universal recommendation of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) that comes at the expense of jobs, worker rights and the quality of service offered by the enterprise. State-owned enterprises are sold under pressure from IFIs when it would be in the better interest of the country and its population to keep the institutions under public control.

2. A state-owned enterprise is easier to parcel out to foreign and national private investors if the employees are not organized into unions. Lowering standards of labor rights attracts private investments.

3. Traditionally, the public sector has the highest unionization rate, and the strongest, most progressive unions. Privatization efforts go hand-in-hand with union busting, and result in the weakening of social movements overall.

1. The right to organize is a long-established right, recognized internationally, and steeped in precedent as a hallmark of democratic government. The right to organize includes, but is not limited to, the right to form a union, the right to bargain collectively, and the right to strike.

2. International institutions and conventions established to protect and promote workers rights, such as the International Labor Organization (ILO), are being systematically gutted, and their decisions are increasingly ignored by capital and governments.

3. Capital is using its newfound mobility under NAFTA and other international agreements to prevent workers from organizing, blackmailing workers with the threat of relocation whenever they exercise their rights.

4. In order to attract investors, governments are violating their legal obligation to uphold the right of workers to organize while, at the same time, they are attempting to weaken their country’s legal codes as they relate to established labor standards.

1. International financial institutions should be prevented from requiring "labor flexibility," which is simply a code word for ending worker protections, in loan agreements that they sign with developing countries.

2. Workers must not continue to pay for the consequences of intensified international competition resulting from free trade. So-called comparative advantage must not be founded on the violation of basic human rights.

3. Countries that do not implement internationally recognized labor rights agreements and refuse to enforce labor covenants undercut the rights of workers in countries that do. International institutions that were establish to defend the rights of workers (such as the ILO) should be strengthened, not gutted. The revocation of trade privileges to countries that do not enforce labor codes can contribute to the improvement of working conditions. Such a strategy must only be employed if called for by the labor movement in that country. Since many countries, including the United States, have not ratified some or any of the ILO covenants, we support campaigns working for the ratification of those points.

4. The right to organize a democratic and independent union, free of government and corporate control, is a human right for all workers regardless of gender, ethnicity, race, economic status, or locality. We support our colleagues who are fighting to oppose the corporativist relationship between the government and government-supported or corrupt unions.

5. Democratic and accountable unions are the most effective method of fighting against worker rights abuses and sustaining worker rights gains worldwide.

6. Union busting is an unconscionable violation of human rights

7. It is the responsibility of governments to ensure laws protecting workers are upheld. The failure of governments to uphold labor laws sets a dangerous precedent, eroding democracy and ensuring lower standards of living.

8. The failure of governments to uphold labor laws has international impact in the context of NAFTA and other free-trade agreements. Standards are effectively lowered in several countries by the action of one country.

9. In this new international context, the right to organize must be defended internationally in order to be respected. Governments and capital must be pressured in several countries at once to force them to accept established labor law, specifically the right to organize.

10. When we buy a garment assembled in a maquila overseas, we enter into an economic relationship with all those who participated in the manufacturing process. We can use our influence as consumers and citizens to pressure companies to uphold acceptable working conditions, including a living wage. What constitutes a living wage should be determined through inclusion of local worker groups so as not to undermine local organizing. As consumers we provide the impetus for ensuring corporate responsibility.

11. Access to free healthcare, education, and water are all basic human rights that governments have a responsibility to provide to their citizenry. It is the obligation of national governments to make decisions about state-owned enterprises that take into consideration the best interest of the country, the workers and the population served.

12. Union busting, the arrest of labor organizers, and violent behavior from the management of state-owned enterprises to destroy an organized workforce is an insidious effect of Structural Adjustment Programs that are a universal condition for aid from International Financial Institutions.

13. The erosion of workersí rights in any country lowers the international standards and has far-reaching effects on the plight of workers everywhere.

14. No human being is illegal. As capital is free to move all over the world, labor should be free to move also. We call for immediate amnesty for all immigrants.

15. Real agrarian reform (reform that is not part of counterinsurgency) is an instrument of social justice, development and generation of employment in the rural sector. It must be implemented to improve the quality of life of the rural working class and rural population in general.

16. We support the continued efforts of unions in the United States to ensure their own rights and the rights of workers globally. A vital counterbalance to the neoliberal offensive is cross-border solidarity. This involves the joint strategizing and implementation of tactics by solidarity organizations and unions in the United States and Canada with Latin American social movement organizations (unions, peasant organizations, and women’s groups) and some leftist political parties.

17. We must strive to develop with our current historic partners in Latin America stronger bonds of cross-border solidarity. This should lead to forming joint campaigns that allow us to confront neoliberalism and US imperialist domination in Latin America. It is important to take into account the history of US imperialism and intervention in Latin America. This means activists in the North should always be aware of the legacy of the US and work to not perpetuate these racist, imperialist dynamics.

18. Workers engaging in concerted action across borders in defense of common interests, is the best guarantor of the right to organize. National and international campaigns of coordinated actions including union-student groups, unions, religious congregations, and others can support international labor rights.

19. Solidarity work must be responsive to union needs and demands. Those on both sides of every border must strive to develop trusting relationships and the sharing of information and resources between organizations (unions, NGOs, student organizations, religious organizations, etc.).

20. We are opposed to the FTAA, fast track, and any bi-lateral or multi-lateral trade agreements that lack language and effective mechanisms for ensuring workers’ rights.