Nothing to celebrate in International Labor Day 

<a href=www.lapress.org>LatinAmerican press In brief

According to the Association of Families of the Disappeared and Detained in Colombia (ASFADDES), 5,372 people were detained or disappeared between 1977 and 2002.

In the last four years Venezuela has lost more than US$33 billion, the most costly flight of capital in the history of the country. Businesspeople blame the stampede on the policies of the government of President Hugo Chávez (LP, Jan. 15, 2003).

In Peru last year, there were 46,654 complaints of family violence, on average 148 a day. The figure was announced by the general prosecutor, Nelly Calderón during a visit by Diane Stuart, director of the US Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women. Stuart said the Peruvian model, dedicating 154 prosecutors to the investigation of the abuse of women, adolescents and children, has been closely followed in the United States.

In 2002 alone, 25,000 undocumented people disappeared on the journey between Mexico and the United States. Of them, 10,000 were Salvadorian, according to an investigation by the daily La Jornada into the abuses inflicted on emigrants by the Mexican authorities.

Five wetlands in Cuba were incorporated into the Ramsar Convention, which guarantees the conservation and rational use of these ecosystems (LP, Sept. 24, 2001). The wetlands in question are Buena Vista, Ciénaga de Lanier and the southern part of the Isla de la Juventud, Gran Humedal de Ciego de Ávila, Delta del Cauto and Río Máximo. Ciénaga de Zapata was incorporated in 2001.

Charles Chaplin in Modern Times  Andrés Gaudin.  Apr 29, 2003

International Labor Day is marked by high unemployment, low union membership and a steady erosion of workers’ rights.

More than a century after the "Haymarket massacre" of May 1, 1886, in the US city of Chicago, which gave rise to International Labor Day and marked a milestone in the struggle for the labor rights gained in the 20th century, Latin American workers have fallen on hard times, with high unemployment and low union membership rates.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), 17 million urban workers in the region were unemployed last year. The situation could be even worse in rural areas, where no specific records are kept.

The fifth consecutive year of recession, exacerbated by a decade of free-market reforms, left the region with an average unemployment rate of 9.2 percent, the highest in the past 22 years. The workers who did have jobs received wages that were below the average for the previous five years, according to the ILO, while working conditions deteriorated. The average work day is now 10 hours or more.

Rubén Manusovich of the Federation of Chambers and Centers of Commerce of Argentina, a business organization, attributed the precariousness of the labor situation to increased tax pressure from governments seeking to finance budget deficits, as well as high public service fees, a lack of credit and high interest rates.

The greatest increase in urban unemployment between 2001 and last year was registered in Argentina, where it rose from 16.4 percent to 23 percent. This was followed by a 1.9-percent increase in Venezuela, to 15.8 percent; a 1.1-percent increase in Brazil, to 7.3 percent; and a 1.1-percent increase in Uruguay, to 16.5 percent. In the past, some of these countries had registered the region’s lowest unemployment rates.

At the other end of the scale were Ecuador, where unemployment decreased by 2.1 percent, and El Salvador, where the rate dropped by 0.8 percent. In Colombia and Chile, the jobless rates held steady at 16.8 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively. Those figures, however, disguise other social problems.

"Ecuador showed a drop in unemployment because of emigration and the large number of people who withdrew from the labor market. The same is true in Colombia," said Ricardo Cano, head of the ILO’s technical teams (LP, March 26, 2003).

The situation is different in Chile, where "measures have been applied that have stimulated the creation of jobs, particularly the use of contracted labor," according to an ILO report. In those cases, because the employee is not on the payroll, the employer avoids paying benefits such as insurance and social security, lowering labor costs (LP, Nov. 8, 1999).

Employers in Argentina and Uruguay are trying to adopt the same measures, which violate workers’ rights, according to Víctor de Genaro, leader of the Argentine Workers Organization (CTA). "It represents an enormous transfer of income to wealthy sectors, similar to what we have already seen with wage reductions and the privatization of the retirement system," he said.

Agustín Muñoz, regional ILO director, warned that the trend could have negative consequences.

"The increase in unemployment could destabilize a great consensus of the 1990s — the emphasis on the value of democracy," he said, echoing the results of a regional survey by the Chilean polling company Latinobarómetro, which found that people’s satisfaction with democracy as a form of government is directly related to their economic well-being (LP, March 26, 2003).

The employment crisis, which worsened throughout the 1990s, has also had an effect on labor organizing.

"Because they were afraid of losing their jobs or suffering other reprisals from their employers, many workers dropped their union membership, abandoning the organizations that defend their rights," Argentine labor leader Héctor Recalde said.

Between 1995 and 2000, union membership in the region fell from 21.1 percent to 19 percent, according to the ILO. The decrease was even greater in Central America, with the largest drop in El Salvador, where membership fell from 27 percent to 5.2 percent (LP, Oct. 9, 2000).

The increasingly precarious labor situation is also reflected in the growth of the informal sector, where workers have neither set working hours nor benefits. According to the ILO, the informal sector represents 51 percent of the Latin American economy, putting the region ahead of other parts of the world, including northern Africa, where the informal sector accounts for 48 percent of economic activity.

Although experts predicted that Peru would have the largest informal sector in Latin America, an ILO study of the past decade, which includes figures through 2000, placed Bolivia in first place, with 63 percent of the work force in the informal sector. This was followed by Brazil, with 60 percent; Honduras, with 58 percent; El Salvador, with 57 percent; Guatemala, with 56 percent; and Mexico, with 55 percent.

Peru does rank first in the informal sector’s contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP), at 49 percent, followed by Colombia, at 25 percent, and Mexico, where the informal sector represents 13 percent of GDP. The ILO study did not include agriculture, domestic labor or clandestine work connected with organized crime, such as the sex trade.

Child labor also contributes to the region’s grim outlook for workers at the start of the third millennium (LP, June 3, 2002). The ILO estimated that about 20 million children between ages 5 and 14 were working in the region at the end of last year. The largest number — at least 7 million — is in Brazil, according to the ILO.

There has been a dramatic increase in Uruguay, where child labor had been limited mainly to rural areas. In March, UNICEF announced that in the poorest 40 percent of the country’s households, children contributed 18 percent of their families’ income.

In urban areas of Ecuador and Colombia, 20 percent of girls between ages 10 and 14 are involved in domestic labor, according to Eduardo Araujo, who heads the ILO’s regional program. The problem has "the potential for growth" in all the region’s countries, especially in the increasingly impoverished Caribbean nations, he said.

Besides agriculture and domestic work, where child labor is traditionally concentrated, about 65,000 Latin American children are involved in small-scale traditional gold mining in Peru and Bolivia (LP, Nov. 19, 2001) and "many others are in worse situations, such as sex tourism, mainly in Brazil and Caribbean countries," according to the ILO (LP, Dec. 30, 2002).