After ordering studies of labor practices in countries that would become part of the CAFTA free trade zone should the pact be ratified by Congress, the U.S. government decried the accounts of labor rights abuses detailed in the contractor’s reports as biased and inaccurate.
The Labor Department ordered the contractor – the International Labor Rights Fund – to remove the reports from its Web site, demanded that paper copies be retrieved, and instructed the contractor not to discuss the results of the reports.
Below are some of the documents that illustrate this case. All are in PDF format.
– An executive summary of the reports undertaken by the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) and later criticized and banned by the Labor Department.
See the document
– A letter on Labor Department letterhead denouncing the ILRF findings as “biased, unsubstantiated and based on dubious statistics,” and citing what it considers flaws in the reports.
See the document
– ILRF studies on the sugar industries in Central American countries. While these are not the reports that the Labor Department requested, they may provide insight into ILRF methodology.
-Cost Rica
-Guatemala
-Nicaragua
-El Salvador