Manuela Chávez of the ITUC's Department of Human and Trade Union Rights told In these Times, "Freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively have been endangered by a very high anti-union repression for years," adding that the threats to unionists are aggravated by government inaction.
Trumka said that in 2008 the AFL-CIO and Guatemalan labor unions filed a complaint under the Central America Free Trade Agreement, asserting the Guatemalan government had allowed repression of union activity as well as intimidation and violence, including the assassination of two union officers.
The ministers issued a statement on Monday saying that the union "condemns the ongoing repression against demonstrators in Libya and deplores the violence and death of civilians".
President Suharto's repression of unions was part of a strategy to promote exports by luring foreign investors with cheap labor.
He sees this as a legacy of the state-corporatist regime, which compensated the repression of unions and limitations on collective bargaining by legalistic rules of protection.
It shows you the level of repression trade unions are facing these days.
The dictatorial government suspended collective bargaining, targeted repression at lower level union leaders, weakened unions, undermined labor institutions, cut down social policies, and initiated a process of trade liberalization.
Out of the Past Written in a time of militant union activity, management backlash and repression from conservatives in Congress, "The Cradle Will Rock," Marc Blitzstein's powerful "play in music," directed by Orson Welles and produced by John Houseman, made history when it was first performed in 1937.
With inadequate health and safety checks, in the worst case resulting in tragedies like Rana Plaza, Winterstein says the repression of trade unions means that workers are too fearful to speak out about their reality.
"Twenty years of repression and resistance," they chanted.Since the union between north and south in 1990, and a short civil war that followed in 1994, southerners have complained of being marginalised from the country's economy and politics.
Economic recession and political repression combined to depress trade-union activity until 1912.
