World Union Body takes action over Fiji

Transcript

The International Trades Union Congress is pressing for fair trade sugar in Fiji to be stripped of its label.

The ITUC which has just met in Brussels has placed Fiji among the world's worst countries for workers on its Global Rights Index.

The Congress' president Sharan Burrow told Sally Round the ITUC does not believe there will be free and fair elections in Fiji and it is appalled at the inaction of the Australian and New Zealand governments over the issue.

SHARAN BURROW: You have a situation here where the world knows that this government is a dictatorship, that it's actually simply repressing people's human rights but of course workers' rights and the decrees that it's initiated, the forcing of electoral rules that are in the interests of the government, there is no commitment to free and fair democratic elections and workers of course fear for their jobs when they choose to exercise demands for their own rights. So Fiji is not a country where workers can feel confident that they'll be treated with respect, that they'll be paid fair wages or indeed that their rights will be respected or that compliance mechanisms will work in the interests of justice.

SALLY ROUND: Yet the constitution does provide for protection for workers and there is quite a comprehensive Bill of Rights in this latest constitution that the government has produced, yet your index still rates Fiji very low.

SB: Well if you're on the ground you know that this government has done everything possible to avoid having a free and fair democratic environment, whether it's the elections, whether it's the implementation of rights, whether it's the fundamental capacity of workers to have freedom to even meet and talk about the issues that concern them. In order to register as a political party, to stand for elections, we've even seen worker representatives forced out of their union jobs. There's no sense of independence, no sense of freedom. We will pursue a commission of inquiry at the ILO in to fundamental rights in Fiji.

SR: Why is Fiji the only Pacific island country on your index? Papua New Guinea for example has a huge labour force, why wasn't PNG included?

SB: If the Pacific Island countries aren't on the index it's because we probably don't have systematic data for them. While I don't have the index in front of me there is still a huge difference between Fiji and the other island nations.

SR: Now I understand Fiji featured in the final outcome statement of your meeting, what was said?

SB: Well Fiji is on the countries at risk watch-list clearly for the reasons we've already talked about; the lack of rights, the systematic oppression of workers who seek a collective voice or to stand and bargain collectively and of course being a dictatorship and not a democracy then it comes up very high as a country where the rule of law has now broken down to the point where it's in the control of a government that's simply not democratic. So it's clearly on the watch-list of countries at risk in terms of rights. It also featured in our congress statement as one of the countries where democracy has been undermined, where rights are not respected. So it's on the global stage as a country that we know is a place where workers absolutely need solidarity, they need international pressure. We are appalled at the inaction of the Australian and New Zealand governments, we don't believe that there will be free and fair elections and the situation for workers shows us that there's no immediate sign of improvement. We have asked as a result of that, that the fair trade executive body meeting this week would strip Fiji sugar of its Fair Trade label. There must be attention from the rest of the world to essentially a situation where the people of Fiji, the workers of Fiji have nobody standing up for them outside of the global union movement.

SR: So you are asking for that stripping of that Fair Trade label, do you carry a lot of weight at trade talks?

SB: The board is an independent board but we would hope that they would stand firm against the beset of principles they espouse where workers rights are respected so that meeting will take place in the next couple of weeks and we'll see the outcome. But you can't pretend that products coming out of Fiji are actually produced in any kind of fair trade environment when you have workers' rights violated to the extent that they are in Fiji.