Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico April 29, 2008
Day two saw the completion of the US employment law segment, which covered Discrimination (with a special emphasis on sexual harassment, a serious and under addressed problem in the work place, especially for farmworker women), Unions (interestingly the focus of the most extensive questions), Health and Safety (mostly the rights of injured workers), Temporary Guestworkers, and Human Trafficking.
Working in groups, the advocates learned how to put the US law into practice as they analyzed a complicated case study of workers whose employment went awry in the US. Their astute analyses underscored the daily evaluations that they were keenly interested and capturing well the material.
The afternoon transitioned into a look into how the US guestworker program violates Mexican and Guatemalan laws. Led by a Mexican Global Workers board member and a Guatemalan human rights lawyer, the advocates, now on more familiar legal ground, delved energetically into the frequent abuses workers face during the recruitment process to go to the US. It was a fascinating conversation of discovery and analysis.