Neo-liberalism, international trade, and the role of law in regulating exploitative labour relations in the Colombian Flower Industry (Colombia).

摘要

This dissertation examines the contradictions between the promotion of international trade on the one hand and respect for individual and collective human rights---in particular labour, environmental, and equality rights of women and racialized minorities---on the other hand. The contradictions are examined through a case study where both trade and human rights laws are in operation: the Colombian Flower Industry (CFI). The research found that the CFI's success as an export industry is based on elite control of land and the state apparatus, which allowed it to secure favorable legislation: neo-liberal inspired trade legal regimes (favorable rules for foreign investment and protection of intellectual property rights), deregulation of the labour market (lowering labour standards and wages), frequent currency devaluations, and preferential tariffs with the USA and the European Union.; On the basis of extensive field work, the dissertation documents how the flower industry's success was gained at the expense of continuous bypassing of constitutionally recognized human rights. CFI working conditions are precarious and over-exploitative: they are underpaid, unstable, unhealthy, and do not accommodate women's roles in the private sphere. Additionally, both new legal statutes that lower previous labour standards and weakened enforcement of existing standards, aimed to increase the profitability of exports, affect not only the racialized workers of the CFI (women in particular) but also have negative impacts on the entire Colombian labour market. Moreover, since the industry utilizes toxic chemicals and high volumes of water, it has harmed environmental integrity in the regions where it operates.; Furthermore, a closer examination of the geo-political underpinnings that underlie the access of flowers and other non-traditional exports from Colombia to its main market, the USA, points directly to a correlation between market access and the diminished capacity of Colombians to conduct their own internal affairs (e.g. war on illegal drugs), to uphold the political and legal strategies that were designed to resolve its endemic civil war according to the country's Constitution, and protect human rights, in particular those of marginalized and vulnerable communities. The conditionalities for obtaining preferential tariff treatment have exacerbated pre-existing violent social and political conflicts.