Labor Union Blog

A few items to gnaw on this morning as we wait to see if a handful of Republicans in the U.S. House will do the right thing and vote to override President Bush's veto of a bill that would ensure millions of America's kids have health insurance.

The press, at least in Britain, has picked upon on the murder of the Guatemalan trade unionist we noted last month. From Reuters:

Masked gunmen dumped a Guatemalan banana picker's bullet-ridden corpse yards from fields of fruit bound for the United States, a grim reminder of the risks of organizing labor in the Central American country.

Marco Tulio Ramirez, killed last month, was the fifth Guatemalan labor leader murdered this year. Activists say the deaths show promises to protect labor rights under a U.S. trade pact have changed little at a time President George W. Bush is pressing for similar deals in other Latin American nations with bad labor records.