By Tom Carter. The
Washington Times. April 9, 2001
The Cuban American National Foundation, America's largest and best
organized anti-Castro lobby, is pioneering a new legal strategy to hold foreign
investors who do business with the communist regime liable for violating
international and U.S. labor law.
Following on the successes of Holocaust survivors and others who have
sued businesses that operated under dictatorships and profited from "slave
labor," CANF is in negotiations to retain an "old established law firm"
in Washington to sue foreign businesses operating in Cuba for the way they treat
their Cuban employees.
CANF hopes to file the suits under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA),
enacted in 1789. The tactic was first reported last week in Cuba Trader, a Cuba
business newsletter.
"We see an emerging body of law that say corporations bear
responsibility for the way they treat their workers," said Dennis Hays,
CANF's Washington director, in an interview on Friday.
"The businesses may have been in compliance with the laws of the
nation where they were operating, but when they violate international labor
standards they can be held accountable."
He said Holocaust survivors have successfully used the courts to get
redress from companies that used slave labor in Nazi Germany. More recently, the
Supreme Court last month rejected a bid by Shell Oil to dismiss a lower court
finding that it was responsible for human rights abuses suffered by its
employees in Nigeria.
Another case found that Unocal Corp., a leading oil company, could be
held responsible for rights abuses suffered by its employees in Burma. Both
cases are still pending, but taken together, CANF believes that foreign
investors in Cuba can be held legally responsible for violations of
International Labor Organization (ILO) standards in Cuba.
"We understand we are breaking new ground here. We are not there
yet, but Shell's attempt to weasel out of its responsibilities in Nigeria opened
the door for us," Mr. Hays said.
Michael Posner, the director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights,
said ATCA was enacted shortly after the American Revolution in order to
prosecute pirates who violated "the law of nations."
In the past 20 years, he said, it has been used some 20 times to go
after foreign government and military officials accused of political killings,
torture and disappearances in El Salvador, Argentina, Paraguay and the
Philippines.
Regarding the Shell and Unocal cases, Mr. Posner said the oil companies
were accused of being "complicit with the governments in massive human
rights abuses."
Without commenting on the specific merits of the CANF strategy, he said
that using ATCA to charge companies with abuse of workers for anything short of
political killings, torture or disappearances would take the law into new
territory.
Mr. Hays, and other critics of foreign investment in Cuba, accuse the
Castro government and foreign investors of collaborating to create a system of "slave
labor."
By contract, foreign investors must hire Cuban workers through the
government. The foreign investor pays the government in U.S. dollars, say $100 a
month per worker, but the Cuban government pays the workers in Cuban pesos at a
rate that amounts to about $10 to $15 per month.
Critics also accuse the Cuban government of prohibiting union
organizing, a right granted under ILO standards.
Mr. Hays said CANF and its legal team are taking a hard look at
Sherritt International of Canada, a nickel mining and natural gas concern, and
Grupo Sol Melia, a Spanish hotel and tourism group.
Sherritt executives have already been denied visas to the United States
under the Helms-Burton Act for using properties confiscated from U.S. citizens
by the Cuban government. The Bush administration is expected to do the same with
the Sol Melia executives within the next few months.
CANF hopes to attach assets held in the United States, should it
prevail in court. Sol Melia operates a hotel in Miami, but Sherritt
International has no assets in the United States.
"Since 1995, Sherritt has had a total of zero assets in the United
States," said Patrice Merrin Best, chief operating officer of Sherritt
International in Toronto. "The [CANF strategy] has no application to us.
There is not one iota of Sherritt International in the United States."
Mrs. Merrin Best, who along with her family is banned from the United
States, said Sherritt workers make about $1,200 a year, which gives them "huge
purchasing power in Cuba."
"They laugh and slap their legs when they hear that some people
consider them slave labor," she said.
© 2001 News World Communications, Inc.
Related link
United States Code.
TITLE 29 - LABOR | 