The ITUC and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) have again alerted the European Commission to the Sri Lankan government’s failure to meet the commitments it made in 2005 to qualify for the GSP+ scheme, namely implementation of all the ILO’s core conventions. The ITUC and the ETUC drew attention to the government’s statements to the effect that it would promote export companies in the North East regions previously caught up in the civil war. Considering the widespread violations of workers’ rights in the export processing zones in the rest of the country, the ITUC and the ETUC believe that after suffering all the atrocities linked to the war, the populations of these regions could soon be exposed to violations of their rights at work.
The US national trade union centre the AFL-CIO has put pressure on the US trade representative to remove Sri Lanka from the list of developing countries eligible to benefit from the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) until the Sri Lanka respects the conditions linked to workers’ rights in the System.