By Adam Andrzejewski for RealClearPolicy
The United States has a myriad of labor and employment issues, but the Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs focuses on labor around the world.
Who knew that our domestic Labor Department also functioned as a foreign aid vehicle?
The Bureau of International Labor Affairs has a $96 million budget in 2021, and “promotes a fair global playing field for workers and businesses in the United States and around the world by enforcing trade commitments, strengthening labor standards, and combating international child labor, forced labor and human trafficking.”
Two of its larger recent grants were $5 million for improving respect for workers’ rights in agricultural supply chains in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, focusing on gender and racial equity and another $5 million for strengthening decent work in the fishing sector in South America.
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The gender and racial equity grant will “address the systemic violation of internationally-recognized workers’ rights in the export-oriented agricultural sector in Honduras and Guatemala and the maquila sector in El Salvador,” according to the grant summary.
For the fishing sector grant, the objective is to “strengthen mechanisms to address labor violations associated with illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing,” among other things, the grant summary states.
No decent human is in favor of child labor, forced labor or human trafficking but $10 million is a huge sum to spend on labor in other countries.
Syndicated with permission for RealClearWire.
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