US Embassy in Dili admits mistake about worker's rights

The General Workers Union of Timor-Leste tells ETAN that they met with the US Embassy in Dili on 3 February 2011 and successfully settled the dispute about the unfair dismissal of Mario Baretto and their subsequent claim that their national staff cannot join a union. ETAN had written the embassy about the dispute.

From the union: 

The Embassy advised that they had mistakenly stated their policy and affirmed their staff’s right to join a union:

The US Embassy seeks to be a model employer and respects workers and the role of unions in representing workers. The Administration has been a strong international supporter of labour rights and we want to maintain an open relationship with the unions and labor rights advocates here in Timor-Leste.

The Embassy also confirmed that they seek to be fully compliant with local labour laws and resolved Mr Baretto’s dismissal consistent with the Labour Code of Timor-Leste.

The General Workers Union of Timor-Leste and the Trade Union Confederation of Timor-Leste would like to thank all those individuals and organisations that supported Mr Baretto and Timorese workers by writing to the Ambassador.

Please direct any media enquiries to:

Almerio Vila Nova
General Secretary
General Workers Union
+670 724 8482

Wikileaks

UPDATE: The Jakarta Post reports that "3,059 [documents] came from the US Embassy in Jakarta and 167 from the US Consulate in Surabaya. The latest document among the Jakarta files was dated Feb. 27, 2010, while the earliest was sent out on Nov. 19, 1990. Only 14 of the files were sent out during the 1990s, and another 20 from 2000 to 2005. The vast majority were sent out from 2006 to February this year."
--

Wikileaks U.S. State Department document dump will include about 350 from embassy in Dili and ten times as many from the embassy in Jakarta.

According to Wikileaks:

"Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.

The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. ...

The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months.

Only a few hundred documents have been posted so far. Much interesting, and possibly revelatory, reading to come.