BWI stands with Amazonian unions pushing for Lula’s re-election and a Congress that stands with workers 

Led by its Brazilian affiliates, the Amazonian Trade Union Network (ATUN), a collective of unions coordinated by the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI), is mobilising to re-elect President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and elect pro-worker candidates to Congress. 

In a political declaration signed by 40 unions from six countries (Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Suriname), the ATUN said that a progressive government and Congress in Brazil are essential for a sustainable Amazon region.  

Five key demands 

At its 4th Planning Seminar in Manaus in August, the ATUN approved a two-year action plan with climate justice and decent work at its core. The declaration calls for five key demands: 

1. A Decent Work Agenda for the Amazon: decent work clauses, freedom of association and ILO Conventions made mandatory in all climate funds and development projects in the region. 
2. Stronger inspection and enforcement: restored budgets and capacity for labour inspectorates and environmental agencies to fight forced labour, child labour and illegal activity. 
3. Union participation in the Just Transition: guaranteed worker representation in climate governance bodies, such as the Amazon Fund Steering Committee (COFA) and the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). 
4. Sustainable forest value chains: support for sustainable forest management and ecological restoration value chains, and certified wood in public construction and social housing. 
5. Protection of territories and union rights: secure territorial rights for Indigenous Peoples, Quilombola and traditional communities, as well as protection for union leaders and members against intimidation, persecution and death threats. 

The stakes in Brazil 

Brazil holds the largest share of the Amazon Basin and its presidential election could shape the future of the entire continent. The choice is between a project of democratic reconstruction, social justice and Pan-Amazonian integration, and a far-right project linked to record deforestation, illegal mining and the destruction of workers' rights. 

ATUN is putting grassroots mobilisation first: organising in workplaces, urban peripheries and communities, and talking with workers and their families about how political decisions affect their lives, wages and health. Trade union organizing strengthens democracy in the region.  

A region shifting right 

Across the region, far-right and ultraliberal forces are weakening environmental and labour inspection, deregulating land and opening the Amazon to extraction. The result is violence against community leaders, polluted rivers and worsening living conditions. 

• Peru: Keiko Fujimori's government is aligned with mining, agribusiness and finance. Looser environmental licensing and weaker labour inspections threaten to deepen illegal logging and mining, debt bondage and drug trafficking in the Peruvian Amazon. 

• Colombia: Abelardo de la Espriella's platform includes new oil and gas exploration, new hydrocarbon contracts and fracking pilots, putting progress on deforestation, prior consultation and the safety of environmental defenders and union leaders at risk. 

• Bolivia: After two decades of progressive government, a new liberal-conservative administration is pursuing deregulation, clearing the way for agricultural expansion, cattle ranching and forest fires that threaten Indigenous territories and rural workers. 

• Ecuador: Under Daniel Noboa, an ongoing state of emergency, militarisation and austerity are being used to open the Ecuadorian Amazon to oil and mining corporations and to undermine labour rights. 

Climate action cannot ignore workers and communities. The impacts of climate change in the Amazon are already hitting rural workers, communities and Indigenous Peoples. 

The Amazon is neither an uninhabited sanctuary nor a storehouse of resources - it is made up of people. People whose labour sustains life and protects the biome. 

Without sovereignty, democracy and decent work, there will be no future for the Amazon.

Notes to editors 

• The full declaration, For the Future of the Amazon: Democracy and Rights in Latin America, is available here. 

• The Amazonian Trade Union Network (ATUN) brings together unions in the Pan-Amazon region under the coordination of the Building and Wood Workers' International (BWI). 

Media contacts:

Luiz Bugarelli, luiz.bugarelli@bwint.org, +55 11 93011-2021  

Tom Myers, tom.myers@bwint.org, +41 79 730 95 17