The Wall Street Journal is annoyed that the AFL-CIO is a labor union:

So what’s the AFL-CIO’s beef? They claim the pro-Western government of President Mikheil Saakashvili has been the scourge of the working man ever since it came to power in 2003. The accusations include “draconian anti-union, anti-worker” measures, “severe limitations on freedom of association and collective bargaining,” and promotion of “the use in certain circumstances of forced labor.”

Based on what I know and have been able to find, these charges would appear to be true. As Thomas de Waal explained in his CEIP report on Georgia last year, Georgia’s labor laws are one of the reasons it has been rated highly for its business climate, but this has come at a price:

The drive for “Singaporization” was given impetus by Georgia’s steep climb in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, something that was again masterminded by Bendukidze as he drastically simplified the regulations required to open a business in Georgia. Singapore itself is in first place in this index, while Georgia has risen to twelfth place, something that spurred a worldwide advertising campaign for investment in Georgia that champions the country as “the world’s number one reformer 2005–2010.” One group’s success story is, however, another group’s cause for complaint. The high ranking stems in large part from the Georgian government’s extremely employer-friendly labor laws, which allow businesses to fire workers easily and inhibit trade union rights. To the EU and the United Nations’ International Labor Organization, these laws are discriminatory to workers [bold mine-DL]. Georgia risks being stripped of some of its international trade privileges if it does not revise its labor laws.

Of course, one could argue that the AFL-CIO should not concern itself with workers’ rights in other countries, or one could argue that maintaining U.S.-Georgian trade as it is is more important for both countries than any problems that may exist with Georgian labor laws, but it’s easy to see why any large American labor union is going to object to preferential trade arrangements with a country in which labor rights are so poorly protected. Since the WSJ is so put-off by “imperialism” (of the labor union kind, anyway), it’s worth noting that Georgian trade unions strongly object to the same provisions in the law that the AFL-CIO has criticized:

Union leaders take particular issue with two articles in the code (Articles 37 and 38), which allow for dissolution of employee contracts without cause. The statutes also require employers to pay only one month’s severance pay to a laid-off worker. With some estimates of Georgian unemployment running well over 30 percent (official rates reach 13.3 percent), Articles 37 and 38 have become a wellspring of economic anxiety for workers, GTUC representatives say.

“The right to bargain collectively and organize is written into the law, but what does this mean when employers can fire people without a reason?” argued GTUC Vice-President Gocha Aleksandria.

The AFL-CIO’s complaints appear to be valid, and current Georgian labor laws do seem detrimental to Georgian workers. I don’t know that it should follow from this that the U.S. should change Georgia’s trading status, but opponents of such a move will have to come up with a better argument than saying, “Who cares?”