by James Parks, Jun 7, 2007

Five members of Congress made it clear today there will be no free trade agreement with Colombia until that country makes significant progress toward ending violence against trade unionists. Colombia also must honor internationally recognized human and workers’ rights and prosecutes high-ranking officials who are connected with murderous paramilitary groups, they say.

“This agreement will not get to the floor” unless Colombian authorities end the impunity of the people who murder trade unionists and human rights activists, Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) told a Capitol Hill press conference.   

We want to see real change, real action, not just more endless talk.

The Colombia agreement is one of several trade deals the Bush administration is pushing that provides no protections for workers and are skewed in favor of Big Business. Deals currently on the table or being negotiated include pacts with Peru, Panama, South Korea and Malaysia. 

Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for union members. Some 2,300 union leaders have been killed there since 1991 and only 37 people have been convicted in the murders.

“At best, the Colombian government has stood by in silence as thousands of its citizens have been brutally murdered,” says Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill.).

At worst, they have been co-conspirators. Irregardless of their exact role, I cannot in good conscience vote to enter into a free trade agreement with a country whose record on labor is nothing short of shameful.

Last year, the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center published an in-depth study, Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Colombia, which focuses on the appalling conditions for workers in Colombia. It also examines gender discrimination, child labor abuses and how labor law, hiring practices and failing labor authorities seriously undermine workers’ attempts to join unions.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is in Washington, D.C., this week—his second trip in five weeks—to lobby Congress to pass the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Members of Congress, union and human rights activists are making sure he knows opposition to the agreement is building since his last trip.

The Bush administration submitted the deal to Congress in time to be considered under its Fast Track trade-promotion authority, which expires June 30. But workers in both countries say the deal with Colombia should be re-negotiated because it will hurt workers and push back efforts to bring an end to the violence against union leaders and ordinary citizens.

McGovern, Hare and Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) all called for the agreement to be delayed at least until next year.

As Sanchez says:

The safety of Colombia’s workers is too important to risk, we must see some results first.

Jeff Vogt, the AFL-CIO’s global economic specialist, pointed out that since Uribe’s visit to Washington:

•  An illegal police wiretapping operation against journalists, opposition figures and government members was revealed. 
• A former paramilitary leader implicated the vice president and defense minister in the widening paramilitary political scandal.
• Fourteen members of Colombia’s Congress, seven former members of Congress, the head of the secret police and several mayors and former governors are now charged by authorities for collaboration with paramilitary commanders. A dozen more current congressmen are under investigation.
• Uribe announced his proposal to intervene in ongoing judicial processes and release from prison all politicians linked to paramilitaries in exchange for confessions. To downplay the gravity of the situation, the government has, instead, employed highly misleading figures on trade union violence, arbitrarily discounting unionized teachers to lower annual number of murders.

 Vogt says: 

The Colombian government has a long way to go to demonstrate that its promises, heretofore unfulfilled, will be kept this time. This is not something that will happen in a matter of weeks or months, but only after a sustained effort to show its worker and the international community that it can and will tackle impunity.

United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard in a letter to members of Congress yesterday called on lawmakers to “refuse to approve” the free trade agreement and to stop all future military aid.

…the government of Colombia is not serious about ending the slaughter of trade unionists or fighting terror and drugs in Colombia and therefore is not entitled to any further military assistance or preferential trade benefits.

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