SEARCH
Murders of Union Members Worldwide Increase 25 Percent |
Some 144 trade unionists were murdered for defending workers’ rights last year, a 25 percent increase from the number of deaths in 2005. More than 800 suffered beatings or torture, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) annual survey of trade union rights violations.
According to the report, nearly 5,000 union members were arrested and more than 8,000 fired due to their trade union activities. Some 484 new cases of trade unionists held in detention by governments are also documented in the report. Click here to read the full report.
Says ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder:
Workers seeking to better their lives through trade union activities are facing rising levels of repression and intimidation in an increasing number of countries. Most shocking of all is the increase of some 25 percent in the number killed compared to the previous year. In many of the countries highlighted in the report, repression continued during 2007.
This increasingly worldwide anti-worker environment is part of the reason the AFL-CIO will host the first ever global organizing summit Dec. 10–11 at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md. Delegates will lay the groundwork for and discuss global strategies to help workers join unions. The summit opens on International Human Rights Day, a time when U.S. unions traditionally mobilize to restore the freedom to join unions.
Colombia remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a union member, with 78 killings. Of the 1,165 documented murders of Colombian trade union members between 1994 and 2006, only 56 perpetrators have been brought to trial, and just 14 have been sentenced. The continued violence in Colombia is one of the key reasons working people and members of Congress are determined to stop the proposed U.S. trade agreement with that country.
The ITUC report also shows a growing wave of anti-union violence in the Philippines, with 33 unionists and worker-rights supporters murdered, in some cases by killers acting allegedly in collusion with the military and the police. The report gives accounts of mass dismissals, beatings, detentions and threats against workers and their families used, sometimes routinely, in countries in each region of the world.
Another recent report by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also lists the Philippines as a dangerous place. The IFJ says some 49 journalists have been killed in the island nation since 2001 when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power. That surpasses the number killed during the 14-year Marcos dictatorship.
Meanwhile, dictatorships and authoritarian governments in Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, North Korea and several Gulf countries continued suppressing independent trade unions, with more than 100 Chinese workers detained in prisons and forced labor camps.
The ITUC also reports growing government hostility to fundamental workers’ rights in some industrialized countries, in particular in Australia, where the government’s deceptively titled “Work Choices” legislation stripped workers of many rights and benefits and imposed heavy restrictions on union activity, with harsh penalties for individual workers and union officials.
In the United States, the report points out that many employers launch fierce union-busting campaigns to defeat workers’ desire to form a union. It mentions that more than 30 million workers are still denied basic collective bargaining rights by law, including 40 percent of all federal public sector workers.
1 Comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
The Whitehouse is working hard to get the FTA with Colombia voted on soon using misleading information. For the sake of both American and Colombian workers it is important that the vote be delayed until Colombia shows sustained results. The earliest should not be before June 2008.
But there are more reasons for not passing the FTA with Colombia than just them being a continual world leader in deaths of union members. The majority of the over 90% unsolved murders have been attributed to the right-wing paramilitary. This group has been linked to members of the military, police and government.
Colombia and the Whitehouse like to say that Colombia has demobilized over 30,000 paramilitary members. However there is more to it. Over 98.8% of those members serve no jail time. Many have remobilized. Of the recently arrested 147 members of a drug lord’s army, 15% were demobilized paramilitary members. It is estimated that there are 70 new gangs in Cartagena with many of them composed of demobilized paramilitary members. Phone taps have revealed that the jailed paramilitary members continue their drug business and ordering murders from their country club prison. Colombian President Uribe has extradited many drug dealers to the USA. Most of them can be considered competitors of the paramilitary drug lords and in fact he has denied U.S. extradition request for 5 paramilitary members.
The Whitehouse likes to say that by not passing the FTA soon we will send the wrong message and that we treat our allies bad. But one has to question what kind of ally Colombia is. The country is the largest recipient of U.S. taxpayer money outside of the Middle East.
The Democrats are correct and there is benefit to workers in both countries of waiting until Colombia proves they are not continuing almost slave labor through intimidation and death of union members.