Violence Against Workers Still Rampant in Colombia

by James Parks, Jan 17, 2008

With time running out on the Bush administration, Bush is pressuring Congress to pass a flawed trade deal with Colombia, the most dangerous country in the world for union members. But a new AFL-CIO report should, once and for all, show Congress that a U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is out of the question.   

Workers’ Rights, Violence and Impunity in Colombia shows that while there was a decrease in the number of trade unionists’ deaths in Colombia last year, the Colombian government still is doing far too little to address this ongoing threat. Click here to read the report.

The report presents a more complete picture of labor rights and labor relations in Colombia in 2007, providing information noticeably absent in the reports issued by the Colombian government.

With the rest of his agenda crumbling around him, Bush has made the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) a significant priority with Congress. The administration continues to lead congressional dog-and-pony show delegations to Colombia—yet these trips have not convinced Democrats to support the FTA. 

Democratic leadership has made it clear that the current FTAs with Colombia and South Korea are not acceptable. In addition, presidential candidates John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton have publicly voiced their opposition to the current Colombia and South Korea FTAs. Working families oppose such agreements unless these countries makes significant progress toward ending violence against trade unionists. Colombia also must honor internationally recognized human and workers’ rights and prosecute high-ranking officials who are connected with murderous paramilitary groups, they say.

Some worry the Bush administration will take the unprecedented step of sending the Colombia FTA to Congress over the objections of Democratic leaders. However, that would be a dangerous gamble, as under Fast Track procedures a floor vote could not be forced until the expiration of 60 legislative days, putting any vote months away from the bill’s introduction. In addition, the few Democratic proponents of the Colombia FTA have stated they would have a hard time supporting it if it was sent up over the objection of Democratic leadership.  

Here are some of the report’s key findings: 

• Thirty-eight trade unionists were murdered in 2007. While that’s a decrease in the number of murders from last year, the current rate in Colombia is still the highest in the world. The Philippines had the next highest rate, with 33 murdered trade unionists.
• There also were 201 death threats against trade unionists in 2007. The combination of ongoing assassinations, death threats and violence against family members creates a climate of fear for trade unionists that makes it impossible for them to fully and confidently exercise their rights to organize, bargain collectively, go on strike or criticize the government.
• The Colombian government has established a special sub-unit within the human rights unit of the Office of the Attorney General to step up the investigation and prosecution of crimes against unionists. However, even with the recent prosecutions, the rate of impunity for the murder of trade unionists remains more than 97 percent. 
• The International Labor Organization (ILO) has reported that several of Colombia’s labor laws violate international labor standards. Further, the ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association routinely has criticized the government for failing to enforce its own laws or international labor standards.
• In addition, El Tiempo, one of Colombia’s leading daily newspapers, recently reported that all three of the special judges appointed to hear the cases related to crimes against trade unionists were dismissed at the end of 2007. 

After meeting with Uribe last May, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said:

Colombia’s atrocious human rights record sets it apart from the rest of the world. There is no labor language that could be inserted into the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement that could adequately address the extraordinary—and unpunished—violence confronting trade unionists in that country.

No labor chapter, no matter how well crafted, will be sufficient to reduce, much less end, the incidence of the most extreme and deadly violations of the right to free association and collective bargaining. And no trade agreement with Colombia should be considered until the country meets an established set of human rights benchmarks.

According to the AFL-CIO statement, those benchmarks for Colombia should include:

• Severing all ties with paramilitary organizations and international criminal networks.
• Making significant advances in investigating and prosecuting crimes against trade unionists.
• Providing protection for unions and trade unionists.
• Bringing Colombia’s labor laws into conformity with ILO standards.
• Supporting the ILO office in Colombia to monitor labor rights compliance and investigate key cases of assassinations of trade unionists.

The AFL-CIO report confirms the findings of previous reports on Colombia by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) report on murder and abuse of unions and workers and the U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP).

The International Trade Union Confederation’s Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights found in 2006 that Colombia is 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.

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