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AFL-CIO Fact-Finding Delegation Heads to Colombia |
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Faced with little time left in office, the lame-duck Bush administration is pushing hard for passage of its unfair trade agenda, including passage of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Beginning today, several AFL-CIO leaders are traveling to Colombia to meet with the leaders of major Colombian unions to hear firsthand the dangers Colombian trade unionists face. They also will participate in a vigil to commemorate the thousands of trade unionists who have been killed during the past two decades in Colombia.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Emerita Linda Chavez-Thompson is leading the Feb. 12–13 fact-finding mission, which includes Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen and United Steelworkers (USW) counsel Dan Kovalik. Participants will meet with Colombian union leaders and the Colombian government, including President Alvaro Uribe. The delegation will gather information to inform the debate over the proposed trade agreement.
Says Chavez-Thompson:
In this country we battle with employers over working conditions and wages, but we don’t get killed because we have the idea that we should have a union. We can’t trade with a country that doesn’t respect the rights of its workers. How do we compromise our values to trade with a country that doesn’t care how many of its citizens are killed for exercising their most basic rights?
Chavez-Thompson also serves as president of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT), the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC’s) regional organization for the Americas.
USW President Leo Gerard said the trip is critical for union leaders to hear the real story from Colombian unionists, one that likely will
challenge the version being told by the Bush and Uribe administrations—that is, we expect to hear about the continuing violence against trade unionists by paramilitary groups, such as the Black Eagles. The paras are re-mobilizing and continuing to plague Colombia’s union movement with death threats and violence, including murder.
The AFL-CIO delegation will then meet with leaders of the Colombian government, including Uribe. U.S. union leaders will convey their concern over the current climate of violence for trade unionists in Colombia, the impunity for the perpetrators of the violence and the many legal and other obstacles facing Colombian unionists trying to organize and bargain collectively.
A recent AFL-CIO report 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. Workers’ Rights, Violence and Impunity in Colombia shows 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.
According to the report, 40 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. (Click here to read the report.)Cohen says although the murders of trade unionists is the paramount issue, the lack of workers’ rights also is very important:
Colombia is the only country in this hemisphere with lower collective bargaining coverage than the U.S. with only 1 percent (12 percent in U.S.) of workers having bargaining rights. This represents nearly total destruction of a labor movement that had 15 percent coverage only 15 years ago. While rightly so, the attention has been on the murders of trade unionists, there should be no consideration of any trade agreement as long as workers have no bargaining rights and in fact no rights at work whatsoever. In Colombia, even in basic industries such as telecom, most workers have been reclassified so they have no employee status. When it comes to workers’ rights, Colombia is off the charts!
Last month, Gerardo Cajamarca, an exiled Colombian community leader and union supporter now living in Minnesota, described how the Colombia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement will not help the workers in his native country.
Meanwhile, late last month, U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) asked President Uribe for information about the unexplained removal of a Colombian judge from a three-judge panel tasked with handling the backlog of criminal cases stemming from the thousands of assassinations of the country’s labor union leaders and members.
Miller also asked for information about a decision to temporarily suspend all three of the judges in December 2007, which forced the judges to cancel hearings in high profile cases that had been scheduled for this month.
Miller traveled to Colombia in December to meet with the judges, trade unionists, workers and government officials. He says the information he is requesting would be vital in determining whether or not the United States should enter into a free trade agreement with Colombia. He said it is critical that Colombia’s judicial process for addressing the killings of labor union leaders must be effective and sustainable, given the extensive history and institutional nature of killings of labor leaders in Colombia.
Miller, who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee, says:
If these prosecutions and adjudications are not effective and sustainable, then impunity will continue—and that is unacceptable.
As the U.S. Congress debates the proposed trade agreement with Colombia, it is essential that we consider whether Colombia is doing everything it can to protect workers’ rights and basic human rights. A trade agreement will not help workers in either country if the basic rights of workers and union members in Colombia are not respected.
To see a copy of Miller’s letter to President Uribe, click here.
3 Comments
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It is good that the union is going to hear first hand some of the problems in Colombia and why an FTA is bad for workers in both countries.
Unfortunately it is difficult for them to talk with the thousands and perhaps millions of workers afraid to even mention collective bargaining. The massive decrease in union membership in the past few years hints at it.
Murders, fear, and impunity from the law – these are all symptoms of a cause that that Colombia seems to refuse to attack, corruption. U.S. State department reports show corruption is excessive in both the public and private sector. It is a tool of the rich to maintain control over the poor and make themselves more money. Corruption keeps labor laws and worker security laws from being enforced in the factories. Over 50% of the population lives below the poverty level. And recent reports have shown that the 20% rich of the country have increased the amount of wealth they control. In order for there to be a market for American goods we need a country with people who can afford them.
The Whitehouse says that Colombia needs the FTA to fix that. In many instances though as much as 80% of monies for projects that could go to hire more workers or purchase more products goes into the pockets of corrupt politicians. It is not the responsibility of American citizens to sacrifice their jobs to support corruption in Colombia. In addition to better treatment of workers, Colombia must show an aggressive attack on corruption before American should consider an FTA or even sending more of the already billions of dollars in aid.
I hope that somehow, this nation can survive another year of the erratic Bush Adminstration. His idea is to give away all of the free nations labor force. “[A] wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” -Thomas Jefferson
Senator Menendez has written a timely and informative piece (Menendez: How has Pakistan been using U.S. aid? Jersey Journal, 12/31/07) about the debacle that is Pakistan today. From his position on the Senate Foreign Relations committee his perspective is very important. Unfortunately, the same story could be written about our neighbor, Colombia. This poor country has been the victim of its own military, an ineffective government, an international drug trade, and internal terrorism on a scale not equaled in the Western Hemisphere.
My wife and I studied Spanish in Bogotá for three months in 1964. When we had progressed enough to understand the newspapers we would read on a regular basis about the army’s capture or killing of a bandit called Tirofijo. Needless to say the reports were greatly exaggerated. Manuel Marulanda, alias Tirofijo, is alive and well and the leader of FARC, the largest guerilla organization in Colombia. Yet in 2006 alone, 80% of the $728 million of the aid we spent in Colombia went to the military, which has been singularly unable to accomplish what it set out to do 43 years ago. What it has accomplished is aiding and abetting the paramilitary groups who are responsible for the murder of union and cooperative leaders and their supporters on a regular basis. These murders go back at least to 1928 when the workers for United Fruit formed a union and struggled for an eight hour day and other conditions. Their supporters were massacred by the army in the public square on a Sunday morning, ostensibly to forestall a landing of U.S. troops, coming to aid Americans and protect the interests of United Fruit.
When will we stop deluding ourselves that peace can be attained through military intervention?
James T. Dette
22 Duer Place
Weehawken, NJ 07086
201-866-0692