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Colombian Labor Scholar Says Union Members Face Genocide |
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Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for trade union members. Over the past 22 years, more than 2,500 union members have been murdered and another 6,500 have been threatened, attacked, kidnapped, tortured or harassed.
Despite a promise by Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe to crack down on violence, not one of the killers of trade unionists has been brought to trial in two years (see chart below). Yet the Bush administration is rushing to pass a trade deal with Colombia before the November elections.
There should be no trade deal with Colombia until the violence stops, says Luciano Sanín, director general of Colombia’s Escuela National Sindical or National Labor College. Speaking Wednesday at a forum sponsored by the Global Policy Network (GPN), a program of the Economic Policy Institute, Sanín says the violence will continue as long as it benefits the multinational corporations and their powerful political allies. Giving Big Business and Uribe a trade deal in this atmosphere of violence will only embolden them and cause more harm to workers, he says.
The Escuela Sindical is recognized as having the most reliable statistics on trade union violence in Colombia.
Earlier this month, an AFL-CIO delegation of union leaders traveled to Colombia where they met with Uribe and told him the U.S. union movement cannot support the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement until real progress is made to protect the lives and rights of trade union members.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Emerita Linda Chavez-Thompson, Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen and United Steelworkers (USW) counsel Dan Kovalik found Colombia’s unionists still operate in a climate of fear in the country, where 40 trade unionists were murdered in 2007. In meetings with Colombia’s trade unionists, they also ascertained the government has systematically undermined union members’ rights while exerting little effort to address the murders of Colombian trade unionists, despite some new government initiatives.
As Chavez-Thompson says:
Despite the Colombian and United States governments’ assertions to the contrary, there has been too little real progress in ending the brutality that trade unionists face in Colombia. In 2008 alone, five trade unionists have been murdered—almost one per week.
Colombian workers are not murdered at random, says Sanin. They are killed in a deliberate effort to destroy unions. Violence is directed against new unions in the process of forming and against existing unions to stop them from gaining benefits for workers.
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Says Sanín:
The government needs to make a greater effort to investigate the murders. The current policy has done little to help the situation. This is a genocide being perpetrated on the trade union movement.
He cited the example of the union representing African palm workers. In the 1990s, there were 3,000 members in the union. Today, there are 500 in an industry that employs 8,000. In the past decade, 27 leaders of that union have been killed. Conditions in the industry are so bad, Sanín says, that 4,500 nonunion workers are out on strike demanding a contract.
In the 2,554 murder cases since 1986, only 82 cases—about 3 percent—have been solved. However, in almost all of these cases, the perpetrator of the crime, not the intellectual author, is punished, meaning that those responsible for the decision to commit the murders are still free. In several cases, paramilitaries have also baselessly claimed that they killed unionists not for their trade union activity but because they were guerillas. In such cases, the victims’ family, under the law, cannot be compensated for their deaths.
The violence benefits multinationals especially, Sanín says, because it allows them to operate without interference from a union. He pointed out that more than 700 members of the union representing banana workers have been killed by paramilitary groups. Chiquita Brands International, a leading banana company, was forced to pay fines to the U.S. Justice Department for paying as much as $15 million to Colombian thugs to “protect” their plantations.
Although stopping the violence is important, Sanín says opposition to the U.S. Colombia trade agreement should also focus on the almost total suppression of the rights to organize and bargain collectively. In a country of 18 million workers, only 800,000 are in unions and those in the public sector have nearly no rights to collective bargaining. According to 2005-2006 Labor Ministry statistics only 99,336 workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements, less than 1 percent of the economically active population. Sanín says only union workers with an agreement can manage to live above the poverty line.
Sanín says only union workers with an agreement can manage to live above the poverty line.
Tony Avirgan of the GPN says the U.S.-Colombia deal is a “bad idea.”
It is not a step forward. These trade agreements are much more about giving rights to multinational corporations. They should be called “corporate rights agreements.”
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There are a few very important points in the article. First the comment of “Colombia’s unionists still operate in a climate of fear in the country,”
Indeed it is not only unionist, it is all workers. One thing the visiting US congressmen to Colombia can’t or won’t do is walk around and just talk to people and workers. I have done that. Indeed there is a fear or sometimes a hopelessness that is almost beyond what can be fathomed in the American mind. Anything about improving working conditions or even allowing for a descent wage, well alone thinking of collective bargaining and you could be labeled a guerilla. Basically if you are not helping the rich get richer then you are considered a terrorist against the government and that seems to mean you can be shot without an arrest or trial.
That makes the other comment in the article very viable. “Giving Big Business and Uribe a trade deal in this atmosphere of violence will only embolden them and cause more harm to workers”
A third comment also rings true: “Although stopping the violence is important, says Sanin, there are other reasons to oppose the U.S.-Colombia trade agreement.”
With wages so low and fear keeping them low, then it is most likely that more American jobs will go to Colombia. Owens-Illinois already did that by closing their Godfrey plants and moving the work to Colombia into a company that they own over 50% of. Over 50% of the population of Colombia lives below the poverty level. Minimum wage is $249 a month. If Colombians cannot afford to purchase American goods then there is little to no market for American goods.
Corruption is rampant in Colombia. US State department and international organization reports show that. It is corruption that allows safety and health issues in work places to go uncorrected, allows for the massive impunity from the law for many, allows 20% of the population to control over 60% of the wealth, keeps the drug business going and keeps infrastructure projects from getting the most bang for the buck. It is possible for as much as 80% of project money to go to corruption. And it is corruption that Colombia fails to address.
Bush’s latest tactic to push through the FTA is stating that not passing it will undermine the security of our country. That tactic was used to invade Iraq and cost billions of US dollars as well as the lives of many Americans. Even without the FTA, the USA has already given Colombia over $5 Billion in military aid and continues to do so at over $600 million a year. There is no viable security threat from not passing the FTA at this time. Another reason from Bush for passage is that Colombia is a good friend of the USA. Well, our good friend just ordered 25 warplanes, not from a USA company, but from Israel.
When intelligently looking at all the factors, it is unmistakably clear that passage of the FTA at this time would not only support abuse of workers in Colombia, but adversely affect jobs in the USA. The United States has nothing to loose and all to gain by waiting to vote on the FTA with Colombia.
It may be mass murder, but it is NOT genocide.
The FTA benefits corporate America, another place they can go for cheap labor, to undermine American jobs for corporate profits. No benefit for workers in either country, continuing corruption and lawlessness, it’s a no-brainer to anyone except the Bush Administration and his comment about “undermining the security of our country(?)” is as lame as his comment that “all Americans have health care, they just go to the emergency room.” GEORGE BUSH IS THE SECURITY PROBLEM IN THIS COUNTRY!!!!
How many more days do we have to endure his stupid comments? The man is like a garbage disposal in reverse, spewing garbage wherever he goes….Please get a straitjacket and haul his sorry butt out of the White House….
To Shaurain: The American Heritage Dictionary defines genocide as: gen·o·cide (jěn’ə-sīd’) Pronunciation Key n. The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.
The Union movement is certainly political which is why they are consistently targeted by authoritarian regemes.
Martin Niemoller’s famous quote includes Unionists:
“In Germany they first came for the communists and I did not speak up because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak up
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak up
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Catholics and I did not speak up because I was a Protestant;
Then they came for me–
and by that time there was no one left to speak up.”
The Columbian oligarchy is intent on extinguishing Unionists.
Free trade or slave trade? How do you compete against labor willing to work for fifty cents an hour? You can’t, unless you want to live in a mud hut and eat dirt Cars are piling up in U.S. show rooms with dealers still trying to unload 07′ models. New homes sit vacant and older homes sit on the market for months. How many more good paying jobs can the U.S. afford to lose? Those already laid off accept jobs under $10 an hour out of desperation before unemployment runs out. One thing is certain, no large ticket items will be purchased on those wages!
By now we must have learned that Bush does not care about American workers who mistakenly put him in office but foreign workers who mostly dislike Americans. Hi is bent on low paid labor with Big Busness making billions more than ever before.
I’m afraid the fate of Columbia rests on what other countries do. In a poor nation, it is so easy for a corrupt business or a corrupt government to take advantage of the entire population. Are we any different in how we view Columbia. The United States has had union-phobia for decades and makes decisions that help corporations engage in anti-union activities. As long as this country continues to victimize workers who want nothing more than collective representation at the bargaining table, this country will NEVER intervene to prevent violence against union members abroad, not when there are monetary gains to be had.
What this country needs to do is proclaim that this is not how we are going to do business, and to insist that there is no trade agreements with countries that sponsor corruption and terrorism. Can we ever get that backbone? It will take more than a well-intentioned president. This we know. Congress needs to be unanimous in this decision. Corporations need to function with ethical guidelines. And the American people need to insist upon what they want for their own country, and how they want this country to treat the rest of the world. Count me in.