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91 Trade Unionists Murdered in 2007 |
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A total of 91 trade unionists were murdered for fighting for workers’ rights worldwide in 2007, according to the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC’s) Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights, released late last month.
Colombia, where 39 union members were killed in 2007, again tops the list of most dangerous countries to be a union member. While there was a slight reduction in killings in Colombia compared with the previous year, ITUC says many attempts to kill Colombian unionists failed, and there was a notable increase in forced removals, arbitrary arrests, illegal raids and threats, especially in agriculture, health and education.
In Guinea, 30 unionists were murdered. ITUC says the regime of President Lansana Conte was directly responsible for the killing of 30 unionists during the brutal repression of union-organized public demonstrations against corruption and violations of fundamental rights.
The survey also noted a disturbing increase in violence in Guatemala as trade unions were increasingly targeted, with four unionists murdered and a worsening climate of threats and harassment.
ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder says:
Repression of legitimate trade union activities…continued unabated in every continent. Murder, violence and torture, along with harassment, dismissal and imprisonment, were all used to stop working people organising unions and bargaining collectively for decent pay and working conditions. Several governments were only too ready to openly or covertly support unscrupulous employers who deny fundamental rights to their employees.
Governments have failed to do enough to protect workers’ rights, either at home or in their international diplomatic, economic and trade relations.
The survey also singled out the United States and Australia among industrialized nations for restricting workers’ freedom to form unions, citing court decisions in Australia and the Bush National Labor Relations Board rulings in this country.
Several disturbing trends emerged in the survey, which covers worker rights violations in 138 countries. Among those: collusion between some governments and employers to deprive workers of their legitimate rights to union membership and representation. Serious and systematic harassment and intimidation was reported in 63 countries.
Seventy-three unionists were sent to prison in 2007, including 40 in Iran, where systematic suppression of workers organizing in transportation and education continued. Fourteen unionists were jailed in Morocco and seven in Burma, where the junta targeted union activists as part of its brutal crackdown on any moves for democracy and human rights.
In Africa, employers in several countries used lax labor laws to encourage splits in trade unions and create employer-controlled groups to replace independent trade unions. Conditions were especially bad in Zimbabwe and Swaziland, which also appeared on a list of countries where Chinese-owned and -funded projects were cited for poor working conditions and exploitation of the workforce.
In the Middle East and Asia:
- Saudi employers beat four female Indonesian domestic workers so badly that two died, and police forcibly removed the other two from the hospital.
- Two trade unionists, one of whom was abducted and tortured, were killed due to their union activities in Iraq.
- Murders of trade unionists were once again reported in Cambodia and the Philippines.
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With all this killing and intimidation it makes one wonder why leading Democrats would support secret ballot union elections in these countries and be pushing for the EFCA here in the United States. Oh well.
Door:
Looks like the corporate propaganda on Employee Free Choice Act has spread far and wide. Here’s the deal: The Employee Free Choice Act WOULD NOT take away the secret ballot for workers considering whether to join a union.
The bill adds a new process to the National Labor Relations Act but does not eliminate any of its current provisions. The Employee Free Choice Act would enable workers seeking to join a union to do so in two ways:
1. Majority sign-up or “card-check” recognition. If 51 percent or more workers sign cards indicating they want a union, they would have one.
2. Secret ballot election. A two-step process in which workers first sign cards saying that they want a union and then they have to vote to have a union. This lengthy process gives companies time to harass and intimidate workers thinking of joining a union.
Unlike the current process, the Employee Free Choice Act would enable workers, not management, to choose the method by which to determine whether they want to unionize, by majority sign up or election.
Working people are struggling to make ends meet and the Employee Free Choice Act will allow more people to bargain for better wages and working conditions—which in turn helps rebuild our middle class and create an economy that works for all.
Big Business is spending millions of dollars to spread the lie that the Employee Free Choice Act would take away the election process. It’s not true. Here is the text of the bill:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.800:
You are correct because I have read the act. It is the rest of the public that needs to be clear on this. So far I have not seen any rebuttal to what has been in the media. Maybe there will be a more robust dialog from labor leaders soon in the public arena.
I know of one website that challenged the AFL-CIO to a debate on the subject during the campaign. It seems right now that labor is willing to take all the bad PR and not stand up for itself with the EFCA. I hope my perseption is incorrect
The most telling in this article is that the United States and Australia are singled out for restricting unions by denying workers their rights to organize. When the United States can strong arm anti-union activities, while claiming to be a democracy and professing personal freedoms, it is setting a precedent for other nations to do the same. If another nation already has a history of human rights violations, this just gives more justifiable fodder for their deplorable acts toward their people. Exploitation is the name of the game. Whatever policies the United States implements in regard to labor is sure to be followed by other nations, and those nations with a corrupt social agenda will take extreme measures to squash union activities.
This is pathetic, not only because our country has been discriminating against unionists for many decades, but also for encouraging this practice world-wide, which has been responsible for the most horrendous and deplorable escalation of human rights violations everywhere. Our nation has already crossed that line with its justification for allowing torture. Together with the NLRB rulings, we have made a hypocritical name for ourselves, and one that will be difficult to reverse.
Like it or not, the world is watching what we do, and unless we take an aggressive stand to protect the labor movement and need for effective unions and worker rights in this country, the rest of the world will find no logical reason to do anything different.
What do we make of this? From Undernews:
http://prorev.com/2008/11/eric-holder-chiquita-and-colombia-death.html
ERIC HOLDER, CHIQUITA & THE AND COLOMBIA DEATH SQUADS
Kevin Gray, Portfolio, October 2007 - For years, Chiquita Brands secretly paid off death squads in Colombia. Now the U.S. Congress is asking questions . . .
In northern Colombia’s lush banana-growing region . . . Chiquita Brands International, the $655 million fruit giant, slipped into a blood-soaked scandal. Between 1997 and 2004, Chiquita gave $1.7 million to the A.U.C., whose death squads destroyed unions, terrorized workers, and killed thousands of civilians. Chiquita’s top officials admit approving the payments but say they thought that if they didn’t pay up, the A.U.C. would kill its employees and attack its facilities. Because the U.S. State Department has labeled the A.U.C. a terrorist organization, federal prosecutors charged Chiquita in March with engaging in transactions with terrorists. In an agreement with the Justice Department, Chiquita pleaded guilty and will pay a $25 million fine . . .
The firm’s lawyers have struggled to explain publicly that Chiquita had to make a choice between “life and law” and that it chose the “humanitarian” route of protecting its workers. “This company was in a bad position dealing with bad guys,” says Eric Holder, a Washington attorney representing Chiquita. “There’s absolutely no suggestion of any personal gain here. It’s not a case like Tyco, where someone is squirreling money away. No one is out buying great shower curtains.”
As a corporation, though, Chiquita stood to benefit greatly from the lethal cleansing that Castano delivered. At the time, the Marxist guerrillas routinely kidnapped U.S. executives, blew up railroads, and sabotaged oil pipelines. Chiquita says it became increasingly difficult to protect its workers and their families. Castano’s death squads, however, were squarely pro-business. They were not just ridding Uraba of guerrillas; they were killing leftists and eradicating unions . . .
During the A.U.C.’s reign of terror, according to the federal complaint, the region would become Chiquita’s most profitable farming operation in the world.
While the A.U.C. was murdering thousands of Colombians, “to our knowledge, the paramilitaries never touched a hair on the head of a U.S. citizen or company,” says Adam Isacson, director of the Colombia program at the Center for International Policy, in Washington. In fact, Isacson says, the A.U.C.’s stranglehold brought “a strange form of peace to the region through terror. It created a much more friendly business environment.”
But for Eric Holder, Chiquita’s lawyer, that argument falls flat. “It’s like saying a shopkeeper feels safe because the Mob is extorting him for protection payments,” Holder says. “You’re not paying these guys to protect you from someone else; you’re paying them to protect you from them.”
Scott Creighton - Barack Obama, the man who spoke so eloquently in the last debate about not passing the Columbia Free Trade Agreement until more was done to bring the killers of the union workers to justice, has just announced that he is going to make the lawyer for one of the companies responsible for these killings, his Attorney General. You can’t make this stuff up.
There are also allegations from a French NGO that Chiquita is exposing it’s workers to a dangerous pesticide. So the workers that don’t get killed by their Chiquita Death Squads, will slowly wither away from horrible illnesses.
There are also criminal charges pending facing some Chiquita executives, in Columbia.
Chiquita is only the tip of the iceberg. The former head of Colombia’s DAS (their version of the FBI) and former campaign manager for the President of the country was found to be passing union member names to paramilitary death squads. More recently both the United Nations and Amnesty International have found that Colombian military units financed by US money have been killing innocent civilians including union members. One report stats the killing is worse than during the 17 years of terror by Chile’s General Pinochet. Corruption is so bad in the country that even the best labor laws written into FTA’s are not worth the paper they are written on.
The article mentions that 2007 murders of union members was a reduction from 2006. However it should be noted that already in 2008 the murders have exceeded those in 2007, so Colombia is getting worse instead of better in regards to this. It should also be noted that there remains very little change in the pathetic 3% arrest and conviction rate for those committing murders of union members.
The Democrats in the American congress have said that before there is passage of the FTA that Colombia must show SUSTAINED results. This increase in murders takes them back to square one.