Colombian Activist Yessika Hoyos Receives AFL-CIO Human Rights Award   by James Parks, Sep 17, 2009

Share

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka presents the AFL-CIO Human Rights Award to Columbian unionist Yessika Hoyos.

Seven years ago, Colombian union leader Jorge Dario Hoyos was assassinated. But his death did not silence his family’s search for justice. His daughter, Yessika, followed in her father’s steps, risking her life in pursuit of workers’ rights and challenging the power of corporations and a government that does little to protect the rights and lives of workers.

Today, the AFL-CIO presented Yessika Hoyos with the 2008 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award for “her extraordinary courage, her dedication to the cause of workers’ rights in Colombia and her commitment to ending impunity for those responsible.” 

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, a friend of Dario Hoyos, praised Yessica as “an incredible woman.”

As a lawyer, she has fought tirelessly to bring her father’s killers to justice and to end the cycle of violence in her native land. Even though the low-level trigger men responsible for her father’s death have been prosecuted, the masterminds who ordered Dario Hoyos’ death have not been found—an all-too-common scenario in the deadliest country in the world for union members.

Accepting the award, Hoyos said through an interpreter that despite the difficult conditions workers in Colombia face in exercising their defense of human rights and worker rights, the solidarity of the U.S. union movement helps them go on.  

You are the multipliers of our energy and our commitment. You strengthen our voices that demand justice and truth. You are the power in our raised fists. Your actions and your support encourage us to continue on our difficult path that will finally bring us to better and more dignified destinations. Thank you to all of you for being the multipliers of our memory, our voices, our hopes and our dreams. 

Global solidarity also was on display at the convention as the leaders of two of our closest labor allies and the head of the global labor federation spoke to the delegates. Some 50 international guests from trade unions on six continents were on stage during today’s meeting. 

Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents 170 million workers in 157 countries, said:

International solidarity isn’t just in our blood, it’s in our interests. The lessons to be learned from the economic catastrophe of the last year are that it just isn’t safe to leave the globalized economy in the hands of rampant global capital.

That labor has to forge the links of its global chain of solidarity in steel so that they will not cede to those who would break us by pitting the workers of one nation against those of others.

Urging delegates to strongly support efforts to organize, Canadian Labour Congress President Ken Georgetti said:

The more union members we have the better governments we can elect and the better societies we can create for all.

He also pointed out that with all the criticism of the Canadian universal health care system by U.S. opponents of health care reform, not one worker at any labor meeting has asked to switch from their system to the U.S. system. 

Convention delegates also heard video greetings from Brendan Barber, general secretary of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC). Barber reminded delegates that the global union movement faces serious challenges and that the recession has hurt all workers.

We must see that our governments act to deliver justice, deliver jobs, opportunities and optimism for the future. That is our job as a labor movement—to help people live better lives by working together.

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article |Comments (3)