Mexico’s Mineros to Receive Meany-Kirkland Award
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Over the past five years, the Mexican government has unleashed a systematic attack on workers’ rights. Despite the continuing repression, Mexico’s independent, democratic unions organize and represent the rights of workers. Some of the most egregious attacks have been on the Mine, Metal and Steel Workers Union (SNTMMSSRM), also known as Los Mineros.
The AFL-CIO is awarding Los Mineros and their leader, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, the 2011 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award. The award will be formally presented later this year. Click here to read the resolution in English and here for Spanish.
Gómez was first elected general secretary of the SNTMMSSRM in 2002 and immediately began challenging government policies of low wages and flexible labor markets, and building alliances with the global trade union movement.
AFL-CIO, Global Unions Applaud New Egyptian Labor Movement
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Representatives of the Egyptian union movement announced they are forming a new labor federation, the Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions, which will represent workers in more than a dozen industries and enterprises. The federation also plans to set a date for a nationwide general strike for democracy and fundamental rights. Many people believe the labor demonstrations in the past two years played a significant role in giving Egyptian citizens courage to stand up to the government.
In a letter today to Egyptian union leaders Kamal Abbas and Kamal Abu Eita, recipients of last year’s George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka praised the workers’ “extraordinary courage and defiance of a ban on free and independent unions.”
Yesterday we learned that your organizations joined with retirees, the technical health professionals and representatives of workers in the important industrial areas to announce the organization of a new labor federation to represent workers in a new era of democracy in Egypt. We salute you in this brave endeavor and join the international labor movement in standing with you.
Colombian Activist Yessika Hoyos Receives AFL-CIO Human Rights Award
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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.
Paramilitary Members Face Justice in Murders of Two Colombian Union Leaders
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Eight long years after Colombian trade union leaders Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita Amaya were assassinated, those directly responsible for these heinous crimes are being punished.
Just yesterday, Alcides Maneul Mattos Tavares, alias “el Samario,” confessed to having participated as one of the gunmen. The other assassin, Jairo Charris Jesus, was sentenced Aug. 7 to 30 years in prison for his role in the murders. Both men were members of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), the umbrella paramilitary organization.
Two other paramilitary leaders, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias “Jorge 40,” and Oscar Jose Ospina Pacheco, alias “Tolemaida,” also face trial for their involvement in these crimes. Tovar’s case is complicated, however, by the fact that he was extradited to the United States on drug-trafficking charges earlier this year.
Locarno and Orcasita, president and vice president, respectively, of Sintramienergica, the mine and energy workers union, were killed in March 2001. Both worked for the U.S.-based mining multinational, Drummond.
