Colombia unionists still in the crossfire
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LABOR BRIEFS
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US casualties of free trade policies to brief Congress

Oakland, California, June 2— In an open challenge to the United States Trade Representative and the Bush administration’s economic policies, a delegation of America’s working poor from all walks of life will expose the harsh reality behind free trade at a congressional briefing, sponsored by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on June 12 in Washington, DC.

US Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick, argues that free trade helps American workers, saying, “It is our shared hemispheric vision that free trade and openness benefits everyone and provides opportunity, prosperity and hope to all our peoples.”

Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, the United States has lost an estimated three million jobs. Today, those Americans who have found employment in the post-NAFTA economy work longer hours, with less job security and fewer benefits. Overall, real wages have remained stagnant and the low-skill jobs created by free trade agreements on average pay 13 percent less than before.

“One of the great myths perpetuated by the United States government is that free trade helps poor people and communities in America,” said Anuradha Mittal, co-director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, the organizers of the briefing. “No one has asked working Americans what their experience has been. We’ve had NAFTA for nearly a decade and its effects have been tragic. Now Congress will hear the truth from representatives of the hundreds of thousands of people who lose from free trade.”

Several members of Congress, including Representatives Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, Marcy Kaptur, and Sheila Jackson-Lee, will preside over the briefing.

“With our economy on the skids and unemployment on the rise, now more than ever, it is time for us to review how NAFTA and our trade policies have had a damaging effect on this economy,” said Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH). “I look forward to participating in this important forum and taking a critical review of these polices.”

“The spectrum of testimony at the briefing is broad, from workers in US sweatshops, to farmworkers, family farmers and unionized workers,” said Christine Ahn, Coordinator of the briefing. “As the US prepares to seal the WTO Doha round, CAFTA and the FTAA, this briefing could not be more timely. The voices of these Americans deserve to be heard.”

Testifying organizations include AFL-CIO, American Corn Growers Association, Association of Border Workers, Black Farmers & Agriculturalist Association, California Senate Select Committee, Charleston 5 International Longshoreman’s Association, Chinese Progressive Association, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Fuerza Unida, National Family Farm Coalition, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association, Public Citizen, Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network, and United Farm Workers of America.

Source: FoodFirst

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Colombia unionists still in the crossfire

By Gustavo Capdevila

Geneva, Switzerland, June 9 (IPS)— The labor union movement in Colombia is caught between the bullets of guerrillas and paramilitaries and the violations of their freedom of association, said worker leaders taking part in the International Labor Conference this week in Geneva.

Last year, 170 Colombian unionists were assassinated, most by right-wing paramilitaries and at least 19 by leftist guerrillas of the revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), according to a report by the New York-based organization Human Rights Watch.

The Alvaro Uribe government’s discourse for the Labor Conference underscores the decline in the number of unionists assassinated, from 60 in the first five months of 2002 to 25 in the same period this year, said Julio Gómez, secretary-general of the Confederation of Democratic Workers of Colombia (CGTD).

The official Colombia delegation, headed by Vice-President Francisco Santos, is going to present that figure as evidence that progress is being made, according to Gómez.

But labor leaders from Colombia contend that the murder of one union activist is as serious as the murder of a thousand. The government’s line of reasoning does not make sense, commented Cérvulo Bautista Matomá, another top leader of the CGTD.

Furthermore, the attacks on union freedoms in Colombia are increasingly intolerable, commented Gómez.

The offensive is eroding three of the movement’s achievements: the right to organize, the right to collective bargaining, and the right to strike.

The two labor leaders said the criminal attacks on unionists is an attack on the unions themselves, as there has been “a dramatic decline” in the ability to attract new members.

In Colombia the long-standing systems for hiring personnel practically have been liquidated and the right to collective bargaining and to free association have become a sham, said Matomá.

The situation has reached such a critical point that some are saying it is easier to set up a guerrilla front than to organize a union, Gómez said.

Companies engage in massive layoffs if they get wind of any sort of effort to create a union, and no authority protects the right to organize, in spite of the fact that this right is stipulated in the constitution and in the labor code, he said.

But Colombia is no exception in the anti-labor union climate predominating in Latin America, where a common policy is apparently common throughout, fruit of the structural adjustment requirements of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank for countries seeking loans.

Thus the problem runs even deeper in Colombia, given that in addition to the assassination of unionists, there is the structural adjustment strategy, with new hiring rules and the disappearance of the state as a social arbiter, said the CGTD secretary-general.

Undoubtedly in countries like Argentina, Chile or Mexico, working people do not need to think twice about whether to set up a union or not, while the Colombian workers who approach labor organizations do so with the double fear of losing their jobs and losing their lives.

As a result, the CGTD leaders aim to provoke debate about the threatened lives of union activists and the threats to unions themselves as the International Labor Conference gets underway. The tripartite meeting — of government, private sector and worker representatives — lasts through June 19.

The Conference is the highest decision-making body of the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations agency entrusted with overseeing labor relations with sights on maintaining harmony.

The Colombian union leaders’ denunciations will be aimed at the business executives who threaten or harass those workers who demand respect for their labor rights.

They will also lay out accusations against the public sector for eliminating collective labor agreements, as the state-run Colombian Petroleum Enterprise intends to do, which has pushed the workers to the verge of a strike, noted Matomá.

The workers’ representation from the war-torn South American nation will demand that the ILO implement more effective provisions than the existing special programs for protecting union activists.

“There is not enough in the budget to cover the costs of protecting the 500,000 members of our organization,” said Gómez.

“I have an armored car and four bodyguards,” but there are other colleagues who face the same threats but do not have the special car or the guards, noted the CGTD leader.

Gómez and Matomá are confident that their country’s case will reach the Administrative Tribunal, the ILO body that is second in authority only to the Conference.

The Tribunal is made up of 28 government delegates, 14 private sector delegates and several worker delegates. Government representatives from the 10 countries “of industrial importance” hold permanent seats: Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the US.

At the next meeting of the Tribunal, to begin June 20, the Colombian delegation will officially request the creation of a special survey commission for their country.

The ILO sets up such special commissions for critical cases, as with Burma (Myanmar), where a survey commission looked into the matter of forced labor.

Gómez admitted there is a possibility that the private sector delegates and some governments might oppose the creation of a special ILO commission for Colombia, but he said that the union leaders will insist, because the international community must assume its share of responsibility for “the holocaust” occurring in Colombia.

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