Violence Escalates Against Trade Union Leaders in Colombia

 

Cohen speaks at news conference with Colombian unionists and congressional supporters.

While the Bush administration continues its strong-arm tactics to try to pass the anti-worker Colombia Free Trade Agreement, members of Congress and U.S. unions this week welcomed a group of Colombian labor leaders who have received death threats, survived attempts on their lives and are still bravely fighting for workers' rights in a country where union activists are murdered.

At a news conference on Capitol Hill with Colombian union leaders and key members of Congress, CWA President Larry Cohen praised the great courage of Colombian workers and unionists. In Colombia, "workers have no rights. Only owners have rights," he said.

The paramilitary groups that carry out the threats and killings are almost never caught and punished. Between that terror campaign and some of the world's weakest workers' rights laws, only 2 percent of the workforce is unionized, Cohen said.                       

"Multinational corporations have become part of the anti-union culture," Evan Torro Lopez of the bank workers' association in Colombia told the media, naming well known American brands. "They take advantage of the anti-union culture to make more profit."

"We are witnessing a terrible increase in the violence against trade unionists," Cohen noted. "Already in 2008, 24 have been murdered, a rate of over one a week. Last year at the same time, 17 unionists had been assassinated."

Cohen and visiting Colombians were joined at the news conference by other union leaders and by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine). Answering a reporter's question, Brown said almost all Democrats are opposed to the Colombia FTA and so are a growing number of Republicans.

In April, the labor movement's pressure on Congress to reject the Colombia FTA paid off when the U.S. House voted 224-195 to lift the 90-day "fast track" time limit to vote on the flawed proposal. Without fast track, Congress can delay action on the pact indefinitely, though the White House is pushing for action.

Brown condemned the administration's "job-killing trade agreements" and said the Colombia pact "is a disadvantage for workers and unions in Colombia and a disadvantage for workers and unions in the United States."

Michaud said he has personally confronted Colombian President Uribe about the violence against labor activists in his country. "He issued an unconvincing flat denial in the hopes that we would turn a blind eye toward the violence in order to pass a free trade agreement," he said. "I am here to say that the congressional majority will not turn a blind eye."

Pointing out the visiting Colombians, he added that, "There is a human face to these trade agreements, and those faces are here today."