Daily Acts of Heroism in Colombia

Over the past 15 years, the trade agreements that the United States has entered into with other nations have been, when it comes to ensuring the rights of workers in those nations, merely outrageous and inadequate. Now the administration is about to send up to Capitol Hill a new accord that takes our trade agreements to a whole new level. The proposed agreement is with the government of Colombia, and it's ridiculous.

Colombia, you see, has a bit of a workers' rights problem. It's not just that more union leaders, activists and members are killed in Colombia than in any other nation. It's that, year in and year out, more unionists are killed in Colombia than in all other nations combined. In 2004, according to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which produces an annual tally of people killed because of their union activities, 145 unionists around the world were murdered. Of these, 99 were killed in Colombia. Colombia's labor college, the Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS), came up with a slightly lower count: 94. Either way, that's about two-thirds of the entire planet's casualty count.

And the 2004 death count was a bit on the light side by Colombian standards. In 2002 the number of murdered Colombian unionists, according to the ENS, was 184; in 2003 it was 91. Last year the figure dropped to a mere 70, but in the first three months of this year, it surged to 29. All in all, more than 4,000 Colombians have been murdered for their union commitments since the early 1980s.

One reason for this epidemic of homicides is that killing a unionist is a punishment-free crime. Of the roughly 3,000 murders of unionists between 1986 and 2002, according to a study being released tomorrow by the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, only 376 were even investigated by the government, and the number of guilty verdicts returned in those cases totaled five. For the statistically minded among you, that's a conviction rate of one-sixth of 1 percent. Kill a unionist in Colombia and you have about as much chance of doing time as you do of being hit by lightning.

The violence against Colombian unionists afflicts every unionized sector of the nation's economy. The largest number of victims come from the teachers union, since unionized teachers are found, and killed, even in remote villages. But industrial, service and farm workers are regularly slain as well. In December 1996, to take just one case, two members of the local right-wing paramilitary fired 10 shots into Isidro Segundo Gil, a union activist at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa, and later that night, their energies not yet expended, set fire to the local union offices. Segundo's widow, Alcira Gil, spent the next several years seeking justice in the Colombian courts and reparations from Coca-Cola, with which Segundo's union had been involved in a contractual dispute at the time of his murder. In 2000 Alcira Gil, too, was murdered, leaving two children orphaned. The charges against Segundo's alleged killers were dropped.

Colombia is a land of dropped charges and aborted investigations, because judges and prosecutors are themselves often the victims of paramilitary and guerrilla violence. According to an ENS study, however, the killers of unionists -- in those instances when the police have been able to identify the killers -- tend overwhelmingly to come from the paramilitaries, private armies in the service of drug lords, large landowners and the occasional factory. Unions, after all, run counter to the laissez-faire ethos that is apparently dear to the paramilitaries' hearts. "We kill trade unionists," Carlos Castano, the former leader of AUC, the nation's largest paramilitary group, once said, "because they interfere with people working."

And in Colombia people work. With unions' ability to set minimal standards for workers under constant and deadly assault, even children work.

That Colombia's million-member union movement functions at all, given the steady reign of paramilitary terror and governmental indifference (if not complicity) to which it is subjected, is a testament to countless acts of daily heroism. The movement is no fan of the proposed trade accord, which it fears will allow U.S. agribusiness to undercut Colombia's non-drug-related agricultural economy while doing nothing about the nation's abysmal standards of worker rights. For the average Colombian, the trade agreement would add insult to what is all too often deadly injury.

SOURCE: Harold Meyerson (2006, June 14). Ratifying Death in Colombia :[FINAL Edition]. The Washington Post,p. A.23

By platano on Jun 14, 2006, 21:20 in Politics & the war.

juancegomez says on Jun 15, 2006, 09:21:

Platano I sure hope that these same people that are lobbying so hard against the FTA will lobby just as hard or harder in favor of an extension of ATPDEA (sic) that includes Colombia, or else the irony and hypocrisy will be overflowing.

If there's such "clamor" against the FTA then there should be huge support in favor of a new ATPDEA, or else more injuries than insults will quickly become evident. And that won't help the workers one bit, I tell you.

If the economy goes down the drain, clamoring in favor of workers' rights will be even more meaningless and useless, since many of the workers themselves would become unemployed as a result of the ensuing crisis.

And, in those circumstances, it's also likely that the trend will reverse itself and more union murders will occur (rather than less, as the article explictly accepts is already the case. There are fewer union-related deaths today than in 1986, by far).

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Tinto (Moderator) says on Jun 15, 2006, 09:35:

Exactamundo Reading about the Ecuadorians speaking out of both sides of their mouth about their (precarious) flower industry is quite enlightening.

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jccg says on Jun 18, 2006, 05:14:

TLC = more jobs? I have never understand that equation!! I just remember Gaviria's period and the economical aperture.... Closing fatelares, tejicondor (if my memory do not trick on me) and leting Coltejer and Faricato almost out of bussness... yes, a lot of jobs!
I hope I would be wrong about TLC.... may be it would be good... who knows...

This is just the true!!

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jccg says on Jun 18, 2006, 05:17:

Of course it has it's benefits more expensive food but a lot chipper cars and computers! (however, if you can't feed yourself properly, would you buy a brand new laptop?)

This is just the true!!

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juancegomez says on Jun 20, 2006, 17:27:

jccg "La apertura" was unilateral. The "TLC", at least in theory and according to the terms of the agreement, also includes the increased access of many Colombian products and services to the U.S. market.

That should make at least a small to moderate difference, but I'm not saying that it will be painless either.

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mcraig says on Jul 30, 2006, 15:08:

Coca- Cola I read about the coca cola plant your talking about not too long ago an if I remmber right this plant is owned an operated by colombians? Am I right? An this post in incredibily one sided with no proof of the other sides remarks. If a unionist damgages equipment or gathers to protest with a gun there going to be arrested or shot in the US as well. But, there is a whole other side to this story that needs to be told. I know that CAFTA is still out there but the US hasnt passed it yet but if they do its stacked with mandatory workers rights. What I do know is the larger plants that came to Mexico towns with companies like GM, Hanes, all kinds of clothing apparell companies they had the same problem. AT GM they paid there starting shift workers a $1.75 an hour ameican , gave the medical insurance an profit sharing an they still protested. In mexican money that 1.75 is like 18 pesos an hour which is good money an comparable to what ameican workers make. An I know that some of the companies got so tired of the complaining they just moved there companies to another country where the employees where not so hard to deal with .

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