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Number of unionists killed rose even as homicide rate dropped under Uribe's law-and-order government.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070307/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_labor_murders;_ylt=AuxfbfHoc72rFjGbfZYMJtC3IxIF

Union organizing can be deadly in Colombia By SERGIO DE LEON, Associated Press Writer
Wed Mar 7, 7:57 AM ET

More than 800 trade unionists have been killed in Colombia over the past six years, by government count, yet the number of those murders solved can be counted on one hand.

Union organizing can be a deadly activity anywhere but is particularly dangerous in Colombia, where decades of political violence and lawlessness compel some unscrupulous employers to hire assassins.

"There's almost total impunity," claims Flavio Arias, vice president of the CUT labor umbrella organization, which represents Colombia's 530,000 unionized workers.

Now Colombia's reputation as the deadliest place in the world to be a labor organizer threatens to sink one of President Alvaro Uribe's proudest achievements: a free trade agreement with U.S. President George W. Bush, who is expected to use his visit to Colombia on March 11 to press for congressional approval.

The union-friendly Democrats who now control the U.S. Congress are so concerned about the unsolved labor murders that they are threatening to derail the trade pact entirely unless Uribe makes clear progress.

In a speech last May Day — the international day of the worker — Uribe boasted of "working with complete devotion so that one day we can stand before the world and say not a single trade unionist has been killed in Colombia."

Yet the number of slain unionists rose last year even as the homicide rate dropped under Uribe's law-and-order government. The Labor Ministry says 43 trade unionists were killed in 2005, and 58 last year.

None of those murders have been solved.

"Colombia's labor record is one of most problematic and controversial of any countries to sign a free trade agreement," said Thea Lee, policy director of the AFL-CIO, in Washington, D.C.

The biggest threat is hitmen hired by employers, especially in parts of the country where many workers toil in semi-feudal conditions and illegal militias hold sway.

That is the allegation in the 2001 murders of three mining union leaders murdered in 2001 in a case involving a U.S. coal company's Colombian arm.

A federal judge in Alabama on Monday, March 5 ruled that a civil suit could go to trial against Birmingham-based Drummond Co. Inc., whose local president is alleged to have played a role in the killings.

The suit says two union leaders were taken off a Drummond bus and shot to death by assassins hired by the company while a replacement union leader was also gunned down by paramilitaries.

Colombia's union membership rate, at about 5 percent, is one of Latin America's lowest and the chief federal prosecutor's office has a backlog of 1,300 cases of murders, threats and intimidation involving trade unionists.

"It's an embarrassment how slow we've been to take on these cases," said the chief of the office's human rights division, Leonardo Cabana. He's got just 13 prosecutors nationwide tackling the labor caseload.

Among the victims is Jorge Abril Parra, who was shot twice in the head last year on his way to work at "Tapas La Libertad," a metal caps and bottling plant owned by one of Colombia's biggest conglomerates.

Parra had survived a previous murder attempt but the company ignored requests from the Sintraime metal workers' union that he be transferred, said union president Felix Herrera.

A few months after Parra's murder, 25 frightened co-workers — all union members — accepted a company retirement offer.

Although there is no evidence linking Parra's employer to his murder, Herrera said "there's no doubt the company took advantage of his death to defeat the union." A spokeswoman for Tapas La Libertad did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

Often, the hostility toward unions comes from the top.

Jorge Sanchez, the vice minister of labor, told The Associated Press that unions inflate the numbers of slain members "because they thrive on violence and blood."

Protecting labor leaders does appear to be a government priority, however. Guarding them — with bulletproof vests or bodyguards — consumes 40 percent of a nearly $20 million security program for human rights activists, journalists and other threatened individuals.

But labor unions, and their Democratic allies, demand more.

"Countless numbers of trade unionists in Colombia have been intimidated, have been threatened and have been murdered," said Rep. James McGovern (news, bio, voting record), a Massachusetts Democrat who visited Colombia last week.

"Until those issues are addressed, I think there's going to be some rough sledding for the trade agreement."

Rep. Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record) of New York, the powerful new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, would not back the trade deal despite a lobbying trip by Uribe in November.

Nor would Rep. Gregory Meeks (news, bio, voting record), also of New York: "I don't think the free trade deal with Colombia will be approved in its current form."

___

AP writer Joshua Goodman contributed to this report.

By cali373 on Mar 7, 2007, 08:44 in Politics & the war.

KyleHanky says on Mar 7, 2007, 09:34:

The article... did point out what you said. It's in the first paragraph, and if anything, shows that your 95% is actually giving the government some leeway. Secondly, I didn't know that our Congresspeople don't want to upset their "union paymasters." Maybe I'm not a part of "everyone" or that's a ridiculous assumption. Unionists don't have much lobbying power, nor does Congress get paid by a union, unless our taxes are a union too.
A red herring is a pretty weak argument too, because this is a business deal. If business, as this article shows, is at times minimally complicit in the murders of the union leaders, one would think that putting some safeguards on business would be appropriate. Plus, these argeements are good ways to strengthen the justice system as Colombia's political elite want the agreement, and the Democrats want stronger justice assurance for unionists, the TLC is a good way for the Dems to assure that.
It's true you can't change the culture with just a trade agreement, but it can be part of the process. By denying the TLC this ability, the system would simply remain as it is today.

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Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 7, 2007, 10:03:

The big problem with this is that nobody is pointing out the REAL reason that US unions opposed the FTA. The killings of labor organizers seems like a total red-herring to me. The real reason for the AFL-CIO and others to oppose the FTA is because it threatens union jobs in the USA. There's no problem with them opposing it based on that, but using the dismal record of violence in Colombia as an excuse is just silly. Even if there'd been zero killings of labor activists in Colombia last year the US unions would still oppose the FTA.

If you look around at other FTA negotiations, you'll see that the same group of US interests ALWAYS finds some sort of red herring that has nothing to do with their real reasons.

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Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 7, 2007, 13:52:

Mike. You forgot to mention The involvement of your beloved FARC in the problem, too.

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Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 7, 2007, 18:52:

I hear that it depends a lot on the union whether the FARC is for them or against them.

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Sr Tertius says on Mar 7, 2007, 19:40:

No red herring Just a quick comment on "the big problem": Yes, it is the job of unions anywhere to guarantee the best conditions for labor, but sometimes that can be accomplished indirectly. By pressuring for raising the standards on which labor operates on nations with whom the US intends to deregulate trade, US labor not only facilitates a fair competition against Colombian labor, but it also raises the conditions on which Colombians work. It's a win-win situation. I don't see what's the big fuss against it.

"When the finger points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger" (Chinese proverb)

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Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 7, 2007, 20:04:

I think you misunderstood me, Tertius.

I didn't say there was anything wrong with labor from the US trying to improve the conditions of labor in other countries. In fact, I'm in favor of that.

But I have a bit of experience with FTA stuff and EVERY time the US negotiates an FTA, American labor comes up with all sorts of red-herring issues as proxies for their central issue.

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Sr Tertius says on Mar 8, 2007, 17:33:

Two points Mr. H: I'm not familiar with the workings of US unions, so I take your word about the red-herring strategy. The complaint about labor conditions in Colombia, though, is does not fall--at least not necessarily--in that category.

Tinto: You point out that that article should've mention the large impunity rate in Colombia. Maybe. But even such high base rate does not explain the problem with union leaders: The number of murders of union members everywhere in the world outside Colombia doesn't even add up to Colombia's stats. Colombia is a pretty violent place, but we still haven't got to the point where we hold the majority of murders in the world. Union leaders are specifically being targeted.

"When the finger points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger" (Chinese proverb)

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juancegomez says on Mar 8, 2007, 18:47:

Tinto You have a point there, and another thing worth noting is that the number of unionists killed is still quite a bit lower than it was a decade or more ago, even if the fact that it continues to happen at all is no laughing matter. Rather, it is in fact a reasonable protesting matter.

But simply saying that the number rose from one year to another is hardly a good argument though, when the problem's been around for more than twenty years.

Sr Tertius:

I also don't see anything wrong with pressuring an improvement of labor standards....although it's still a bit ironic in the sense that the U.S. Democrats want to impose on us some provisions that do not even apply within their own country.

But if the U.S. actually wants to seriously enforce something like that, it should begin by policing what its nation's own companies do abroad (here in Colombia, in this case), and by imposing sanctions not on the entire country but on those companies, Colombian and otherwise, which participate in such killings or abuses.

We may be the country where more unionists have been killed over a certain XX number of years, but on a per year basis the situation can probably vary, and IMHO it would also be worth looking into which sectors are the most affected.

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