AFL-CIO: No Colombia Trade Deal Until Violence Ends

The violence against workers is continuing in Colombia despite the labor action plan that President Juan Manuel Santos agreed to in April. Until that violence ends, the United States should not approve the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said.

In a letter today to President Obama, Trumka also says Colombia is suppressing the rights of indigenous people and the country’s minority Afro-Colombian community.

Santos’s labor action plan has proved ineffective, Trumka says, as workers continue to be forced to sign“ pactos colectivos,” which unilaterally determine salary and benefit schemes imposed by employers. Or they are forced to join cooperatives or cooperative-like structures to prevent workers from forming a union. Workers also are illegally fired for legitimate union activity and threatened and even killed, he says.

Twenty-two union leaders have been killed so far this year in Colombia, including 15 since the labor action plan went into effect, Trumka says.

While the new government may have good intentions, unfortunately, on the ground, Colombian working families are neither safer nor more able to exercise their basic rights. Colombia continues to be the most dangerous place in the world to be a union member.

“Simply put,” Trumka says, “Colombia should not be rewarded with a trade agreement until it develops a proven track record of ensuring that workers can exercise the fundamental rights of free association and collective bargaining; preventing violence against union leaders and other social justice advocates; and bringing to justice those who have perpetrated such crimes.”