Philadelphia, April 1: Hear Edgar Paez, from the National Board of SINALTRAINAL
Dear
Sisters and
Brothers,
We hope that you
can join us to welcome and hear Edgar Paez, from the National Board of
SINALTRAINAL, the Colombian union of the food industry workers. He will
be
April 1-2, 2008, in Philadelphia as part of a tour through the U.S. to bring
attention
to the danger not only for Colombian workers, but for workers in the U.S
as
well, of signing a Free Trade agreement with Colombia. Please read the letter below from USW president Leo Gerard about the
conditions
of Colombian workers.
On Tuesday
April 1st there will be a public meeting at AFSCME DC 47 (1606 Walnut
St.) at 7PM. (AFSCME DC 47 is
cosponsoring the
event)
We would like you
and/or your
organization to:
Co-sponsor/Endorse
the event
Get
the word out on your lists, etc.
Attend
the meeting
Help
financially so this crucial information from SINALTRAINAL can be heard
widely.
Checks can be made to the IAC
writing
"Colombia" on the memo and sent to IAC, 813 South 48th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19143; or by PayPal
account. Go to
Paypal.com
and enter phillyactivist@action-mail.org as the recipient.
For
more information, please contact us at PhillyIAC@action-mail.org or call
Berta at 267-257-7742.
In solidarity,
Berta
Joubert-Ceci,
For
the Philadelphia Chapter of the International Action Center
Letter from USW President Leo
Gerard
Below is a moving letter sent at the end of February by the USW
President Leo W. Gerard to the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the
Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid where you will find some of the hard
realities that
affect Colombian workers and therefore the necessity to oppose the FTA
the
President Bush so strongly is pushing. I hope you can take a time to
read it.
[At this time, March 23, there have been NINE (9)trade unionists killed
in
Colombia this year]
Dear
Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid:
I
am writing regarding the recent AFL-CIO delegation to Colombia. While I
unfortunately was unable to go to Colombia as a consequence of an urgent
health
issue, the USW was represented on this trip by Associate General Counsel
Dan
Kovalik who has a great deal of experience with the Colombian labor
situation,
having traveled to Colombia fourteen times in recent years. I was
thoroughly
briefed by Mr. Kovalik upon his return.
The
union delegation to Colombia met with the leaders and numerous members of all
three major union confederations in Colombia – the CUT, CGT and CTC,
which collectively represent around 217,000 workers – as well as the
confederation of pensioners (the CPC). Despite intimations to the
contrary by
some members of the U.S. Congress, all four of these major
confederations are
unanimous in their opposition to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The
members
of the AFL-CIO delegation found out why on their trip to
Colombia.
Representatives of Colombian unions told of how unions in
Colombia are disappearing – both as a result of overt anti-union =
violence
as well as legal maneuvers by the current Uribe Administration.
Consequently,
only a mere 60,000 out of 18 million Colombian workers (less than 1%)
are
protected under a labor contract.
In regard to anti-union “legal” maneuvers, the Uribe
Administration
– in clear violation of the core labor standards of Conventions 87
&
98 of the ILO (conventions which Colombia has ratified) -- has stripped
thousands of workers of their bargaining rights by legislation which
denies
public sector workers the right to bargain collectively; delaying,
denying and
taking away the registration of unions without cause; denying the right
to
bargain to temporary and cooperative workers as well as to
subcontractors;
allowing the blacklisting of trade unionists and union supporters; and
denying
the right to strike to numerous workers, including our fellow union
workers in
the oil industry. As to this latter issue, Congressman Wilson Borja
explained
to the union delegation how the Uribe Administration is labeling more
and more
segments of the economy, such as the oil and other extractive
industries, as
“essential” and thus immune from the legal right to
strike.
Moreover,
it is those relatively few remaining workers who are protected by labor
contracts who are being targeted for assassination in Colombia. In
short, there
are significantly fewer union workers in Colombia left to kill, but they
are
still being killed. Just this year, five (5) unionists have already been
killed.
While
I cannot recount all of the heart-wrenching stories the delegation heard
about
lives destroyed by the continuing anti-labor assault in Colombia, I
wanted to
at least give you a sample of such stories.
Fo
r
example, members of the Sintraemcali union (the union of the Cali
municipal
workers), many of them women, took a long bus ride just for the
opportunity to
meet with the delegation in Bogota. These individuals told the
delegation how
51 of the most active unionists, including themselves, were fired in
retaliation for their challenge to President Uribe’s plan to
privatize
the public services of Cali and to consequently wipe out the
Sintraemcali
union. With tears in their eyes, these workers related how they are now
destitute and struggling to survive as they continue to fight for their
jobs
through the Ministry of Social Protection. Meanwhile, a number of
Sintraemcali
members have been assassinated in the course of this anti-privatization
struggle, while others have been abducted, exiled, arrested and
imprisoned.
Those arrested and imprisoned were accused by the state of
“terrorism,” only for those charges to be later dropped for
lack of
evidence.
(M
ore
on that type of state stigmatization of unionists
below.)
It is worth noting that leaders of the Sintraemcali union, as well as one
of their
chief allies in Congress, Alexander Lopez (with whom Dan Kovalik
also
met), were the targets of something known as “Operation
Dragon”
– a plan to “neutralize,” which in some cases meant to
kill,
key social leaders associated with the anti-privatization struggle in
Cali.
It turns out, according to one of the authors of this plan, (Ret.)
Lieutenant
Colonel Julian Villate, that this plan was fully sanctioned by President
Uribe’s Ministry of the Interior as well as the DAS. Curiously,
while Mr.
Villate was found with the detailed plans of “Operation
Dragon” on
him, he remains at large, continuing to work for the Drummond Coal
Company in
the State of Cesar. Meanwhile, Congressman Alexander Lopez continues to
receive
death threats; the 51 fired Sintraemcali unionists remain unemployed;
and,
according to the Fiscalia’s office, Julian Villate was the author
of a
plot to murder Senator Gustavo Petro (who also met with the delegation)
just
last year.
In the course of the trip, the delegation also heard from unionists about
how the
Colombian military entered the offices of Telecom to forcibly eject
8,000
workers from their jobs after President Uribe illegally liquidated this
state-run telephone company by decree. The delegation also heard about
the
heroic struggle of workers in the flower sector (which employs a total
of
100,000 individuals) to try to unionize, only to be crushed by Dole
Foods which
went so far as to close its largest flower plantation in order to
destroy the
unionization campaign.
We note that Dole Foods has yet to suffer any sanction as a consequence of
its
being credibly accused last year of making regular payments to the
illegal AUC
paramilitaries. Indeed, Dole was named as the point company which
actually
collected the payments from all of the banana companies in Antioquia and
passed
them along to the AUC. This connection between the banana
companies and
the AUC is important in considering the Colombian FTA which, as written,
will
greatly benefit large landowners such as the multi-national banana
companies as
well as paramilitaries who have laundered their drug monies through the
purchase of large tracks of land.
In addition to unionists, the delegation met with numerous Congressional
leaders.
For example, the delegation met with Orsinia Polanco Jusayu, the
representative
of the Indigenous Peoples of Colombia, who told of her
opposition
to the FTA on the basis that she believes this agreement will lead to
the
further loss of land by indigenous peoples to multi-national companies.
Ms.
Polanco also related the strange story of how a group of indigenous
leaders
were brought to Washington D.C. by President Uribe last year on the
pretext
that they were to tell Congressional leaders about the issues
confronting
indigenous peoples in Colombia, only to find out that they were actually
brought to Washington to lobby in support of the FTA – an
agreement which
they actually oppose. A number of these indigenous representatives left
the
trip early when they found out about the true purpose of the
trip.
Finally,
I wanted to tell you about the delegation’s meeting with President
Uribe
– a meeting in which Uribe revealed his true, and at the same time
shocking, view of unionists in Colombia. Thus, during this meeting, Mr.
Kovalik
told President Uribe of the delegations' concern about dangerous
stigmatization
of unionists by Colombian companies, the government and military. In the course of this discussion, Mr. Kovalik recounted a conversation he had with a
colonel
of the Colombian Army’s 18th Brigade (Colonel Medina) shortly
after this
Brigade shot and killed three trade union leaders near Saravena in
August of
2004. The Colonel stated that he knew he was required as an army officer
to
protect trade unionists as he would all citizens. However, he claimed
that many
unionists were in fact guerillas – a claim which is untrue but
which
makes unionists fair game for attacks by the
military.
In response, President Uribe said that he meets with unionists every month
and
that many of them have good hearts. Like the colonel, however, Uribe
followed
up this statement with a pregnant “but.” He said it was his
experience as a student (decades ago) that a tactic of the guerillas was
to
infiltrate the union movement, the student movement and the press. Then,
he
claimed that, by the way, those three unionist killed in Saravena were
in fact
guerillas linked to the ELN (one of the left wing guerilla groups). Mr.
Kovalik
openly disagreed with the President, pointing out that his own attorney
general
(Mario IguarE1n, with whom the delegation also met) had concluded after
investigation, that this was not in fact true, and that the 18th Brigade
had
actually planted weapons on the unionists after the fact to make it look
like
they were insurgents killed in a gun battle. In response, Uribe said
that he
had gone to Saravena personally and that (unnamed) members of the
community had
assured him that the three killed were, in fact, members of the
ELN.
Further,
in the course of his meeting with the delegation, President Uribe
attempted to
downplay the murders of the five unionists killed so far this year
(almost one
every week) by claiming, as he so often has done, that they were all, in
fact,
killed in the course of petty robberies or in domestic disputes. Unlike
his own
Attorney General Mario Iguaran did, Uribe simply refused to acknowledge
to the
delegation that they, as the other unionists killed in Colombia, were
killed
precisely because they were trade unionists.
In the end, President Uribe’s comments revealed precisely why the
murders of
unionists continue – because of the stigmatization of these
unionists by
the highest ranks of the Colombian government, including the President
himself.
Madame
Speaker and Leader Reid, I cannot tell you how concerned we are about
the
continued fate of workers and unionists in Colombia. This concern drives
our continued,
vigorous opposition to the Colombian FTA – an opposition we share
with
all three trade union confederations in Colombia. I urge you, on behalf
of the
Colombian and U.S. labor movements, to continue your great work in
preventing
this agreement from ever coming to a vote on the floor of Congress.
Thank
you.
Si
ncerely,
Leo
W. Gerard
International President
UNITED STEEL WORKERS
