On March 22, 2008, Adolfo Gonzalez Montes, a Colombian coal miner and leader of the union SINTRACARBON, was assassinated in his home, leaving behind his wife and children. Adolfo Gonzalez Montes was the 13th unionist murdered in Colombia this year, putting Colombia on course to far exceed its rate of 40 trade unionists killed last year.

Since 1991, around 2,300 union leaders have been killed in Colombia — a country which continues to lead the world in the murder of trade unionists. It must be noted that 433 of these unionists have been killed since President Alvaro Uribe took office in 2002. Some of these, moreover, have been killed by the Colombian military itself. And, all were put at risk by the Uribe Administration, which continues to wrongly stigmatize trade unionists as “guerillas” and “terrorists.”

As the LA Times recently reported, the Colombian military’s share of extra-judicial killings has been on a steady increase recently, with the military responsible for the killing of 287 civilians last year alone — a 10% increase over the previous year. In total, the Colombian military has been responsible for over 955 extra-judicial killings since Alvaro Uribe was elected president in 2002.

The LA Times article also notes that this rise in extra-judicial killings has been accompanied by an increase in the phenomenon known as “‘false positives,’ in which the armed forces … kill civilians … and brand them as leftist guerrillas.” The LA Times further explains: “A macabre facet of a general increase in ‘extrajudicial killings’ by the military, ‘false positives’ are a result of intense pressure to show progress in Colombia’s U.S.-funded war against leftist insurgents . . . .”

An example of the phenomenon of “false positives” is the murder of three union leaders in the oil-rich region of Arauca by the 18th Brigade of the Colombian Armed Forces. As Colombia’s own Attorney General as well as a well-respected judge of Colombia’s Constitutional Court concluded, these unionists were killed by the Army in cold blood. They further concluded that the Army, after the fact, planted guns in their hands to make it look like they were guerillas killed in a gun battle.

When I recently met with President Alvaro Uribe as part of an AFL-CIO fact-finding mission to Colombia, and stated concern about this and like instances, Uribe expressed his continued belief — a belief held in contradiction of the findings of his own Attorney General and Constitutional Court — that these unionists had been guerillas. Not surprisingly, the judge who made findings belying this belief, and who handed out long sentences to the Army personnel responsible for the union killings, was inexplicably let go by the Colombian government under circumstances being questioned by U.S. Congressman George Miller.

Another example of the phenomenon of “false positives” was the killing of 4 unionists between March 4 and March 7 of this year. All of these unionists were associated with a peaceful March 6 world-wide demonstration in support of the victims of paramilitary and Colombian state violence. Prior to this demonstration — a peaceful protest which the United Steelworkers union (USW) co-sponsored — a spokesman for President Uribe announced that Uribe would not participate in this demonstration because, he claimed, it was being “convened by the FARC.” This is a dangerous statement because the FARC is a guerilla group which the Colombian state has been at war with for decades. And, what predictably followed from this provocative, and baseless announcement by the Uribe Administration was a killing spree by the Black Eagles, a re-formed part of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) — the right-wing paramilitary group which our own State Department reports has been closely tied with the Colombian government and military. The result: 6 more victims, 4 of them unionists, of the paramilitary/state violence in Colombia.

It is against this backdrop of anti-union violence, violence both encouraged by the Colombian government, and in a number of instances carried out by the Colombian military itself, that the United Steelworkers is carrying out its struggle against human and labor rights abuses in Colombia as well as the struggle against the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

While the Bush Administration is attempting to premise its current efforts to try to force passage of the Colombia FTA upon the claim that anti-union violence in Colombia is abating, the facts point to the contrary. Indeed, all three major union confederations in Colombia — confederations which the AFL-CIO delegation met with in Colombia this past February — are unanimous in their opposition to the FTA. And, they base this opposition on the belief that they are under attack by the Colombian government, that they are near extinction as a result and that passage of the FTA will only ensure their ultimate demise.

The truth is that, as a result of overt anti-union violence as well as legal maneuvers by the Uribe Administration, union membership has declined under Uribe from 6 percent to 4 percent of the workforce. Even more disturbingly, less than 1% of Colombian workers (that is, a mere 60,000 out of 18 million workers) benefit from the protection of a labor contract — this is 25% of what that figure was only ten years ago.

In regard to the 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 the USW’s fellow union workers in the oil industry. As to this latter issue, Colombian Congressman Wilson Borja explained to the AFL-CIO delegation in February 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.

And, it is those relatively few remaining workers who are protected by labor contract 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 at a horrifyingly high rate.

The USW, in accord with the vast majority of union workers in Colombia, opposes the passage of the Colombia FTA on the basis of our belief that any leverage we have on the Colombian government to stem the continued violence and attacks against union leaders is the withholding of this preferential trade regime until the Colombian government can show that (1) it is willing to take the steps necessary to protect trade unionists; and (2) it has the will to prosecute those responsible for the thousands of killings which have already taken place.

In the latter regard, we note that 97% of those killings remain unsolved and unprosecuted. In addition, we believe that the agricultural provisions of the FTA in particular will only exacerbate the ongoing civil war in Colombia. Thus, these provisions will allow government-subsidized food products from the U.S. to flood Colombian markets, thereby undercutting small, poor farmers. The result will be the dislocation of these farmers, swelling the ranks of the already large internally-displaced population of Colombia and pushing a number of these displaced farmers into joining illegal armed groups.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 10:10 am and is filed under Politics, Foreign Policy, Labor .