– by James Parks
President Bush’s decision to send the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to Congress over the strong objections of the leadership of both the House and the Senate “shows an outrageous disregard for basic human and workers’ rights,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says.
In a statement, Sweeney says:
Workers in Colombia are terrorized every day for standing up for their economic freedom, and union supporters are routinely murdered. Our government should not reward the Colombian government for such callous indifference to the rights and lives of Colombian workers.
The AFL-CIO stands in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Colombia in opposition to violence against trade unionists. We stand for the rights of workers in both Colombia and the United States to organize and bargain collectively without fear of firing, retribution or bodily harm. The AFL-CIO is strongly opposed to the Colombia FTA and will mobilize with all of our might to defeat it.
Bush signed the agreement today, and it will be introduced in Congress tomorrow. Once the agreement is submitted, Congress has 90 days to act under the Fast Track trade authority rules that expired in July 2007, but still apply to deals pending at that time. (Click here to tell your representative to oppose a trade deal with Colombia until their government makes real progress in protecting the lives and rights of union members.)
In short, says United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard, no one but Bush
wants a deal with a corrupt regime that continues to rule over the most dangerous country in the world in which to be a trade unionist.
With just nine months left in his term, Bush has made the Colombia FTA a priority. But working people in the United States and Colombia are strongly opposed to the deal.
The agreement is another in a series of bad trade pacts negotiated by the Bush White House, deals that have contributed to a U.S. trade deficit of $712 billion in 2007, massive job loss and shrinking paychecks. Such trade deals have contributed to the loss of 3 million good manufacturing jobs in the United States alone since 2001.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) says the Colombia FTA is a “betrayal of the middle class.” In a statement, Brown says:
The proposed Colombia FTA betrays small businesses, it betrays workers, and it betrays consumers. Colombian workers earn little more than $600 a month. This FTA is much less about finding new markets for American goods than it is a continuation of this administration’s failed trade policy—a policy that exploits workers in developing nations, fosters unsafe working conditions, and allows unsafe products and food into our country.
Colombia remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade union member. Thirty-nine trade unionists were murdered in 2007, and another 17 have been killed in 2008–a rate of more than one a week. Of the more than 2,500 murders of trade unionists since 1986, the government has successfully prosecuted less than 3 percent of these cases.
Congressional leaders say the deal will not pass. In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) say:
President Bush’s statement today regarding his unprecedented decision to send a free trade agreement to Congress without following established protocols of congressional consultation is counter-productive, jeopardizing prospects for its passage. Under present circumstances, we cannot support the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
The Ways and Means Committee has jurisdiction over the trade agreement.
In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says:
By sending up the Colombia FTA legislation under circumstances that maximize the chances it will fail, he will be adding one more mistake to his legacy and one more mess for the next president to clean up.
In February, a delegation of AFL-CIO leaders to Colombia wound up a fact-finding trip by telling Colombian President Alvaro Uribe the U.S. union movement cannot support the FTA until real progress is made to protect the lives and rights of trade union members. During the trip, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Emerita Linda Chavez-Thompson, Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen and USW counsel Dan Kovalik met with Colombian union leaders, International Labor Organization representatives in Colombia and elected leaders.
Leaders of the major Colombian labor federations told the delegation they oppose any free trade deal between the United States and Colombia until the government takes strong action to stop the violence against union members and ends assaults on union rights. They emphasized that the agreement in its current form will create more economic insecurity in their country and hurt workers more.
The Colombian union leaders also detailed a government policy of “busting unions.” As an example, they pointed to Uribe’s refusal to follow a court order to reinstate and give back pay to members of the oil workers union who struck recently.
The delegation also found the Colombian government had repeatedly failed to bring its labor laws into compliance with international norms, has in many cases failed to enforce its laws protecting workers from anti-union discrimination and has erected bureaucratic and legal obstacles to union registration and collective bargaining rights.
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