by Congressman Jim McGovern and Congressman George Miller
Today, December 3rd, President Barack Obama and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos will meet in Washington. Key to their agenda must be how to live up to the promises they made to U.S. and Colombian workers and the Congress to promote and protect labor rights. Right now, the reality on the ground for Colombian workers, unions and labor activists is grim. As Congress faces votes next year on new trade agreements, there are lessons to be learned in the challenges besetting Colombia.
In April 2011, the two presidents signed the U.S.-Colombia Labor Action Plan (LAP), designed to create institutional and legal changes in Colombia, strengthen workers’ and unions’ ability to exercise their basic rights, prosecute and punish those who have murdered and threatened unionists, and significantly reduce violence perpetrated against Colombian workers and unions. The commitments made in the LAP were critical to garnering the necessary votes to pass the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in the U.S. House of Representatives. The FTA had languished there since its signing in 2006, mainly because year after year Colombia was deemed the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist.
We traveled to Colombia at the end of August and assessed the reality of labor rights in practice and gauged workers’ ability to freely associate, organize, bargain collectively and exercise basic labor rights, free from violence and the threat of violence, as Presidents Obama and Santos had promised. For nearly two years, we have been monitoring labor rights closely as members of the Congressional Monitoring Group on Labor Rights in Colombia. Over five days, in Cali, Buenaventura and Bogota, we met with representatives of over 50 unions, hundreds of workers, business groups, labor rights experts, government officials and members of the Colombian Congress, along with religious, human rights, internally displaced, Afro-Colombian and indigenous leaders.
In the first year of the LAP, the Colombian government made substantial institutional, legal and regulatory progress. Importantly, the number of unionists murdered each year has begun to come down due to strengthened protective measures.
But some 20 months after the signing of the LAP and 16 months after the FTA entered into full force, we were shocked by the difficult and threatening reality facing too many workers in Colombia. A culture of impunity persists regarding past and current cases of murder and death threats against trade unionists, their organizations and their families.
We found widespread threats of violence, and cases of actual violence, against union members and leaders, and continued and proliferating suppression of unionization, despite additional protections that the Colombian government passed into law. Intransigent business interests and companies’ violations of the law appeared to be tolerated, and even though the government had levied some fines, not a penny had been collected.
In some cases, companies’ unwillingness to deal directly with their workers might be interpreted as having been rewarded. Over the past year, the Colombian Ministry of Labor devised a method for business interests to negotiate agreements on basic hours and benefits directly with the government – without the input, participation, knowledge or approval of the company’s workers, let alone their representative unions.
Sadly, since our return, we have received news of more death threats and even murders of trade unionists in Colombia. One set of threats and killings occurred in mid-November, while U.S. Department of Labor representatives were in Medellin meeting with their Colombian counterparts. On November 13th, those U.S. labor officials issued a statement that echoed concerns we had emphasized in an October 29th report summarizing our trip’s findings. [Read the report and recommendations here (pdf).]
We support a strong and mutually beneficial relationship with Colombia. We want the U.S.-Colombia LAP to succeed. To achieve this, Presidents Obama and Santos must fulfill the commitments agreed upon in 2011 and make these promises a reality for workers. Certainly, they must do so for the sakes of Colombian and U.S. workers. But they must also fulfill their commitments before asking Congress to approve other trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which raise similar labor and human rights issues.
Rep. James P. McGovern (D-MA) is Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) is Ranking Member of the House Education and Workforce Committee. Each has traveled frequently to Colombia over the past 15 years.