Canadian union leaders join Colombia solidarity tour
- July 25, 2008 - Leaders say free trade will hurt, not help Colombia
- July 25, 2008 - People’s Tribunal condemns Colombian government
- July 23, 2008 - Indigenous peoples feel the blows of Colombian policies
- July 23, 2008 - Free collective bargaining non-existent in Colombia
- July 23, 2008 - Canadian ambassador meets public sector union leaders
- July 23, 2008 -
- July 22, 2008 - Leaders visit displaced persons in Medellin
- July 22, 2008 - Leaders briefed on human and workers’ rights in Colombia
- July 18, 2008 - Canada’s public sector union leaders arrive in Bogota
- July 17, 2008 -
- July 17, 2008 - First leader arrives in Colombia
- July 07, 2008 -
- July 07, 2008 - Media advisory #1
July 25, 2008
Leaders say free trade will hurt, not help Colombia
Free trade with Colombia will lead to worse human and labour rights abuses and further devastation of communities at risk, Canada’s public sector leaders said at a news conference in Bogota on July 24.
Here is the statement the leaders made to several Colombian media reporters following a meeting with leaders of the United Central of Workers (CUT), one of three central labour bodies:
“As the leaders of one million Canadian public sector workers, we have come to Colombia to examine human and labour rights as our governments negotiate a free trade agreement.
“We have met with many sectors of Colombian society, including government officials, the United Central of Workers (CUT) and other trade unions, opposition leaders, non-governmental organizations, groups representing indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples as well as the Canadian ambassador.
“We also were present to hear the final report of the Permanent People’s Tribunal following two years of hearings in six sectors of the Colombian economy. The report condemned the Colombian government and transnational coporations for countless violations of human and trade union rights.
“Our overwhelming conclusion is that a free trade agreement will not help the Colombian people. It will only exacerbate an already horrifying list of human and labour rights abuses that are shocking the world.
“Colombia continues to be the most dangerous country on earth for trade unions and civil society activists. Since the beginning of 2008, 32 trade unionists have been assassinated. We have also observed that Colombia has no juridical framework that permits free collective bargaining.
“On our return to Canada, we will tell our one million members, our government and all Canadians that it is unacceptable to sign a free trade agreement with Colombia as long as trade unionists are at risk and free collective bargaining and other labour and human rights continue to be violated.”
The statement was signed by Denis Lemelin, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, John Gordon, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and George Heyman, international vice-president of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
***
Earlier, leaders met with several Senators from the opposition party Polo Democratica Alternativa (PDA or Polo), including Senator Alexandra Lopez, a long-time labour activist who attended a CUPE human rights conference in 2003 in Toronto.
The Senators were unequivocal in their opposition to a Canada-Colombia free trade agreement. “We don’t believe in free trade period,” said one. “It’s simply a bad way to develop healthy relations between two nations.” Another said “Free trade is a new form of colonization and the Polo rejects it.”
They called on the leaders to help them stop the destruction of a 400-year-old village by a Canadian mining company (Colombia Goldfield) that wants to mine the gold they have found underneath the village. And the Colombian government could let them do it.
On Ingrid Betancourt: “Her release was super well used by [President Alvaro] Uribe.”
On worker cooperatives: “They destroy worker-employer relations.” The Senators cite what is happening to cane workers and court workers among others.
On privatization: Postal workers went from 3,000 to 300 and many teachers’ jobs are going the same way; 83 hospitals have fallen into private hands.
Yearly statistics: 5,000 people die in the armed conflict; 26,000 die in the social conflict; 20,000 children die of hunger; 3million children get no access to education. “The president hides these realities.”
On Uribe and labour relations: “Uribe’s is trying to destabilize labour relations because labour is in the forefront of opposition to his government.”
On Uribe and the Polo: “Uribe’s intention is to falsely accuse our members and to put us in jail.”
***
The Canadian group also met with CUT President Tarisco Mora and executive members of the CUT, one of three central labour bodies in Colombia. The CUT had 1.5 million members at its founding, Mora told the leaders. It now has 460,000.
“Colombia may be the only country in the world that does not have a labour minister,” he said. The Ministry of Social Protection has replaced the old Ministry of Labour.
On organizing unions: “It is easier to form a paramilitary gang than it is to form a trade union in this country,” Mora noted.
On Canadian Embassy assistance for workers: “The role of the Canadian Embassy has changed from being helpful at assisting threatened families to receiving paramilitaries,” said one of the executive.
On the leaders’ public opposition to the free trade agreement: “A great help to all Colombians,” Mora said.
On the idea of a fourth labour central: “There is little interest except from the union leaders who represent the bosses.”
On the Uribe government’s tripartite declaration to improve the situation for trade unionists: “It is another trick to persuade the international community that Colombia is safe for investment. Thirty trade unionists have been killed this year, so they have issued this declaration. In another few months, 32 more will die and then they will issue another similar declaration. Nothing will have changed.”
On the leaders’ visit: “Your presence here is a clear demonstration that we are not alone.”
***
In vivid contrast to these meetings, the leaders also met with Fabio Valencio, Colombia’s Minister of the Interior, and an entourage of deputy or vice-ministers, one of them responsible for labour.
The minister was quick to unfold his notes on the tripartite declaration on improving the labour situation, but he was equally quick to argue that trade and investment come before labour rights improvements. He called it a “chicken and egg question”: investment or labour rights?
Valencio painted a rosy picture of the Uribe government’s achievements – lower unemployment, fewer assassinations, higher investment confidence, stronger economic growth. He stressed that it was not possible to compare Colombia to Canada or Europe. “The government is fighting terrorist organizations on the right and the left,” he said, and “the drug problem cuts through all other questions.”
But the Canadian leaders weren’t buying it.
“When will Colombia begin to respect the basic conventions of the United Nations’ International Labour Organization?” CUPE National President Paul Moist asked. “From what we have learned, 95 per cent of Colombian workers do not have an enforceable collective agreement. Until that happens, we cannot accept a free trade agreement.”
The minister was clearly upset when he learned that the leaders’ group would return to Canada with an anti-free-trade message.
“We don’t believe free trade will improve human rights,” National CUPW present Denis Lemelin told the minister. “There is a major difference between free trade and fair trade. Fair trade means respecting human and labour rights. Free trade is only about investment.”
***
The leaders leave Colombia on July 25.
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July 25, 2008
People’s Tribunal condemns Colombian government
After two years of hearings, the Permanent People’s Tribunal delivered its final judgment on Colombia’s human and labour rights record to a crowd of over 2,000 people in Bogota on July 23 and Canada’s public sector union leaders were there to witness it. What they heard confirmed all that they had learned during their week-long tour.
The tribunal, which examined six sectors of the economy: food production, mining, biodiversity, oil, public services, and the genocide of indigenous peoples, was soon interrupted by a dozen hooded students who ushered them off the stage at Che University Centre.
They took over the meeting momentarily, moving Argentinian Nobel peace laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel out of the chair along with the other distinguished panelists. The students issued their own list of judgments and demands, and the dramatic theatrical interlude drove home the deep sense of outrage that they and others share for the current government and for the armed conflict it has supported with its policies.
Periodically throughout the tribunal’s report, the names of the dead and disappeared were shouted from around the large hall and then shouts of “presente, presente, presente” to indicate that those murdered members of society were there in spirit and waiting to hear their killers judged.
When reporting resumed, the audience heard the full extent of the terror the Colombian people have faced. It is an “economic laboratory”, the damning report said, and the result has been thousands of deaths and disappearances, millions of displaced people, the destruction of the environment and the trade union movement, and a wholesale selloff of the country to transnational corporations.
The tribunal held dozens of transnationals responsible for these “crimes against humanity” and pledged to send its findings to the International Court and the governments of more than 100 countries where the transnationals operate. But it reserved its strongest indictment for the Colombian government.
President Alvaro Uribe government’s “democratic security doctrine” has paved the way for mass exploitation, allowing corruption to run unchecked, the tribunal said. Sixty members of the Congress and Senate are being investigated for illegal activities, including involvement in paramilitary death squads. Among those being investigated is Uribe’s own cousin.
The government consciously assisted in the creation of a paramilitary system that led to forced takeovers of large portions of land for the growing of coca to supply the $5 billion annual cocaine-exporting business.
The Uribe government is complicit in the murder or displacement of thousands of rural peasants, Afro-Colombians and aboriginal peoples. With nowhere to go, the displaced populate the large cities, living in slums with few services. The tribunal also charged the government with the near genocide of 18 indigenous communities.
The companies act with impunity from far off world capitals while the Uribe government does their dirty work, the tribunal said. They expropriate the land with the help of the paramilitaries, slash, burn and poison to grow cash crops like African palm and bananas for export, leaving no room for domestic food production. In the process, the land and waterways are contaminated with herbicides and other chemicals.
The global financial institutions are equally guilty for having pushed privatization as an economic miracle worker, the tribunal noted, citing World Bank reports that there is $2.8 billion in state corruption in Colombia.
The mass privatizing of most public services and the near annihilation of trade unions has left workers with no hope of ever earning a living wage under the current system of so-called worker cooperatives and contract employees, the tribunal said.
“Impunity is the rule here,” Esquivel concluded, shouting “no more impunity for any crime against humanity.”
***
Earlier, the leaders met with United Nations human rights commissioner Javier Hernandez and the Uribe government-appointed public defender Volmar Perez Ortiz.
The high commissioner spelled out some of the reasons why Colombian trade unionists have been getting killed in greater numbers than anywhere else in the world. Much of the violence is associated with labour disputes and some is linked to the lucrative drug trade, he said, stressing its influential role in the Colombian economy.
He gave the flower industry as one example. The drug traffickers in the largest cocaine-producing country in the world (600 tons a year) may decide to have the stems of flowers stuffed with the drug so that it can be exported undetected. A union leader who threatens the steady flow of the cocaine-laced flowers to their markets in the north is at risk.
The public defender described the work of his office in trying to protect the country’s most vulnerable people, many of whom were listed in the tribunal’s report.
The leaders asked about the safety of local defenders, many of them young students working in the most dangerous parts of the country. When a public defender’s staff member suggested that they could develop a plan for ensuring their safety, the public defender agreed. The staff member, also a trade union leader, credited the leaders with getting the agreement to proceed.
***
In the evening, the leaders visited the new headquarters of the National Union of Postal Workers (STPC) to see a presentation on the impacts of the privatization of the postal service and how the union is rebuilding tenaciously from the ground up. Unique in its approach, the STPC has created a foundation for political and social action and a social service arm to assist unemployed postal workers and their families.
***
The Canadian union leaders are Denis Lemelin, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, John Gordon, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and George Heyman, international vice-president of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
The group continues its tour of Colombia this week, meeting government officials and holding a news conference at the CUT labour central. The leaders return to Canada on July 25.
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July 23, 2008
Indigenous peoples feel the blows of Colombian policies
Canada’s public sector union leaders visited La Maria Pendiamo, an aboriginal reserve about two hours drive outside Cali, on July 21 as part of their ongoing tour of Colombia.
About 100 residents joined the Canadian leaders for a discussion about the situation they face under the government of Alvaro Uribe, including the methods the government has promoted to curtail their freedom.
At the open-air meeting, Luis Evelis Andrade Casama, president of the National Union of Indigenous Peoples (ONIC) led the presentations with a strong denunciation of those methods. “Uribe is trying to force a neo-liberal model on us,” he said. “He talks of liberty as a concept that private property owners can have, but what about the rest of us?”
“Uribe is preoccupied with the possibility that the dispossessed, like us, will rise up,” he added. “He has no respect for the basic rights and freedoms guaranteed in a democracy. He has invented what we call ‘sausage’ laws where all the good stuff goes to the rich.”
A free trade agreement with Canada is motivated by the mining sector, he said. “We think the Canadian government wants a free trade agreement because of mining. We need help from the Canadian mining unions to confront this problem.”
The people of the region, called Cauca, are mobilizing to take back their land. They are worried that free trade will destroy their environment even further and that they will lose their water rights.
“We will lose a lot more land under free trade,” said one presenter. “We have already lost our rights. Free trade would be detrimental to us.”
“Our basic fight is about the new economic model being forced on us, particularly the privatization of water,” said another.
Canadian leaders pledged to tell Canadians that the situation is worse here than Prime Minister Stephen Harper has led them to believe. What the leaders saw and heard contradicted his view that human rights problems are not a major concern.
“A free trade agreement would benefit a small number,” said one indigenous presenter. “It won’t help us get more rights. It won’t help us to be aboriginal people in indigenous nations.”
“This country has been kidnapped,” said another presenter. “We need to say ‘No’ to large-scale exploiting companies.”
“A strategy of repression needs a strategy of resistance to defend our lives,” said another.
***
Earlier, the leaders heard from CRIC, the regional council in Cauca that was organized in 1971 to protect small indigenous communities and defend aboriginal rights.
The CRIC representative spoke of their lands being flooded without compensation, ancestral culture being erased, and the many social problems bred by poverty. “Big monopolies are threatening the rights of all the ethnic peoples of the territory,” he said. “But we are resisting by occupying large farms that were once our lands.”
Since the 1980s, with the coming of more privatization, the big mining companies needed more water, he explained. A dam was completed in the region in 1984. It flooded aboriginal land, but the indigenous people were never compensated.
The Spanish multinational company in charge of the dam promised better services, but they never materialized. The CRIC continues to fight for the government to fulfill those promises.
Another CRIC spokesperson charged the Uribe government with lying to the international community about Colombia. “The historic process of extermination has been made permanent by this government,” she said. “It’s like slavery has come back.”
CRIC leaders encourage the Canadian group to attend a major gathering in October where groups would be developing a protection of Mother Earth Act. They also asked the group to put them in better contact with the Assembly of First Nations.
***
The Canadian union leaders are Denis Lemelin, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, John Gordon, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and George Heyman, international vice-president of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
The group continues its tour of Colombia this week with more meetings and visits to examine human and labour rights, working conditions, and exchange views on free trade and the absence of human and labour rights guarantees. They plan to meet with the outgoing Canadian ambassador, government officials and members of the opposition. They will also discuss privatization and other problems with public sector trade unionists.
The leaders return to Canada on July 25.
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July 23, 2008
Free collective bargaining non-existent in Colombia
University sector union leaders in Cali gave Canada’s public sector union leaders a taste of Colombian collective bargaining reality when they met on July 20 as part of their ongoing tour of Colombia: free collective bargaining is non-existent on campuses.
SINTRAUNICOL president Carlos Gonzalez told leaders of the countless challenges university workers face. Near the top of the list was the distressing absence of collective bargaining rights. Employers simply ignore their proposals.
At the top of the list is personal safety. About 100 university labour activists have been murdered in the past six years, Gonzalez said. His members are routinely arrested for demonstrating on university campuses. And the privatization threat is everywhere.
Gonzalez attended CUPE’s national convention in Toronto in October 2007 to inform delegates of the ongoing repression that is occurring under Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
As the Canadian group has been told repeatedly this week, state repression and attacks on trade unions has increased and there is probably more to come as Uribe tries to hold onto power after his term ends. There is a war on trade union rights and it takes the form of systematic harassment and death threats.
In briefing sessions this week with NOMADESC, a non-governmental organization supported by CUPE and the British Colombia Government Employees’ Union, a NUPGE affiliate, and at the National Labour School, leaders heard about another way the government is trying to eliminate unions. Under Uribe, worker cooperatives, some 12,000 of them, are taking over public sector jobs. But the term ‘cooperative’ is misleading.
These organizations provide no protection to workers and severely undermine any hope of restoring a collective bargaining process in Colombia. They are cooperative only in the sense that they cooperate with employers and the government to destroy fairness in the workplace and any dream of earning a living wage. One of the results is that there are far fewer collective agreements than in 2002 when Uribe came to power.
The Canadian leaders also got a lesson in the importance of a simple gesture of international labour solidarity. The university unionists thanked CUPE for writing a letter about some arrests from last April in Cali.
A SINTRAUNICOL member, Jose Milciades Sanchez Ortiz, was arrested for filming police violence during a student demonstration at the University of Valle. The police anti-riot squad assaulted him, shot him in the arm with a tear gas canister, threatened him with arrest and destroyed the video camera along with the evidence he had been filming. When he went to the police station, he saw the CUPE letter on a desk. He credits it with helping him avoid the trumped up charges he was facing.
***
The Canadian union leaders are Denis Lemelin, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, John Gordon, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and George Heyman, international vice-president of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
The group continues its tour of Colombia this week with more meetings and visits to examine human and labour rights, working conditions, and exchange views on free trade and the absence of human and labour rights guarantees. They plan to meet with the outgoing Canadian ambassador, government officials and members of the opposition. They will also discuss privatization and other problems with public sector trade unionists.
The leaders return to Canada on July 25.
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July 23, 2008
Canadian ambassador meets public sector union leaders
Canada’s ambassador to Colombia spoke with public sector union leaders at a breakfast meeting in Bogota on July 22 as part of their ongoing tour of Colombia. Free trade was the sticking point.
Ambassador Mathew Levin engaged in a two-hour exchange with the four leaders on differing views of what he termed the “Colombian reality”. While there was agreement on many of the problems facing this South American country, they couldn’t agree on the proposed Canada-Colombia free trade agreement.
“Free trade will not help raise the tide for poor people and the oppressed in Colombia, said one leader. “Free trade won’t improve human rights, especially for the millions of displaced people,” said another. “Free trade must be fair trade that respects people’s rights,” said another. “Canadians need to hear the other side of the Canada-Colombia free trade story,” said a fourth.
“Our view is that a free trade agreement can’t resolve the deeper problem of violence in Colombia…The conflict hasn’t served to fix the problems of poverty, lack of social justice and exclusion. Instead, it has created polarization, intolerance and a lack of confidence.” And the regions most affected by the conflict are where “pre-economic, almost feudal, relationships exist”.
“We are also concerned about the massive displacement of people,” Levin replied. “Our global peace and security fund is trying to encourage a truth and justice process. Our current focus is on children and youth that have been excluded from formal education due to violent displacement.
“Canada’s engagement must be balanced and multifaceted,” Levin said. “It can’t just be about trade and economics.” But until the country can put the 50-year-old conflict behind it, it will only exacerbate the problems.
On corporate social responsibility: “That question is not going away,” he said. “We are being told to work on it more.” But he argued that Canadian companies treat employees in Colombia as they do those in Canada, a point the leaders vigorously disputed based on their discussions with Colombian trade unions.
On the Colombian economy: “The government knows that the Colombian reality is not ideal,” he said. “There is poverty, violence, lack of access to services.” He agreed that a round table on investment did not produce “the expected outcomes from the extractive industries”, but noted that they examine trade and investment situations closely.
On the many murders of trade unionists: “No one would question the severity of the violence against trade unions in Colombia…The point of the free trade labour cooperation side agreement is to hold partners to the rule of law.” He acknowledged that the killers act with impunity.
On a labour side agreement: News reports recently revealed that the side agreement includes a proposal for the Colombia government to pay a fine when a trade unionist is murdered. “The government doesn’t agree with this,” Levin said.
***
Later in the day, the leaders met with a group of national trade union leaders to discuss privatization, the lack of collective bargaining rights and cuts to public services. They represented the municipal sector, health and social security, postal services, the office of the human rights ombudsman and others.
The two-hour session yielded a list of complaints against the Uribe government, including his push to privatize, destroy unions, threats to the lives of trade union activists, and the abysmal state of free collective bargaining.
“We are now dealing with a situation where our young people go to work without pay as cashiers,” said one union leader. To be paid, they must ask for a tip from the customer. “Uribe has worked hard to disappear trade unions from our country,” said another.
“What we are seeing is the formation of a national Gestapo,” said another. “Through Uribe’s ‘forgive and forget’ policy, he has allowed the distribution of demilitarized paramilitaries throughout all institutions.”
One leader thanked CUPE for teaching her about pay equity. “Pay equity is now central to our bargaining with municipalities,” she said.
A member of a lawyer’s collective laid out the raw statistics: 4 million displaced (1.7 since Uribe came to power), 15,000 disappeared, 3,000 kidnapped, 20,000 political assassinations over past 20 years (12,500 since Uribe was first elected), 6,500 arbitrary detentions in the past six years.
As for trade unionists: 2,600 assassinated (one every three days since 1986, 467 under Uribe), 194 disappeared, 7,200 attacked, 58 murders admitted by paramilitary leaders, and they get away with murder in 97 per cent of the cases.
“It is the state that is killing the trade unionists,” he concluded. Another presenter added that “most of the time the assassinations occur around a labour conflict”.
***
The Canadian union leaders are Denis Lemelin, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, John Gordon, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and George Heyman, international vice-president of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
The group continues its tour of Colombia this week with more meetings and visits to examine human and labour rights, working conditions, and exchange views on free trade and the absence of human and labour rights guarantees. They plan to meet with the outgoing Canadian ambassador, government officials and members of the opposition. They will also discuss privatization and other problems with public sector trade unionists.
The leaders return to Canada on July 25.
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July 23, 2008
Leaders visit displaced Afro-Colombians in Cali
Canada's public sector union leaders visited Agua Blanca, the second largest Afro-ethnic community next to Brazil in South America on July 20 as part of their ongoing tour of Colombia. What they saw was maddening and heart-rending.
About 1.5 million people live in Agua Blanca. That's more than half the 2.5 million population of Cali. And many of them live in squalor. The tiny streets are almost impassable by car and in some parts of this community of the displaced, they become running sewers.
Children run everywhere. There is no school for them and little potable water, electricity or other services for their makeshift houses. As the children grow older they become users of a low-level cocaine extract called basuco. Gangs roam the streets after dark.
The leaders entered one dilapidated brick structure to find one room divided by a curtain. Eighteen people live there. The single mother and her children were shy to meet outsiders. They are concerned that they will be hurt by other groups in the community who see them as interlopers.
The deeper into Agua Blanca one goes, the poorer are the displaced families. In one wooden structure, the leaders spoke with a grandmother. Her spouse had been murdered by paramilitary death squads and she and her children and grandchildren were told to leave their rural community.
It was a too-familiar example of companies, some created by former paramilitary leaders, pushing people off their land to make room for mining, eco-tourism and other money-making operations. There is no compensation. The families of Agua Blanca arrive with nothing and have little hope of finding work. Some call the process ethnocide, the systematic destruction of communities.
***
Earlier in the day, the leaders learned from a lawyer for the Afro-Colombian community that blacks are the poorest of the displaced. For years, they have been victims of discrimination and violence from armed groups on both sides of the conflict, the armed forces, the paramilitaries and the FARC guerrillas.
"First, the paramilitaries pushed them out of their rural homes," the lawyer said. "Then, when they looked up to heaven for help, they saw helicopters fumigating the land with herebicides." The aerial spraying is supposed to be used to eliminate coca plants (from which cocaine is made), but it is also a way to force communities to move off their land.
In a graphic description of the brutality of the death squads, the lawyer said "they would cut up the bodies, put them in bags and float them down river. No one was allowed to touch the bags. When the river narrowed, the body parts would be strewn on the shore" as a reminder of the paramilitaries' terrorizing tactics. The same thing would occur along the roadsides.
Another Afro-Colombian told the leaders that the paramilitaries patrolled the waterways and controlled access to the only route for the locals to get food. "If you had a bag of rice on the way down river and it was not there when you returned, they would accuse you giving it to the guerrillas." They have "privatized the rivers and contaminated them with fertilizers and other chemicals," said another.
The leaders also met with staff and volunteers for NOMADESC, a non-governmental organization supported by CUPE and the British Colombia Government Employees' Union, a NUPGE affiliate. They work with the people of Agua Blanca and other displaced communities, providing legal advice, training and other services as well as acting as their voice and helping to mobilize resistance.
"We go out in the streets to make our position clear to people." NOMADESC leader Berenice Celeyta told the leaders. "We have in common with you many problems with the proposed Canada-Colombia free trade agreement. "No one has been consulted in these communities and there has been no respect shown for black or indigenous Colombians and others who have been displaced by the government-backed machinery that moves in to plunder the land."
"Here in Colombia it is prohibited to think differently from the government," Celeyta added. "If you dare to think differently, you become a target of persecution." As she spoke, a massive march for peace passed by the NOMADESC offices. Millions of Colombians were telling the world that they want an end to the violence that continues to plague their country.
Another black Colombian put the situation facing his community this way: "We are descendant from the slaves of 400 years ago," said. "Now we are slaves again. Our children can never go to university, never have organized recreation, and they have no future."
***
The Canadian union leaders are Denis Lemelin, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, John Gordon, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and George Heyman, international vice-president of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
The group continues its tour of Colombia this week with more meetings and visits to examine human and labour rights, working conditions, and exchange views on free trade and the absence of human and labour rights guarantees. They plan to meet with the outgoing Canadian ambassador, government officials and members of the opposition. They will also discuss privatization and other problems with public sector trade unionists.
The leaders return to Canada on July 25.
July 22, 2008
Leaders visit displaced persons in Medellin
Canada’s public sector union leaders got a glimpse of a Colombia that rarely gets exposed in the North American news media when they visited a displaced persons community in Medellin on July 19 during their week-long tour of the country.
Lately, the media have focused on the release of famous hostages and reported Colombian president Alvaro Uribe basking in his increased popularity. But there is another Colombia that struggles to survive under his government’s free-trade-related policies. It is that Colombia that leaders of CUPE, CUPW, PSAC and NUPGE saw.
In La Onda, high above the expensive clubs and condos of downtown Medellin, boys kicked a soccer ball, teenage girls practiced their salsa steps, single mothers and their mothers cuddled infants in the surrounding hills of Colombia’s second largest city. But these Colombians are not counted among the population of 2-3 million who live in this inland city an hour’s plane ride north of Bogota, the capital.
They are among the displaced peoples of this much troubled South American country with which Canada is negotiating a free trade agreement. Including them in the count would swell the official population count by 120,000 and some say triple that number has been forced from their homes and now live in poverty in makeshift communities like La Onda. Across Colombia that figure leaps to 3-4 million by some estimates.
The forced displacements are part of a systematic effort to allow the corporate take-over of the land and waterways that once provided sustenance to the displaced. Now the Uribe government is content to allow the brutal displacement process to continue in the name of progress. Land once inhabited by families is to be used for producing exportable products for profit. The result has been the impoverishment of millions like those living at La Onda.
The leaders are Denis Lemelin, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, John Gordon, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and George Heyman, international vice-president of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
At an informal meeting, several residents described being driven from their previous homes by paramilitary squads supported by the military. They came to Medellin and other cities out of fear for their lives, they said, and they soon found themselves destitute.
Some at the meeting still remembered having no proper public services when they organized the shanty town 11 years ago. But it was their only chance to survive. They did so by helping each other when their country’s government disowned them.
“We were attacked by security forces,” one of the original displaced settlers told the leaders. “Now, just as we begin to get back on our feet, there are rumours that the government will move us somewhere else.”
Many families live on whatever the women, many single mothers, can beg on crowded downtown streets, she said. And “we grow our own food here on our little plots.”
Others spoke out as well. “They systematically exterminated us,” said an older woman who indentified herself as a member of the Union Patriotica, a political party that formed after the M19 guerrilla group agreed to disarm. But the agreement spurred a bloodbath with several thousand UP members dying at the hands of military-supported death squads.
“There were many massacres, some known and some unknown,” she said. “They hung people and put them on display to intimidate us.”
A young man came forward to show the leaders how the paramilitary squads had cut off his right hand, so he could not work. Another described living in a refugee camp for four years before finally coming to La Onda.
At the end of the meeting, the leaders learned that services could soon improve in this poor community, but with them will come worries about the paramilitaries battling with others for control of those services. The residents of La Onda could find themselves in the middle of the battleground again.
The group continues its tour of Colombia this week with more meetings and visits to examine human and labour rights, working conditions, and exchange views on free trade and the absence of labour and human rights guarantees. They plan to meet with the outgoing Canadian ambassador, government officials and members of the opposition. They will also discuss privatization and other problems with public sector trade unionists.
The leaders return to Canada on July 25.
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July 22, 2008
Leaders briefed on human and workers’ rights in Colombia
Before visiting the displaced persons community of La Onda in Medellin on July 19, Canada’s top public sector union leaders attended two intensive presentations on the grave situation in Colombia. The conclusion of all presenters: Things are worse than ever.
The national leaders of CUPE, CUPW and PSAC and the international vice-president of NUPGE met first with the National Federation of Public Sector Workers (FENALTRASE), including members of the Association of Workers from the Justice System (ASONAL), controller’s office and health care unions.
“A million people have been disappeared and union persecution is ongoing,” FENALTRASE president Mariano Jose Guerra told the leaders. Despite the repression, he added, “through unity at a global level we can be much stronger.” He is also a lawyer for victims of repression.
A young union leader explained that she had just received a letter from her employer threatening to fire her for organizing workers into the union. The threats against trade union leaders have forced many of them to have body guards. They have been systematically targeted for harassment, kidnappings and assassinations.
The leaders’ second briefing was with the National Labour School, supported by several international unions, including the Canadian Labour Congress.
With Uribe’s sudden rise in popularity, due to the release of high-profile hostages being held by guerrillas, the school staff speculated that he was seeking to challenge the current constitution so he could run for a third term.
The NLS staff also said that Uribe supports the creation of thousands of workers’ cooperatives that critics say are nothing more than union busting and a way to lower wages and remove all workers’ rights. Other government measures would further weaken a union movement already suffering from massive limits on collective bargaining and union organizing, they added.
The group continues its tour of Colombia this week with more meetings and visits to examine human and labour rights, working conditions, and exchange views on free trade and the absence of labour and human rights guarantees. They plan to meet with the outgoing Canadian ambassador, government officials and members of the opposition. They will also discuss privatization and other problems with public sector trade unionists.
The leaders return to Canada on July 25.
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RV
July 18, 2008
Canada’s public sector union leaders arrive in Bogota
Canada’s public sector union leaders arrived at Bogota airport on July 18 to begin a week-long labour tour to learn about the potential impact of a Canada-Colombia free trade deal on Colombian workers and their families.
The leaders were greeted by members of the Sindicato de Trabajadores Postales de Colombia (STPC - Union of Postal Workers) and the Association of Public Employees of the Human Rights Ombudsman (ASDEP), among others.
Arriving were John Gordon, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and George Heyman, international vice-president of the National Union of Public and General Employees. Canadian Union of Postal Workers national president Denis Lemelin had arrived earlier in the week.
The welcoming party, including family members of the Colombian trade unionists, held high a hand-crafted banner with all four Canadian unions named on it. Balloon-topped umbrellas provided protection from the evening rain.
The group continues its tour of Colombia this week with more meetings and visits to examine human and labour rights, working conditions, and exchange views on free trade and the absence of labour and human rights guarantees. They plan to meet with the outgoing Canadian ambassador, government officials and members of the opposition. They will also discuss privatization and other problems with public sector trade unionists.
The leaders return to Canada on July 25.
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RV
July 17, 2008
July 17, 2008
First leader arrives in Colombia
Canadian Union of Postal Workers president Denis Lemelin was the first of four national public sector leaders to arrive for a week-long leaders’ tour of
Lemelin will be joined by Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, John Gordon, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and George Heyman, international vice-president of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
The group will study human and labour rights, working conditions, and exchange views on free trade. They will meet with the outgoing Canadian ambassador, government officials and members of the opposition. They will also discuss privatization and other problems with public sector trade unionists.
The leaders return to
July 07, 2008
July 07, 2008
Media advisory #1
Union leaders representing a million workers will visit Colombia to assess human rights
OTTAWA - The national leaders of the four major public sector unions in Canada will visit Colombia July 18-25 to meet with union leaders, politicians, diplomats, human rights groups and others. Their mission is to assess the human rights situation.
The visit will allow the leaders to examine first-hand the problems that afflict the South American country, especially given the current government's human rights record and the concerns about the recent free trade agreement with Canada.
The group includes national presidents: Paul Moist, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE); Denis Lemelin, Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW); John Gordon, Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and George Heyman, international vice-president of the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE).
The labour tour will stop in Bogota, Medellin and Cali as well as some rural destinations to visit indigenous communities. A main focus of the tour is to assess the impact of Colombian government policies on various sectors, but especially the public sector.
The leaders will also attend the final meetings of the Permanent People's Tribunal on Colombia in Bogota on July 21, 22 and 23. The tribunal has been holding hearings on human rights violations since April 2006. Since then, there have been hearings on six sectors of the economy: food production, mining, biodiversity, oil, public services, and lastly on the genocide of indigenous peoples.
The leaders will also discuss the impact of the new free trade agreement and continued pressure to privatize Colombian public services.
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