[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 147 (Tuesday, October 4, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H6508-H6509]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1010
          COLOMBIAN WORKERS CONSTANTLY THREATENED AND AT RISK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I was in Colombia at the end of August 
with a delegation organized by the Washington Office on Latin America.
  In Medellin, we met with the National Labor School, or ENS, to 
discuss the current labor situation in Colombia. Their reports on 
threatened and murdered unionists are internationally recognized; and 
because of this, ENS faces constant threats and efforts to discredit 
them.
  While not at the levels of the early 2000s, violence against 
Colombia's workers continues. It is persistent and frequent. It is a 
reality that cannot be denied, and it is meant to silence people. At 
least 40 trade unionists have been murdered since President Santos took 
office last year.
  One benchmark in the Colombia Labor Action Plan is for the attorney 
general's office to meet with ENS and determine how to address the more 
than 2,900 cases of murdered unionists, of which 90 percent remain in 
impunity. The first meeting happened in May, but there's been no second 
meeting. In Bogota, I met with Deputy Attorney General Juan Carlos 
Forero. I asked him when the next meeting would happen, and he said 
``imminently.'' Five weeks later, still no meeting.
  Last week, Human Rights Watch sent a study to Colombian Attorney 
General Viviane Morales. It says ``virtually no progress'' has been 
made in getting convictions for killings of labor activists that have 
occurred in just the past 4\1/2\ years. So virtually no progress on 
recent murders of labor activists, and little progress on past cases.
  Mr. Speaker, I met with port workers, campesinos, workers on palm oil 
plantations, and petroleum and factory workers. Their reality is filled 
with risk, threats, and even death. They are not valued as human 
beings, Colombian citizens, or productive members of society. In 
Cartagena, port workers went on strike in March. Their working 
conditions are inhumane, and they are forced to work under various 
subcontracting schemes. These contracts deny them basic benefits and 
keep them in constant uncertainty about whether they will be working 
next week or even the next day. They just want the right to negotiate 
their contracts directly with their employers, the port associations.
  The port workers ended their strike after just a few days because the 
Santos government promised to facilitate talks between the workers and 
the port associations. But nothing happened. Nothing changed. In fact, 
some things are worse. As part of the LAP, the most common 
subcontracting scheme, the so-called ``cooperatives,'' was abolished, 
except nothing was done to facilitate direct contracting between 
workers and their employers. So a new scheme has popped up called 
``simplified joint stock companies,'' or SAS. Good-bye cooperatives, 
hello SAS. Meet the new boss; worse than the old boss.
  The government has done little to help, unfortunately. When I asked 
Vice President Garzon about the port workers, he promised to meet again 
with their union leader. Mr. Speaker, it's not the workers he needs to 
meet with and convince to negotiate. It's the presidents of the port 
associations.
  Oil workers from Meta showed me photographs and documents describing 
poor living and working conditions, unfair contracts, and how the 
Canadian Venezuelan oil company, Pacific Rubiales, acts like a 
sovereign government on Colombian soil, destroying public roads, firing 
workers for organizing, and calling in security forces to tear gas 
striking workers. I'm sure it's not the whole picture, but once again 
striking workers returned to work because the government promised to 
open talks with the company. Again, all the workers are asking for is 
the right to negotiate directly with the company about their contracts 
and their living and working conditions, and once again the Colombian 
Government let the workers down.
  In September, the strike was renewed, more explosive on all sides 
than the last one, because nothing had changed since July. Bruno Moro, 
the U.N. delegate in Colombia, called on everyone to come to the table 
and resolve the crisis, describing the conflict as the result of no one 
creating conditions for dialogue. The workers have again returned to 
work because of agreements by the government to open talks with the 
company. This time, I hope the government keeps its word.
  Mr. Speaker, nothing I saw in Colombia indicated things have changed 
for the better on the ground for Colombia's workers. Before we take up 
the FTA, we must demand concrete improvements in labor rights and 
security for Colombia's workers. Whatever we're doing now isn't 
working, it isn't making a difference, and it simply isn't enough.

[[Page H6509]]

                 [From Associated Press, Oct. 2, 2011]

             Study: Colombia Anti-Union Violence Undeterred

                            (By Frank Bajak)

       Bogota, Colombia.--A new study challenges claims from the 
     administration of President Barack Obama that Colombia is 
     making important strides in bringing to justice killers of 
     labor activists and so deserves U.S. congressional approval 
     of a long-stalled free trade pact.
       The Human Rights Watch study found ``virtually no 
     progress'' in getting convictions for killings that have 
     occurred in the past 4\1/2\ years.
       It counted just six convictions obtained by a special 
     prosecutions unit from 195 slayings between January 2007 and 
     May 2011, with nearly nine in 10 of the unit's cases from 
     that period in preliminary stages with no suspect formally 
     identified.
       Democrats in the U.S. Congress have long resisted bringing 
     the Colombia trade pact to a vote, citing what they said is 
     insufficient success in halting such killings.
       The White House disagrees, and says Colombia has made 
     significant progress in addressing anti-unionist violence.
       It is pushing for congressional approval as early as this 
     week of the Colombia agreement along with pacts with South 
     Korea and Panama, something the Republicans endorse and that 
     they say will increase U.S. exports by $13 billion a year and 
     support tens of thousands of jobs.
       U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk recently said the trade 
     agreements are ``an integral part of the President's plan to 
     create jobs here at home.''
       But in Colombia, the world's most lethal country for labor 
     organizing, the killings haven't stopped. At least 38 trade 
     unionists have been slain since President Juan Manuel Santos 
     took office in August 2010, says Colombia's National Labor 
     School.
       ``A major reason for this ongoing violence has been the 
     chronic lack of accountability for cases of anti-union 
     violence,'' Human Rights Watch said in a letter sent Thursday 
     to Colombian Chief Prosecutor Viviane Morales that details 
     the study's findings.
       Convictions have been obtained for less than 10 percent of 
     the 2,886 trade unionists killed since 1986, and the rights 
     group said it found ``severe shortcomings'' in the work of a 
     special unit of Morales' office established five years ago to 
     solve the slayings. The letter says the unit has demonstrated 
     ``a routine failure to adequately investigate the motive'' in 
     labor killings as well as to ``bring to justice all 
     responsible parties.''
       A chief finding: The 74 convictions achieved over the past 
     year owe largely to plea bargains with members of illegal 
     far-right militias who confessed to killings in exchange for 
     leniency.
       They did so under the so-called Justice and Peace law that 
     gave paramilitary fighters reduced prison sentences of up to 
     eight years in exchange for laying down their arms and 
     confessing to crimes. That law expired at the end of 2006, 
     the year the free trade pact was signed.
       Only in a handful of cases did prosecutors pursue evidence 
     that the paramilitaries who confessed acted on the orders of 
     politicians, employers or others, Human Rights Watch says.
       Prosecutors ``made virtually no progress in prosecuting 
     people who order, pay, instigate or collude with 
     paramilitaries in attacking trade unionists,'' the letter 
     states. ``What is at stake is the justice system's ability to 
     act as an effective deterrent to anti-union violence.''
       Of the more than 275 convictions handed down through May, 
     80 percent were against former members of the United Self-
     Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. The head of international 
     affairs in the chief prosecutor's office, Francisco 
     Echeverri, told the AP that it has put 513 people in prison.
       In nearly half of 50 recent convictions reviewed by Human 
     Rights Watch, the judges cited ``evidence pointing to the 
     involvement of members of the security forces or intelligence 
     services, politicians, landowners, bosses or coworkers.'' Yet 
     in only one of those cases was such an individual convicted.
       In the case of a gym teacher and union activist killed in 
     the northwestern town of San Rafael in 2002, one of the 
     paramilitaries who confessed to the crime said it was 
     committed at the request of the mayor, according to the 
     judge's decision.
       The man who was mayor at the time and was re-elected in 
     2008, Edgar Eladio Giraldo, is not being formally 
     investigated and has not been questioned about the killing, 
     said Hernando Castaneda, chief of the special unit.
       ``I have no knowledge of that and did not know that I was 
     involved in that,'' Giraldo told The Associated Press by 
     telephone when asked about the killing of Julio Ernesto 
     Ceballos.
       A spokeswoman for Chief Prosecutor Morales said Sunday that 
     her boss had not yet yet seen the Human Rights Watch letter.
       Dan Kovalik of the United Steel Workers said the study's 
     findings and the continued killings ``prove what labor is 
     telling the White House: The labor rights situation in 
     Colombia is not improving, and passage of the FTA is not 
     appropriate.''
       A memo soon to be released by the AFL-CIO deems Colombia 
     noncompliant with the ``Labor Action Plan'' Santos and Obama 
     agreed to in April as a condition for White House approval of 
     the free trade pact.
       In the memo, shown to the AP, the labor federation finds 
     neither ``economic, political, or moral justification for 
     rewarding Colombia with a free trade agreement.''
       Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Nkenge Harmon 
     said Friday when presented with the study's findings that 
     Colombia's record prosecuting ``perpetrators of violence'' 
     against labor activists ``has improved significantly,'' 
     though she added that Colombian officials acknowledge more 
     needs to be done.
       Harmon also stressed that additional Colombian resources 
     are being dedicated to the issue and that the U.S. government 
     ``is working intensively with them through training and 
     support.''
       Human Rights Watch acknowledged that annual trade unionists 
     killings are only a quarter of what they were a decade ago. 
     And it applauded some measures taken by Chief Prosecutor 
     Morales, including her announcement that an additional 100 
     police investigators would be assigned to the special 
     investigative unit.
       But HRW regional director Jose Miguel Vivanco said ``the 
     challenge (Morales) is facing remains huge.''
       A U.S. congressman who has met with various Colombian 
     presidents on human rights issues, Jim McGovern, a Democrat 
     from Massachusetts, doesn't think enough has been done to 
     reverse what he called a ``dismal'' record.
       Said McGovern: ``My worry is that if you approve the FTA at 
     this particular point you remove all the pressure off the 
     powers that be in Colombia to actually make a sincere, honest 
     and concerted attempt to improve the situation.''

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