Statement of Stephen Coats, U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project

The U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project (US/LEAP) is a twenty year-old independent non-profit organization that supports the basic rights of workers in Latin America. The greatest source of US/LEAP's financial support comes from individuals. We also receive support from foundations, unions, and the U.S. religious community.

US/LEAP supports global trade, but believes that without trade rules that protect the rights of workers, trade agreements and trade programs will not spread the benefits of trade to workers abroad and will accelerate the race to the bottom for workers in this country.

US/LEAP has been actively engaged in linking U.S. policy on trade and worker rights since 1992 when it filed a Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) worker rights petition on Guatemala with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). Since then, US/LEAP has had extensive experience in using the worker rights conditions of both the GSP and the Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA) preferential trade programs. As members of the committee know, these and other U.S. preferential trade programs condition U.S. trade benefits on the beneficiary country taking steps to improve workers internationally-recognized worker rights.

Worker Rights Conditions Can Work. US/LEAP has seen that effective enforcement of worker rights conditions in U.S. trade programs can improve labor rights and help level the playing field in global trade. For example, the GSP worker rights petition process was used by USTR with Guatemala in the 1990s to secure labor law reform, an increase in the minimum wage, new labor courts, improved enforcement mechanisms, and even a break-through in the wall of impunity, resulting in the first conviction of criminals for violence against trade unionists in decades.

But They Need to Be Strengthened. It is also clear that worker rights conditions need to be strengthened and much more effectively enforced. They should be, as part of a fundamental strengthening of U.S. trade policy on ensuring respect for basic worker rights. Global trade must be built on a solid foundation of a level playing field for workers here and abroad. Instead of a strengthening, we have seen the reverse approach over the past ten years, a weakening of U.S. commitment to worker rights as part of U.S. trade policy. In Latin America, protections for worker rights provided for by the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and pending agreements elsewhere, represent a huge step backwards from those contained under the GSP and ATPA programs. CAFTA and the pending trade agreements both lower standards (to national law rather than international standards) and weaken enforcement mechanisms (replacing trade sanctions with modest fines paid back to the offending government). The Bush Administration's trade-worker rights policy is going exactly in the wrong direction, with negative consequences for workers here and abroad.

Upsurge of Violence in Guatemala Since Passage of CAFTA. The level of violence against trade unionists in Guatemala has increased since the passage of CAFTA. As many trade unionists have been murdered in Guatemala in the past two months than in the three years before CAFTA was passed. Those who are opposed to the exercise of basic rights in Guatemala know full well that the leverage of the U.S. government and of organizations like US/LEAP that seek to apply that leverage has been drastically reduced with the passage of CAFTA and the replacement of GSP worker rights conditionality with the labor chapter of CAFTA.

This submission pertains primarily to the pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia.

US/LEAP is a leading U.S. non-governmental organization working on Colombia worker rights. In the past year, US/LEAP authored "Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Colombia,"  the most comprehensive study of worker rights in Colombia in recent years whose release by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center generated wide-spread press coverage including by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Voice of America. US/LEAP also leads delegations to Colombia each year while staff travel to Colombia on a regular basis to meet with Colombian and U.S. government officials as well as trade unions and NGOs.

Colombia is by far the most dangerous country in the world for a trade unionist. Not only are more trade unionists murdered each year in Colombia than in any other country, more trade unionists are murdered in Colombia than in all other countries combined. This was true last year, the year before, and ever year since the Uribe Administration has been in power.

The Uribe Administration is a year into its second term. Since it took office, over 400 trade unionists have been murdered, raising the total of trade unionists murdered since 1991 to over 2,200.

Preliminary and unofficial figures show that more trade unionists were killed in 2006 (75) than in 2005 (70).

According to the respected Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS, the National Labor College, an independent NGO whose analysis and statistics are cited by the U.S. government):

o Public sector unions, especially teachers, have been particularly hard hit. In 2005, 44 out of the 70 trade unionists killed were teachers. In addition to teachers, municipal workers, judicial workers, and health workers continue to be the principal targets.

o Most of the violence against trade unionists is a result of engagement in normal union activities. ENS estimates that over 75% of the anti-union violence that took place in Colombia in 2005 (including murders, attempted murders, kidnaps, threats, etc.) was the result of the victims' normal union activities.

o Violence against Colombian women trade unionists has increased dramatically in recent years. Since 2002, human rights violations against women trade unionists have increased nearly 500%. Violations against women trade unionists accounted for nearly 35% of all violations against trade unionists in 2005.

The second and perhaps even more relevant fact for this committee's consideration of the Colombia FTA is the shocking level of impunity demonstrating the inability or unwillingness of the Colombian government to prosecute those responsible for the horrific violence against trade unionists. By the Colombian government's own figures, the rate of impunity with respect to these murders is over 99%. That is, less than 1% of murderers of trade unionists have been put behind bars.

Government can't even keep track of the few cases prosecuted. The Uribe government has had a difficult time demonstrating any progress on impunity. In an April 2006 meeting with US/LEAP, Vice President Santos stated that there had been 19 successful prosecutions since President had taken office, out of a case load of over 2,200 murdered trade unionists in the past 16 years. While a ridiculously small number given the large number of cases from which to choose, the number of successful prosecutions cited by the Vice President in April 2006 was, incomprehensibly, no higher than the number cited in documents provided by the Vice President to members of Congress in October 2004, a year-and-a-half earlier. (To compound the confusion, in May 2006, the Ministry of Social Protection provided US/LEAP with a report documenting only 15 successful prosecutions.)

ILO Chastises Colombia. An ILO report released in November 2006 takes Colombia to task for failing to address violence and impunity. In its November 2006 report, the ILO's Committee of Freedom of Association, "... once again urges the Government [of Colombia], in the strongest possible terms, to take the necessary steps to pursue the investigations that have been initiated and to put an end to the intolerable impunity that currently exists." 

Workers in Colombia face not only violence but also non-violent attacks on the exercise of their basic rights. These include the failure of the government to enforce labor law, inordinate delays in the approval of union recognitions, and a weakening of labor law protections in the early 1990s that, among other things, permit the extensive use of temporary workers to block the exercise of freedom of association.

Case study: Worker Rights in the Flower Sector. The denial of worker rights in the Colombian flower sector is widespread, as revealed in a recent report cited on National Public Radio on Valentine's Day. Indeed, the most important flower grower in the country and the largest exporter of flowers from Latin America (Dole Fresh Flowers) is currently in the process of closing its largest flower plantation in the face of the most important union-organizing effort in the Colombian flower sector in the past five years. The flower sector should be of particular interest to U.S. trade policy makers, since nearly every flower from Colombia enters the U.S. duty-free under the ATPA program and Colombia provides about 60% of all flowers sold in the U.S.

For an extensive documentation on the attack on worker rights in Colombia, see the June 2006 report, Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Colombia.

The combined violent and non-violent assault on worker rights in Colombia has been successful, with a sharp reduction in the number of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements. Less than 5% of the Colombian work force is now unionized, a third of its previous level.

The pending FTA with Colombia should never have been negotiated, given the level of violence and impunity with respect to murders of trade unionists. As stated in testimony before USTR in March 2004, US/LEAP= s position is that the Bush Administration should have conditioned the initiation of negotiations with Colombia on an end to impunity with respect to murderers of Colombian trade unionists and a real reduction in the level of murders.

What has subsequently been negotiated is completely unacceptable, representing a huge step back in current U.S. trade policy commitments to worker rights. Any FTA, with Colombia or any other country, must include at its core enforceable protections for acceptable conditions of work and for core ILO conventions, accompanied by effective measures to ensure full compliance.

But Colombia is a special case. Even if an FTA is renegotiated to include acceptable provisions on worker rights, no FTA with Colombia should be approved until the government demonstrates the political will to end impunity.

One could list a host of worker rights violations in Colombia as reasons why stronger worker rights conditions are needed in a FTA with Colombia and why the current FTA should be opposed.

But there are really only three facts that members of Congress need to know for why the current FTA should be rejected:

1. More trade unionists are killed each year in Colombia than in all other countries combined.

2. The rate of impunity for murderers of trade unionists in Colombia is over 99%.

3. The first two facts have not changed under the government of President Alvaro Uribe.

Rejecting the pending FTA with Colombia provides the clearest opportunity for Congress to reverse the destructive free trade policy of the Bush Administration. Conversely, approval would make a mockery of any expressed U.S. commitment to constructing a global trading system built on a level playing field that ensures respect for worker rights. And approval would give a green light to those who wish to deny workers abroad their basic rights and accelerate the race to the bottom for workers at home.