Jul 16, 2012
The first national organization dedicated to the working conditions of Afro-descendants in Colombia was formed on July 14 in Cali. The new Afro-Colombian Labor Council will advance racial inclusion in the labor movement and in Colombian society.
The council was launched at a forum attended by 570 Colombian labor activists from the palm oil, sugar cane, domestic work, port, and public service sectors, who joined Afro-Colombian community activists, academics and local students. The forum was sponsored by the Solidarity Center, with the support of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), an AFL-CIO constituency group. The Solidarity Center has been working closely for many years with the Colombian labor movement to address specific worker rights issues affecting Afro-Colombian workers.
A quarter of Colombia’s population is Afro-descendant, yet Afro-Colombians comprise more than 50 percent of the country’s poor. While many community and non-governmental organizations are dedicated to defending the rights of vulnerable Afro-Colombians, this is the first national organization to explicitly tackle the exploitive working conditions that most Afro-descendants suffer.
“The success of this event was really a dream come true for us,” said Saray Castañeda, president of the Sindicato de Trabajadores y Empleados de la Educación (SINTRENEL), the public education workers union. “Now, we have the task of being the driving force behind policies for labor conditions for Afro-Colombians and demanding recognition for our professional capacities.”
According to the National Union School (ENS), which released the first in-depth study of the Afro-Colombian labor situation in four major Colombian cities, 65 percent of Afro-Colombians in the informal sector and 29 percent in the formal sector make less than the minimum wage. Additionally, ENS found an alarming disparity in the quality of employment available to Afro-Colombians despite their rates of educational attainment.
“The Solidarity Center knew through our ongoing work with Afro-Colombian workers and union leaders that there was intense interest in bringing together workers, union leaders, academics, and policy makers to focus on the dire situation of worker rights for Afro-Colombian workers,” said Rhett Doumitt, Solidarity Center country program director for Colombia. “But we were still impressed by the huge numbers of people who came to participate in this forum and move forward on this critical issue.”
The council will work with academics and cooperate with all three national union centers. CBTU participated in the public launch of the council and will have an ongoing role. Representatives of the Colombian government, including Presidential Adviser on Afro-Colombian Issues Oscar Gamboa, also attended the forum.
“It is historic that the Solidarity Center brought together such a large and diverse group to discuss labor issues and race,” said Harold Rogers, international relations secretary for CBTU. “This is a small, valiant step, and now it is up to the Afro-Colombian people to carry out what has started.”
Jul 12, 2012
The Solidarity Center has expanded its program work in Colombia, with the goal of consolidating and implementing labor reforms and formalizing labor relations for hundreds of thousands of precarious, subcontracted workers who currently toil without many of the protections of the labor law or the right to join a union.
Colombia has a long history of repression of worker rights and the world’s highest murder rate for trade unionists, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Colombian workers are largely employed under innumerable subcontracting schemes that sever the traditional employee-employer relationship and render them ineligible for protections under labor law. As a result of these factors, fewer than 5 percent of Colombian workers belong to a union.
In response to these problems, and as a result of negotiations with the U.S, government around the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, the Colombian government committed in 2011 to a Labor Action Plan, leading to legal reforms including the prohibition of fraudulent worker cooperatives and other types of labor intermediation that prevent unionization of workers and protection of worker rights. Unfortunately, only a minority of workers have been able to capitalize on these reforms, as a result of a weak enforcement of the law and employer hostility toward unions.
To address these challenges, the Solidarity Center is increasing the size and scope of its work in Colombia. Solidarity Center work will focus on building organizing capacity within unions to rebuild membership and on strengthening unions’ advocacy capacity to press for full implementation of new legal reforms, with an emphasis on women’s empowerment and inclusion. While the Solidarity Center will continue to work with its long-standing allies in the public sector and the sugar cane, ports, palm oil, and energy industries, it will increase its work in such sectors as cut flowers and telecommunications—all with the potential to achieve significant, precedent-setting gains for workers.
Specifically, work with partner unions will focus on training and empowering vulnerable workers, with emphasis on women workers, to grow their unions and advocate for their rights. Training areas include worker organizing, leadership skills for new union members and emerging leaders, negotiation and collective bargaining , labor law (particularly new laws that were created or changed to eliminate fraudulent subcontracting), and tools for defending worker rights, including international justice mechanisms.
In addition to training and capacity building, Solidarity Center staff in Colombia will play a critical role in providing ongoing mentorship and support to unions undertaking new organizing campaigns. In sectors where union activists and leaders are frequent targets of threats and violence, such as the sugar cane, energy, and palm oil sectors, this role has entailed Solidarity Center staff presence alongside workers engaged in both short-term demonstrations, such as rallies, and longer-term struggles, such as work stoppages, as well as solidarity and support for union-led advocacy directed at decision makers in Colombia, such as the Ministry of Labor, elected officials, and the U.S. Embassy. Solidarity Center work in Colombia also includes support for several union- led public forums, seminars, and publications, intended to build broad support for worker and union rights and to increase public pressure for compliance with labor law.
“We are working with all three national union centers and key sectoral unions in Colombia to support their demands for direct, formal labor relations with employers that will bring workers under the full protection of the law,” said Rhett Doumitt, Solidarity Center country program director for Colombia. “For Colombian workers to be recognized as ‘workers,’ with due rights under national and international law, and for Colombian enterprises to be made legally responsible as employers are critical to improving worker rights in Colombia.”
The Solidarity Center’s Bogota-based team will implement its expanded Colombia work with financial support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Mar 23, 2012
In Colombia’s coal mines, troubling health and safety risks combined with serious environmental and social justice issues create conditions reminiscent of mining in the early 20th century in the United States. The dangers mine workers—and local communities—face are real and frightening, say four mining safety and health experts from the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).
The UMWA experts recently returned from a union exchange to Colombia. They were: Ron Airhart, executive assistant to Secretary-Treasurer Daniel Kane; Tim Baker, assistant to the secretary-treasurer; Ron Bowersox, international safety inspector; and Dale Lydic, president of UMWA Local 2193 in Clymer, PA. In Colombia, they met with their union counterparts, conducted site visits, and held discussions with local community groups and government officials.
“Coal mines are what ours would have been in the 1920s,” said Airhart. “There are no safety standards. There are no mining laws.” Consequently, he explained, mine inspection systems are all but non-existent.
The most obvious health and safety risks for mine workers, UMWA exchange participants said, were exhaustion, spinal fatigue, and lack of dust control. Spinal injuries are common. Long shifts added to multi-hour commutes on rough rural roads cause many mine workers—especially heavy equipment operators—to suffer spinal breakdown.
“You put 20 hours on that backbone up and down with no rest, and you have a lot of spinal injuries,” said Airhart.
Worker exhaustion is of particular concern as fatigue is a known risk factor in workplace accidents and fatalities.
Participants reported that in Colombia, underground and strip coal mines are mostly in remote areas, cordoned off with razor wire and heavily guarded. Workers are not allowed to live inside mine compounds and are transported by bus to and from far-off villages. At the Cerrajón open-pit coal mine, for example, many workers combine a 12-hour shift with an eight- to 10-hour roundtrip bus commute to their villages. With only four to five hours’ rest at home, workers are exhausted.
Cerrajón—which UMWA representatives visited—is considered one of the best mines in the country in terms of hours, wages, and conditions. However, the distinction between mine worker and management is stark. Company personnel live inside a guarded compound and are provided with schools, homes, swimming pools, and a golf course. Workers have no access to company amenities.
Union members said their employer’s response to worker exhaustion is to use technology rather than cut shift hours. This company plans to install lasers to flash into heavy-equipment operators’ eyes when slowed blinking is detected.
Measures to monitor and prevent dust inhalation at open-pit coal mines were observed to be absent or inadequate. UMWA participants said that the levels of dust they personally observed at one large-scale strip mine would cause most workers to develop breathing issues and likely a high percentage of workers would develop black lung disease.
Working for Change
The Colombian union federations Sintramienergética and Sintracarbón represent nearly 10,000 workers in Colombia`s coal mines. Both labor federations are struggling to push reluctant employers to adopt better safety standards and practices, as well as to educate and empower their own members to demand better working conditions.
Members of Sintracarbón told the visiting UMWA representatives that inspections do not always clear up problems. Mine inspectors make site visits by invitation only and are ordered off mine property regularly. Meanwhile, many Colombian mine inspectors are attorneys with knowledge of labor laws but no background in mining.
“My son is an attorney,” said Baker, who visited Colombia in 2008 as part of the same exchange program, “but I sure don’t want him inspecting any of the mines I go into.”
Sintracarbón members reported a few improvements at the Cerrajón mine, many in response to requests following a 2010 exchange in which six Colombian union members attended a program at the Mine Safety and Health Administration Academy in Beckley, West Virginia. Recently Cerrajón hired one resident doctor. In addition, Sintracarbón convinced management to relocate 367 injured workers to light-duty positions while recovering from injuries.
While improvements are welcome, the absence of regulations and third-party enforcement means the changes are not binding.
Data collection on mine health and safety is inadequate. According to a staff member visited by UMWA exchange participants, the Colombian government does not know how many mines operate in the country and so does not collect data on injury rates or deaths in the mining industry.
The ability of Colombian mining unions to negotiate health and safety measures with management is undercut by the fact that large mine operators are replacing permanent workers with contract workers. Contract workers have no work security, no training, no workplace rights, and no collective representation. At Cerrajón, for example, only 4,600 of 11,000 workers are permanent workers.
An Uphill Battle
Apart from health and safety concerns, UMWA participants reported serious environmental and social justice issues.
Community groups reported to UMWA visitors that a multinational mine operator plans to relocate 18 miles of river to access 500 million tons of recoverable coal under their villages. Villagers are afraid of losing their land, livelihoods, and access to clean drinking water.
“We met with seven different community groups, and they told us stories that would just break your heart,” said Airhart. “The coal operators came in the middle of the night, took their village, and just moved the whole town.
The scale and extent of strip coal mining projects in Colombia surprised the UMWA participants, especially given that there are apparently no enforceable requirements for mining companies to return the land to its original condition, they said.
Strip coal mining is trending upward in Colombia. Cerrajón, which currently produces 34 million tons of coal per year, plans to increase production to 60 million tons a year by 2014, according to mine management.
Baker was struck by the difference between coal mining in the United States and in Colombia.
“You see these folks, and you realize that they have a long hard fight to go through,” Baker said. “And the shame of it is, is they’re going to have to fight the same hard fight we had to fight 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.”
Several follow-up activities will result from the exchange. The UMWA’s medical expert on black lung disease and head of the Black Lung Association will contact Sintracarbón’s medical consultant to exchange information on the illness. UMWA’s administrator of occupational health and safety will research the new sensor devices to determine whether they will cause eye damage. Bowersox plans to provide Cerrejón’s safety director with information on personal dust monitoring devices. Finally, UMWA will work toward bringing more Sintracarbón union members to the Beckley Academy for mine safety training.
The exchange was implemented by the Solidarity Center with funding provided by the U.S. Department of State.
May 6, 2006
Colombian trade unionists face daily threats of violence and assassination, attempts by employers, paramilitaries, guerrillas and the state to stop dissent, silence workers and destroy the only mechanism that gives workers some control over their economic lives: their union. Yet the Colombian labor movement has faced all these challenges by building a broad leadership base with deep rank-and-file roots.
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