By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jun 9 2003 (IPS)

The labour union movement in Colombia is caught between the bullets of guerrillas and paramilitaries and the violations of their freedom of association, say worker leaders taking part in the International Labour Conference this week in Geneva.

Last year, 170 Colombian unionists were assassinated, most by right-wing paramilitaries and at least 19 by leftist guerrillas of the revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), according to a report by the New York-based organisation Human Rights Watch.

The Alvaro Uribe government’s discourse for the Labour Conference underscores the decline in the number of unionists assassinated, from 60 in the first five months of 2002 to 25 in the same period this year, says Julio Gómez, secretary-general of the Confederation of Democratic Workers of Colombia (CGTD).

The official Colombia delegation, headed by Vice-President Francisco Santos, is going to present that figure as evidence that progress is being made, according to Gómez.

But labour leaders from Colombia contend that the murder of one union activist is as serious as the murder of a thousand. The government’s line of reasoning does not make sense, commented Cérvulo Bautista Matomá, another top leader of the CGTD.

Furthermore, the attacks on union freedoms in Colombia are increasingly intolerable, commented Gómez.

The two labour leaders said the criminal attacks on unionists is an attack on the unions themselves, as there has been "a dramatic decline" in the ability to attract new members.

In Colombia the long-standing systems for hiring personnel practically have been liquidated and the right to collective bargaining and to free association have become a sham, said Matomá.

The situation has reached such a critical point that some are saying it is easier to set up a guerrilla front than to organise a union, Gómez said.

Companies engage in massive layoffs if they get wind of any sort of effort to create a union, and no authority protects the right to organise, in spite of the fact that this right is stipulated in the constitution and in the labour code, he said.

But Colombia is no exception in the anti-labour union climate predominating in Latin America, where a common policy is apparently common throughout, fruit of the structural adjustment requirements of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank for countries seeking loans.

Thus the problem runs even deeper in Colombia, given that in addition to the assassination of unionists, there is the structural adjustment strategy, with new hiring rules and the disappearance of the state as a social arbiter, said the CGTD secretary-general.

Undoubtedly in countries like Argentina, Chile or Mexico, working people do not need to think twice about whether to set up a union or not, while the Colombian workers who approach labour organisations do so with the double fear of losing their jobs and losing their lives.

As a result the CGTD leaders aim to provoke debate about the threatened lives of union activists and the threats to unions themselves as the International Labour Conference gets underway. The tripartite meet – of government, private sector and worker representatives – lasts through Jun. 19.

The Conference is the highest decision-making body of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the United Nations agency entrusted with overseeing labour relations with sights on maintaining harmony.

The Colombian union leaders’ denunciations will be aimed at the business executives who threaten or harass those workers who demand respect for their labour rights.

They will also lay out accusations against the public sector for eliminating collective labour agreements, as the state-run Colombian Petroleum Enterprise intends to do, which has pushed the workers to the verge of a strike, noted Matomá.

The workers’ representation from the war-torn South American nation will demand that the ILO implement more effective provisions than the existing special programmes for protecting union activists.

"There is not enough in the budget to cover the costs of protecting the 500,000 members of our organisation," said Gómez.

"I have an armoured car and four bodyguards," but there are other colleagues who face the same threats but do not have the special car or the guards, noted the CGTD leader.

Gómez and Matomá are confident that their country’s case will reach the Administrative Tribunal, the ILO body that is second in authority only to the Conference.

The Tribunal is made up of 28 government delegates, 14 private sector delegates and several worker delegates. Government representatives from the 10 countries "of industrial importance" hold permanent seats: Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, and United States.

At the next meeting of the Tribunal, to begin Jun. 20, the Colombian delegation will officially request the creation of a special survey commission for their country.

The ILO sets up such special commissions for critical cases, as with Burma (Myanmar), where a survey commission looked into the matter of forced labour.

Gómez admits there is a possibility that the private sector delegates and some governments might oppose the creation of a special ILO commission for Colombia, but he says that the union leaders will insist, because the international community must assume its share of responsibility for "the holocaust" occurring in Colombia.

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