LABOUR-COLOMBIA: Striking Oil Workers Defy President – and Danger

By Constanza Vieira Reprint | | Print |

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, May 11 2004 (IPS) - In Colombia, considered the most dangerous country in the world for labour activists, oil workers are defying right-wing President Alvaro Uribe in a strike against measures that the union sees as steps towards the eventual privatisation of the state-run oil company.

Roman Catholic Church authorities are attempting to mediate in the test of will between Colombia’s oil workers’ union (Unión Sindical Obrera de la Industria del Petróleo – USO) and the government, which has taken a ”firm-hand approach” in Colombia’s armed conflict.

After nearly 18 months of negotiations, the longest and most ineffective in the history of the state-run oil company Ecopetrol, the oil workers struck on Apr. 22.

The strike was declared illegal the next day by the government, on the grounds that oil production constitutes an essential public service.

The workers are opposed to changes in the contracts between Ecopetrol and foreign oil companies that give the transnational corporations a larger share of profits than they were previously receiving in joint ventures.

The modified contracts and other measures are seen as moving in the direction of privatising Colombia’s oil industry, which would mainly benefit the U.S. oil companies ChevronTexaco and Occidental Petroleum, Austria’s Schlumberger and British Petroleum-Amoco.

USO argues that the drop in fiscal revenues that will result from the measures will have ”an incalculable impact.”

Colombia produces around 520,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Although that volume is 40 percent lower than output for 1999, soaring international oil prices of around 40 dollars a barrel, a consequence of the U.S.-led war and occupation in Iraq, as well as climbing domestic fuel prices have kept up the company’s earnings.

Ecopetrol accounts for one-third of Colombia’s export revenues.

This South American country of 44 million people has 1.6 billion barrels in proven reserves, and potential reserves estimated at 47 billion barrels.

Ecopetrol, which employs about 6,600 people nationwide – 3,600 of whom are members of USO – has a monopoly on the production of gasoline in Colombia.

The strike ”is aimed at keeping the government from handing the country’s oil over to the transnational corporations, which is the objective of the reforms of the contracts,” USO vice-president Hernando Hernández told IPS.

”And, of course, we are also seeking to preserve our union,” he added. The strike is demanding respect for the rights of workers to organise and to bargain collectively. Only around six percent of Colombia’s workforce is unionised, and Ecopetrol has begun to take steps to dissolve the oil workers union.

USO is the jewel in the crown of Colombia’s labour movement. Before the state-owned oil company was created, oil workers had decades of experience fighting for their labour rights against abuses by the U.S. Tropical Oil Company, which began to operate in 1921 in Barrancabermeja, an oil town in central Colombia on the Magdalena river. Two years later, the union was created.

Workers have been sacked, imprisoned, forced to flee their homes and even the country, and killed during the strikes that have marked the history of the union.

But in 1948, USO became the first union to gain an influence over government policy, after a massive strike that opposed the extension of Tropical Oil’s contracts and successfully pushed for the creation of Ecopetrol.

”We are trying to save the company,” said Hernández.

The day Uribe declared the oil workers’ strike illegal, Catholic Bishop Jaime Prieto of Barrancabermeja announced the Church’s support for USO in the peaceful protest and said it would condemn ”any provocation of violent confrontation, wherever it comes from.”

In response to the strike, the Uribe administration has stepped up the militarisation of the country’s oil installations, placing refineries under military command.

Before the strike, Ecopetrol authorities locked USO leaders and members out of the plants, began disciplinary proceedings for 1,000 workers, and dismissed 13 employees.

By Sunday, 93 workers taking part in the strike had been laid off, mainly union leaders in the 13 production areas in different regions. Among them were Hernández and the president of USO, Gabriel Alvis.

The Colombian Commission of Jurists has repeatedly stated that declaring the strike illegal runs counter to the jurisprudence of Colombia’s Constitutional Court as well as numerous International Labour Organisation recommendations to the Colombian government that have defended the rights of workers to strike and to organise.

Trade unionists and social activists are frequently the targets of assassinations in Colombia, which is in the grip of a four-decade civil war that pits leftist guerrilla groups against right-wing paramilitary organisations and the armed forces.

Since 1988, 89 USO members have been murdered and 37 injured in attacks. The union’s human rights commission has also documented two disappearances and two kidnappings by the paramilitaries.

Around 400 oil workers have been forced to flee their homes because of death threats, and three are in exile, while 34 members of USO have been thrown into jail since 1993 and five still face legal charges.

In 2003 alone, 87 trade unionists were killed in Colombia. Some 3,800 leaders of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) central trade union, which groups 80 percent of the country’s unions, have been murdered since its creation in 1986.

The Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) has held the Colombian state responsible for tolerating paramilitary attacks on labour activists, and even active participation by its agents.

With regards to the arrests of trade unionists, the IACHR has stated that the case of USO is ”a particularly clear example” of how closely ”violent attacks by paramilitary organisations have coincided with the start of legal proceedings initiated by the state against trade unionists.”

Members of USO are covered by precautionary measures issued by the IACHR, which means they must receive protection from the state.

”In Colombia, labour organising is an extremely high risk activity, and of course staging a political strike to defend our oil, sovereignty and state-run oil company also poses a very high risk for those of us who are leading it,” said Hernández.

USO adviser Alvaro Vásquez, an 80-year-old labour movement observer and activist, said in an interview with IPS that public opinion is becoming more favourable to the strike, which is in its third week, as people gradually come to understand what it is about.

But ”this is a very difficult moment. The labour movement has been greatly weakened by the ‘dirty war’, and with unemployment standing at nearly 20 percent, people are very afraid of losing their jobs,” he added.

Over the weekend, a ‘USO-Ecopetrol panel for talks’ was set up in the headquarters of Colombia’s bishops’ conference in the capital. It was presided over by Archbishop of Bogota Pedro Rubiano, and attended by Minister of Mining Luis Mejía.

A spokesman for the office of the president said last week that although the government is willing to engage in talks, ”there is nothing to negotiate,” because all of the decisions and measures have been adopted in accordance with the law and are a fait accompli.

The government has not ruled out the possibility of importing petrol to avoid any shortages that might be caused by the strike, and warned that the dismissals will only cease when the work stoppage is called off.

But the strike will continue ”until the future outlook for Ecopetrol and our trade union is clear,” responded Hernández.

In Vásquez’s view, the violence, persecution of labour activists by Ecopetrol authorities and the government’s refusal to negotiate are part of an offensive that has been launched against USO.

So far, the strike has been adhered to by 78 percent of USO’s 3,600 members, primarily the blue-collar workers, according to the union.

In addition, all of Ecopetrol’s independent contractors support the strike.

The company has another 2,700 non-unionised employees, who have been assigned to other tasks in the company as part of an emergency plan to keep production levels up. For example, administrative employees have donned hard hats and boots to work in the refineries.

According to the government, pre-strike production levels have been maintained.

But although Hernández did not venture to provide a precise estimate, he said he is sure that the workers involved in the emergency plan that is currently being used to keep the company running ”do not have the technical capacity nor are there enough of them” to keep production levels up if the strike continues.