Author: Peter Bolton

Colombia`s sugarcane unions denounce labour abuses

Sugarcane

Four of Colombia’s sugarcane unions united at a press conference last month to denounce abuses against workers in the sugar industry. Sintrainagro, Sintracatorce, Sintracañazucol and Sinaltrainal met for the first time in years to sign a resolution which set forth common concerns faced by labour activists in the sugar sector and agreed to a set of recommendations and actions for the future.

The document made condemnations of “violence and impunity against union leaders” such as the assassination of Sintrainagro leader Carlos Pérez Muñóz which took place in January of this year. Muñóz’s death has been given as proof that unionist in Colombia are still under considerable risk from targeted violence. Despite a decrease in assassinations of unionists in recent years, Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists. The resolution also condemned continued threats against leaders and the failure of the National Protections Union to provide guarantees for their organizations.

One of the central themes of the conference was third party contracting, a practice that has been common in Colombia whereby companies give contracts through intermediary companies in order to flout their responsibility to provide workers with legally mandated benefits. For example, sugar companies have adopted new forms of third party contracting through Simplified Stock Companies (SAS), ignoring or redefining what constitutes “permanent essential work related to production,” and by forming in-house “yellow” unions.

Companies have found other ways around direct contracts such as by the formation of so-called “worker cooperatives”; a misnomer in which workers are said to be autonomous but in actuality end up worse off in terms of salary, benefits and conditions. Sinaltrainal leader Oscar Bedoya said:

 “Law 50 led to the formation of worker cooperatives, associated worker’s cooperatives. Large unions really suffered for that and workers went from having direct contracts with the companies to being part of these worker cooperatives and remained in this condition of being indirectly contracted.”

He explained how this led to the loss of benefits such as healthcare and pensions, adding: “companies aren’t taking any sort of responsibility for the health of their workers or any sort of role in their healthcare system.” Companies he said, have become increasingly adept at abusing their position. He said that they create new companies “at click of a button” but that these weren’t  real company in the sense of taking responsibility for workers.

Other concerns faced by workers include salaries and retaliatory firings. According to Sintracañazucol leader Yermi Micolta, salaries in the sector are down 50% because of the way that cane cutters are paid. He added: “We also work on Sundays and holidays and we’re denied our right to overtime.” Omar Cedano of Sintracatorce pointed to some examples of unjust firings. He said that the Providencia company fired nine workers just for attending a union meeting and that the Manuelita company fired 19 members of his union in what he says was a deliberate effort to weaken organizing efforts.

Cedano said:

“In spite of all of this, this union still has been growing, we’ve been strengthening our efforts, and we the workers need it. We’ve been facing a lot of challenges but we’ve always been struggling to protect our work and our livelihoods and our rights as workers. But every day the situation gets more difficult, there’s a lot of unemployment and companies have closed their doors to workers.”

Another problem that he discussed in his speech to the gathering was mechanization, which has been a growing source of layoffs for workers in the sugar sector. “Workers that leave, retire or are forced to quit, those positions aren’t filled again, they’re filled with machines,” he added.

The effects of the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement was also a prominent issue. The controversial free trade agreement was made law in October 2011, shortly before President Obama faced a re-election battle. In an effort to appease critics of the agreement within the United States Congress and in the labor movements of both countries, a document was signed that came to be known as the Labor Action Plan (LAP) which purported to commit the Colombian government to labor protection, ending impunity and improving worker rights. The Labor Action Plan also established a Ministry of Labor and led to the appointment of labor inspectors to monitor labor practices.

According to the union leaders, however, the prevalence of threats and targeted violence, indirect contracting and poor working conditions have not improved and in some senses worsened. Though some companies have been fined for violating the plan, the fines have yet to be paid and companies still violate labor rights with apparent impunity. Sintrainagro leader Mauricio Ramos said:

“Even though indirect contracts were banned companies will just flat out say to administrative labor that they’re not going to pay the fines and they can’t make them. And the government let’s that happen.”

Cedano also said:

“We’ve had a very clear position on the Labor Action Plan and a really clear position on the compliance of that agreement. Even though the government did create a Ministry of Labor a group which was supposed to be monitoring and going after third party contracting in Colombia, which is an ongoing problem in Colombia, this hasn’t really been enforced. None of the labor inspectors who have been nominated have even come to investigate in our sector. So these protections don’t exist for us as workers and so in this sense the plan is not being complied with.”

Besides Providencia and Manuelita, two of the other big labour rights offenders in the region are the San Carlos and La Cabaña sugar mills, both headquartered in Cali. Sintracatarce had mass firings of its members from the San Carlos company this year, with over 300 workers losing their job because of their union affiliation. This retaliatory firing is illegal in most developed countries and should theoretically not take place in Colombia under the terms of the Labor Action Plan. La Cabaña was singled out for its failures relating to contracts. The resolution states: “La Cabaña boldly refused to formalize contracts for cane cutters, rehire fired workers, negotiate workers’ list of demands or recognize cane cutters’ organization.”

Sintrainagro leader Mauricio Ramos pointed to the lack of response from the labour minister for the actions of sugar companies and also singled out La Cabaña for criticism. He said:

“In the face of mass firings, like in the case of La Cabaña, mass firings of unionists the Labor Minister [Rafael] Pardo hasn’t done anything. He’s just accepted that. He still allows sugarcane companies to issue any kind of contracts that it wants.”

One of the most worrying things brought up by the speakers is the continued impunity for violence committed against unionists despite the alleged protections provided by the LAP. Ramos recounted the death of his fellow Sintrainagro member:

“Juan Carlos Pérez Muñoz was a union member with La Cabana when he got killed, the government hasn’t done anything there’s been no prosecution and no suspects named. When Juan Carlos was trying to organize with the workers that had been fired from La Cabana which was a hub of about 20 people which was why he was targeted. It’s so bad that we’ll turn in reports to the local investigator, to the attorney’s office, and they’ll put way more energy into investigating the person who made the complaint than the actual case because it’s so stigmatized to be a labor leader or a human rights leader and to be speaking out.”

This continued violence after the free trade agreement and LAP were signed seems to have confirmed the worst fears of those who resisted the agreement in the first place.

The resolution committed the four unions to seven recommendations for action including actual enforcement of sanctions for companies that engage in indirect contracting, pushing for other job functions to be included in the definition of essential labor, ensuring the rights to free association and union membership, promoting Senate Bill 097-098 (sponsored by Alexander Lopez Maya) which would outlaw third-party contracting, and an effort to open a dialogue between sugarcane unions and the Sugarcane Association to discuss compliance with the Labor Action Plan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwdMOV0Iojc&feature=youtu.be

 

Anti oil giant Pacific Rubiales rally in Puerto Gaitán

Jueves_21_7_2011@@petroleo

Pacific Rubiales Energy has over the last decade grown to be the largest independent oil company in South America. A result of a myriad of mergers between different companies, it can trace its presence in Colombia back to 1982 and made big inroads in the country with the 2008 acquisition of Kappa Energy. The Toronto-based oil giant today extracts around 20% of Colombia’s oil and has surpassed BP and Occidental to become the country’s largest extractor of oil behind the state-owned Ecopetrol.

The multinational giant, however, has been mired in controversy over the last few years. In 2011 it was embroiled in a clash with the Colombian government over security (. The company threatened to bring a halt to production unless they were given guarantees over security. Next year in 2012 it was put under investigation for obstructing environmental regulation by failing to provide a environmental compliance report and giving false information to environmental authorities.

Later that year it was ensnared in a bitter labor dispute. A Colombian-based NGO, Proyecto Gramalote, accused Pacific Rubiales of threatening to fire workers who wished to join labor unions. Spokesperson for the NGO, Felipe Harman, said that the company had responded aggressively to attempts at worker organization as well as to complaints by local of environmental damage.

Pacific Rubliales responded by creating their own “in-house” labor union called UTEL. The move was heavily criticized by the established national Colombian union for oil workers, Union Sindical Obrera (USO). USO president Rodolfo Vecino accused the Canadians of attempting to cut the legs out from under the USO. He said that the UTEL was assembled purely “to hinder the negotiation process that has been going on with USO.”

The criticisms of Pacific Rubliales have recently come to a head, prompting a convention last month in Puerto Gaitán, site of the company’s largest operation in Colombia, the Rubiales oilfield, to discuss the alleged abuses. Originally organized by Red de Hermandad y Solidaridad con Colombia (REDHER), the conference was also led by the USO, Proyecto Gramalote and Corporacion Choapo, a grassroots social justice organization. They were joined over the weekend-long conference by a number of international organizations including labor unions and human rights groups such as Projet Accompagnement Solidarité Colombie (PASC) and Peace Brigades International (PBI).

Speakers put forward numerous objectives for the event and for what they hoped would be achieved in the future. A center piece of the conference was to bring to light the social, economic and environmental problems that the organizers believe are caused by the presence of transnational corporations in Colombia. A recurrent theme was the charge than an asymmetry exists in the application of justice between such companies and the communities that are affected by their presence.

Proyecto Gramalote put forward its position that Ecopetrol should take over total operation of the Rubiales oilfield by 2016. It believes that full control would allow profits from the oil field to be put toward social programs for the nation and that there would be better union guarantees. The NGO also discussed how ownership by a majority state-owned company would lead to greater penal responsibility in the case of environmental or social damages as there would be a judicial body present to provide recourse through the law.

The highest profile speaker at the event was Senator Alexander Lopez. USO president Rodolfo Vecino claimed in 2012 that Lopez had been blocked from meeting with USO representatives when visiting a Pacific Rubliales worksite. Lopez said: “it’s very sad that the Colombian people have to come and judge this company and review the perverse actions on the part of the company. The way in which they enslave the workers. The way they degrade the our ecosystems and environment. How they displace our indigenous communities and campesinos. The way they take the sovereignty away from the territories.”

Asked about the time when he was stopped from entering a Pacific Rubiales he said that he was stopped by both the company and the army and police as well. He added: ” This illustrates the high levels of corruption and irresponsibility and anti-patriotism that Santos and his government has displayed.”

I asked him specifically about the Labor Action Plan, an agreement that was made between president Santos and president Obama to allay the fears about free trade agreements and the effects they might have on Colombian workers. He said that his office has produced several reports on the action plan, all of which show that it has been ineffective. He said: “The action plan was an excuse to sign the free trade agreement with the argument that we’re going to improve the conditions of Colombian workers but the exact opposite has happened. The work conditions here have gotten worse.”

Dave Coles, national president of the Canadian Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, was present at the event to lend support to USO as part of his union’s mandate is to assist unions in impoverished countries. He said: “multinational corporations are not abiding by the simplest of human rights conduct in Colombia.”

He said: “it is a poor reflection on the Harper/Obama government that they knowingly signed these agreements during a period of time when there are still huge human rights violations taking place in Colombia. And they did it to support the corporations.”

He added that Colombia is not living up to the human rights and labor rights provisions of the free trade agreements and that while that is not surprising given the nature of free trade agreements, he was shocked to uncover the extent of corporate control of the state. “The state of Colombia is owned lock, stock and barrel by the oil companies. They tell them what to do. The army is directed to de-unionize the energy sector. The army is directed to violate human rights and it is done with complete immunity. The state condones it.”

Some of the leadership of Pacific Rubiales are former members executives of PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, including CEO Ronald Pantin. If Proyecto Gramalote’s goals were realized, Colombia’s oil industry would more closely resemble that of Venezuela in which PDVSA has a state monopoly on oil extraction. For now, Ecopetrol is a joint partner with Pacific Rubiales in Puerto Gaitán as part of a public-private set-up.

Photo, El Espectador (archive)

Senior Semana journalist attacked

semana

Chief of Investigations at Colombia´s top weekly publication Semana, Ricardo Calderon, survived a gun attack in Tolima last week. Five shots were fired at his car while he had stopped to urinate before approaching a toll near the town of Fusagasuga late on Wednesday, May 1st.

The attack on such a high-profile journalist has reignited the debate about safety for members of the press in the country. Semana’s publisher released a statement saying that it was the first against one of its journalists in its 30 years of publishing. The Associated Press reported: “While provincial journalists are periodically assassinated in Colombia for their work, attacks on prominent journalists such as Calderon are extremely rare in Colombia.”

President Santos has appointed the chief of police to investigate the case and a number of speculations about the perpetrator and motive abound. In particular, Calderon’s investigation into alleged human rights abuses at the Tolimaida Prison in Tolima by military officers has raised suspicions that it was the military retaliating for Calderon exposing abuses by its personnel. It has emerged that the attack took place just a few miles from a military base which was the focus of some of Calderon’s reports and that he had been in Tolima to conduct interviews to gather further information about corruption and criminal activity committed by the army.

Luis Guillermo Perez, a lawyer of the Jose Alvear Restrepo law firm, says that he is certain that the military was behind the shooting. He said, “Without doubt it is the military responsible for this attack because he denounced the corruption in the military prisons.” He said that he thinks that it was a threat as opposed to an attempt on Calderon’s life. He added, “I am sure that if the army wanted to kill him he would be killed already.”

Other focuses of Calderon’s journalism have been illegal spying by the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) domestic intelligence agency on judges, journalists and opposition politicians during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe. These reports were part of the impetus behind the conviction of more than 20 DAS agents. His reporting on right-wing paramilitaries and their links to politicians close to Uribe has also been controversial particularly given the embarrassment that was caused to Uribe by the Parapolitical scandal during which 139 members of Congress were put under investigation.

Perez says that he has been in contact with a man hired by the DAS to spy on Calderon. Perez said: ” [This man] received the Calderon office [as his investigation project] and he told me he had stashed in his [Calderon’s] office a little camera that transmitted to the DAS because the DAS wanted to know who is responsible for transferring the information [about the prison human rights abuses] to Ricardo Calderon’s office.”

The incident has added to the on-going debate about the power of the military in Colombia and allegations that it can commit illegal acts with impunity. President Santos has made changes to the law whereby military jurisdiction has been expanded so that human rights abuse cases, such cruel and degrading treatment, will be tried in military courts rather than regular civil criminal courts.

The National Protection Unit, a state entity, has pledged to offer Calderon security and well-known international organizations, including Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch, have called on Colombian authorities to find suspects and search for the motives behind the attack.

A report published last week, the 2013 Impunity Index of the Committee to Protect Journalists, ranked Colombia as fifth worst country in the world for failing to protect journalists. The report was released to tie in with World Press Freedom Day, designated as May 3rd by the United National General Assembly in support of freedom of the press and to encourage governments to uphold Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

According to Colombia’s Foundation for Free Press (FLIP), only one journalist was killed for motives related to his work last year. However, the report on 2012 also documents 150 cases of direct aggression against journalists and 31 cases of assault against journalists by members of the Colombian armed forces.

Peter Bolton is a freelance journalist based in Bogotá.

Colombia´s May Day protests end in violence

marchas

May Day protests in Bogotá ended in violence on Wednesday with police firing tear gas, stun grenades and using water cannon tanks to disperse crowds in the Plaza de Bolivar and along Carrera Septima.

According to police, 65 people were arrested and three have been formally charged. The Unified Command Post of the Mayor announced that the march took place without mishap. However, others such as the Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners, an NGO based in Bogotá, have claimed that there were arbitrary arrests and harassment of peaceful protesters and journalists covering the event. The Ministry of Health has announced that 12 people, three of them policemen, were admitted with minor injuries.

As is usual on International Labor Day, there was a strong turnout from organized labor groups. Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), Colombia’s largest labor federation, was present in significant numbers as were unions including Unión Sindical Obrera, which represents mine workers, SINTHOL, which represents hotel and tourism workers, and SINDICUNICOL, which represents university employees.

CUT has claimed that roughly a hundred thousand people turned out to march in Bogotá and around one million people nation-wide.

marchesThere was also a contingent from workers at the General Motors plant located in the outskirts of Bogota. The plant has been the target of labor campaigns over the past few years from international advocacy organizations such as Witness for Peace. In May 2011, 68 current and former employees formed ASOTRECOL (the Association of Current and Former Injured Employees of GM Colmotores) in response to labor abuses firings for work related injuries which has been involved in controversial campaigns involving hunger strikes.

petro marchOther groups present included those representing students, victims of human rights violations and campaigners against racial prejudice. There were also representatives from the political parties Polo Democrátic Alternativo (PDA), a left-wing electoral alliance and the only large party with representation to oppose the Santos administration, the Movimiento Progresistas, led by mayor of Bogotá Gustavo Petro and other dissenters as a break-away from the PDA, and the Colombian Communist Party which was recently expelled from the PDA coalition. The obvious tensions between them was visible as they marched and congregated separately. Movimiento Progresistas held posters with the name of its high-profile leader, Mayor Petro, the second most important politician in Colombia after the president.

Former Senator Piedad Cordoba made an appearance and spoke with media and well-wishers. She said, “people are rising up in face of the pressure from the neo-colonialist, imperialist, savage capitalism which is expressed by the neoliberal model.” She compared the political activism taking place in Colombia at the moment to the Occupy movement in the United States, and the Indignants movements in Spain and Greece.

cordobaDespite slightly improved safety for trade unions in recent years, Colombia is still the world’s most dangerous country to be a union activist. Around 2,000 unionists have been killed since 1991, many of them committed by paramilitaries such as the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia. Unionists face other problems such as death threats, arrests, dismissals for organizing and more subtle attacks such as contract labor schemes where they are denied labor rights such as collective bargaining.

Peter Bolton is a freelance journalist based in Bogotá.