Issues surrounding the Colombia Free Trade Agreement are different from those involving South Korea, Panama or NAFTA. The ongoing assault on workers in Colombia should have been reason enough for Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell to vote against the deal. This is clearly a moral issue.
The Obama administration tried to dress up the Colombia agreement with labor accords negotiated last April, but the killings of workers who speak out haven’t stopped. Fifteen union leaders have been assassinated since April — after 51 were in 2010. No progress has been made to dismantle the labor contracting law that undercuts the right of workers to have a voice through unions.
In 2009, I was part of a Witness for Peace delegation that met with six sugar cane workers who are being prosecuted for a strike against sugar plantation owners. One of their requests was for direct employment in an effort to eliminate the harsh labor contracting hiring method. Their attorney was assassinated on the streets of Cali in May 2011.
Now that the trade agreement is on its way to ratification, Colombian workers have little hope that a system heavily rigged against them will ever be reformed. Worse, the agreement does nothing to dismantle the paramilitary groups responsible for the murders.
