FTAWATCH-Labor Wins One, Loses One http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/05/labor-wins-one-loses-one/

On May 4, over the strenuous objections of organized labor, President Obama announced that the U.S. intends to sign an ambitious and expanded free trade agreement with the government of Colombia. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka described the treaty thusly: “The action plan does not go nearly far enough in laying out concrete benchmarks for progress in the areas of violence and impunity, nor does it address many of the ways in which Colombian labor law falls short of international standards.”

For those not familiar with the international labor scene, Colombia not only leads the western hemisphere in anti-union sentiment, it has a unique and horrifying way of expressing that sentiment. Last year alone, 51 Colombian labor activists were brutally murdered, many of them by what were reported to be government-sponsored death squads. As Trumka wryly pointed out, would this trade agreement be moving forward if 51 CEOs had been killed? 

When it comes to workers’ rights, you have your old-fashioned, garden variety “anti-unionism” as seen in places like Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina (with 3.5 percent union membership, it’s the lowest of any state in the U.S.), and then you have your infinitely more toxic, government-sanctioned anti-unionism as seen in places like Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia. 

The problem with the Colombian trade deal is that it’s pure window dressing, not worth the paper it’s written on. Organized labor doesn’t believe for one minute that the Colombian government will abide by the language included in that treaty. Despite the glib assurances provided by Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos, no one—not Colombian business interests, not American banks and private investors, not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, not the National Association of Manufacturers—wants to see Colombia’s working class gain power. And if the provisions of that treaty were enforced, they would definitely gain power.

You don’t murder 50 union organizers one year and then, the very next year, sit down and draft a high-minded document that makes it sound as if you’ve been fundamentally pro-labor all along. To believe that could happen, you’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb and a presidential candidate. But the trade agreement was never in doubt; it was assured of passing. The Republicans staunchly supported it, the Democrats gutlessly went along with them, and Obama was eager, pen in hand, to sign it. The corporations will profit from the agreement, the oligarchies will be made stronger by it, and the only losers will be the Colombian people.

[ALSO READ ...MY COLOMBIA SECTION!