Date of publication: June 10, 2009

Source: Financial Times

Colombia remains the most dangerous country for trade unionists and the situation there is getting worse despite government claims to the contrary, the International Trade Union Confederation says on Wednesday.

In its annual survey of violations of trade union rights, the ITUC says 49 trade union activists were killed in Colombia last year, an increase of 10 over 2007. Globally, the number of recorded assassinations of trade unionists fell to 76 last year from 91 in 2007.

The Colombian government claimed this week that killings of union members had fallen by more than 80 per cent in the past seven years, partly as a result of steps taken to protect activists and increase prosecutions.

However, the labour standards committee of the International Labour Organisation, which discussed Colombia on Monday, said more measures were needed “coupled with a clear message at the highest level … that anti-union violence would not be tolerated.”

Luc Cortebeck, spokesman for trade union representatives on the ILO committee, which also includes government and employer delegates, said 96 per cent of cases of violence against Colombian unionists went unpunished.

Democrats in the US Congress are refusing to ratify a proposed US-Colombia free trade agreement over the country’s continuing abuses of labour rights.

In a separate development, Philip Alston, UN human rights envoy on extrajudicial executions, this week began a 10-day mission to Colombia to investigate alleged unlawful killings, including those of labour activists, and the extent of impunity.

The ITUC survey documents assassinations of trade unionists in 10 other countries, including Guatemala, Venezuela and the Philippines.

Guy Ryder, ITUC general secretary, said: “The fact that certain countries, such as Colombia, Guatemala and the Philippines, appear year after year on the death list shows that the authorities are, at best, incapable of ensuring protection and in some cases are complicit with unscrupulous employers in the murders.”

Elsewhere, the report says, activists face harassment ranging from physical assault and imprisonment to dismissal from their jobs. A number of countries, including China, ban independent trade unions and in countries such as Saudi Arabia, “genuine trade union activity is still effectively impossible”.

Worsening global economic conditions have exacerbated repression, the ITUC says. Attempts by workers to boost wages in the wake of sharp food price prices prompted a crackdown in Africa. The survey also cites 34 countries as failing to protect workers in export processing zones, and a further 22 as exploiting migrant workers.