General Motors in Colombia: the Free Trade Agreement, the Abuses, the Corruption and the Resistance

by Carlos Cruz, WFP Colombia

The Association of Sick and Fired Workers of General Motors Colombia (ASOTRECOL)

Jorge Parra, the President of the Association of Sick and Fired Workers Of General Motors Colombia (ASOTRECOL in Spanish), started his makeshift tent city with fellow fired General Motors workers right across the street from the United Sates Embassy on August 1, 2011. Their reasoning was very clear: Since the U.S. government bailed out General Motors in 2008, the government and U.S. taxpayers became major stakeholders of this multinational corporation and assumed responsibility for its behavior in other countries, including Colombia.

From their tent city, they have launched a strong grassroots campaign that has attracted the attention of U.S. Congresspeople, Colombian trade union federations, nongovernmental organizations, opposition senators and hopefully the GM CEO.

These fired workers have shown incredible endurance, sleeping out in the cold and rainy Bogotá weather with metal rods in their spinal columns as a result of the surgeries they’ve undergone due to injuries acquired at the GM plant. Their endurance shows their determination to attain labor practices and standards that are fair and comply with the law.

Colombian Workers and the Free Trade Agreement

What they ask is for the U.S. government and General Motors in Colombia to comply with safety and labor standards supposedly guaranteed by Colombian laws and the 2011 Labor Action Plan between the Colombian and the U.S. governments.

The Labor Action Plan was geared to address the grave human rights abuses in Colombia in order to ratify the notoriously debated Free Trade Agreement proposed in 2006. There was fierce opposition from many sectors of Colombian society, including indigenous and afro-Colombian communities and U.S. trade unions and confederations, which stalled the FTA’s ratification for 5 years, and with good reason.

Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world to exercise labor organizing and unionizing rights. According to the AFL-CIO, 2,850 Colombian trade unionists have been killed in the last 25 years with almost complete impunity.

Colombian labor leaders face life and death situations and find abuse in almost all aspect of labor. Approximately three million Colombian workers are employed by subcontracting mechanisms that give a type of temporary worker status in order to break up unions, limit medical care, deny extra pay for over-time, weekends and holidays, and limit the right to a fixed contract. An estimated 300 to 400 workers in the GM plant in Colombia are hired under these exploitative schemes.

These and many more abuses resulting from subcontracting schemes are specifically addressed in the Labor Action Plan, but remain intact in Colombia when they shouldn’t.

In an environment of impunity, corruption and weak institutions, the newly-created Ministry of Labor and its labor inspectors, which have received $2 million U.S. taxpayer dollars in order to implement the Labor Action Plan, are working against the rights of workers.

The Abuses

Jorge and many more workers in Colombia, specifically in this case, endure precarious safety standards, long working hours, and don’t have adequate access to mechanisms to address these issues. Instead, workers are simply fired once they get injured or start working to address these labor violations. This is what happened to about 164 workers at the GM plant.

The fast pace, the heavy equipment and the lack of proper medical attention led to several injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, spinal injuries and hernias. Instead of taking care of its workers, GM management obtained their medical records and fired them, listing false claims so the firing wouldn’t be related to their injuries.

What is even more troubling is that these fired GM workers have been targets of persecution and harassment by private security firms contracted in secrecy. Members of the association have reported being fallowed and photographed outside their homes and their children’s schools. Even more alarming is that the Labor Action Plan’s protective measures for labor leaders are not being fulfilled; 51 trade unionists were murdered in 2011 alone, and 5 have been killed to date in 2012.

The Corruption

The far reach of multinationals and their deep political and economic ties more often than not sabotage, stall and hinder judicial processes in their favor.

Labor inspectors, called for by the Labor Action Plan, signed off on these illegal firings, protecting the companies instead of the workers. In a legal motion and investigation filed by ASOTRECOL, one corrupt labor inspector was actually sanctioned. The remaining concern is that the Labor Action Plan calls for roughly 400 of these officials.

The Resistance

The GM case is one of several in Colombia relating to labor abuses, exploitation, persecution and anti-union organizing. To highlight these issues, in early May, Jorge and other Colombian workers from the most exploited sectors of the Colombian workforce, who are specifically mentioned in the Labor Action Plan, will be going to Washington, DC, to express the ground-level reality of the Labor Action Plan. Their objective is to renegotiate the implementation of the Free Trade Agreement until the plan becomes a reality and not just an unenforced document signed over to the U.S. in order to implement the FTA.

The Cuba Rambler

by Diego Benitez

I have spent a lot of time in Cuba the past five months now and I’m not sure where to begin this first blog. Maybe I’ll start by rambling about my experiences through my research and work with our licensed delegations and hope to grab on to something somewhere along the way. I thought things would be different here. For some reason I thought this would be a place where basic human rights were deprived, where big bother watched my every move, where my toes would hurt from walking on their tips…I thought I would lose weight. I thought I would smoke a lot more cigars, drink a lot more rum, dance a lot more salsa and swim more often at the beach. It turns out I was a victim of the mass misinformation campaigns that have been feeding our senses for over fifty years. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I was one of those; I think most of us are. Ultimately the truth changes everything. It turns out that I was right about things being different here, just not in the way I had assumed.

Every Cuban family has a ration card to supplement their needs. The Cuban government offers its citizens a social safety net that includes free education, health care, housing, basic foodstuff and a lot more goodies that sound too good to be true. Monthly rations are not the only way of surviving. This is merely a basket of goods meant to satisfy basic needs. They must work to supplement the rest. Each month a member of the family heads to a local bodega to pick up the monthly ration of rice, beans, sugar, oil, coffee, pasta, eggs, a small portion of meat/poultry and a few other basic nutritional goods. If there are young children in the household they receive yogurt and milk. Bread is rationed daily. It isn’t enough to survive on, but something is better than nothing. The rest of their needs are found through the daily lucha, the everyday struggle. Everyone finds a way to survive here. In fact, Cubans pride themselves on being survivors. Sometimes things are done through the black market but the overwhelming amount of success comes from their creativity, hard work and solidarity. They suffer and succeed together which, is something I am still trying to understand.

One Friday night last November after a full day of meetings with our first People to People licensed delegation I went to a downtown bar to see a well-known Cuban rock band perform. The bar is called Stairway to Heaven. On Friday nights it operates as a gay establishment. Normally it plays pop and rock music from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Pictures of Madonna and the Beatles adorn the walls with neon paint that glimmers under glowing blue lights. I wasn’t prepared for what I experienced that night. First, I realized that maybe I should have washed my white shirt with a bit more care the day before…blue light can be cruel to clothing with stains. Second, I slowly came to understand that I was at a gay bar and the realization struck me with awe. I didn’t think that the gay community could gather as freely as it did that night. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is still a lot of discrimination and social stigma, but not to the degree I had expected. When I lived in Burkina Faso things were much more difficult, flat out dangerous for gay men. Colombia also had/has its challenges. As a straight man I wondered if I would be welcomed or chastised. I felt nervous. Like an underage kid sneaking in to his first bar with a fake ID; I wasn’t sure if I’d get kicked out or not. But, things turned out well in the end and I chatted up a storm with a gregarious physician and his partner, an accountant, who visit the bar at the end of each week to enjoy live music, fine rum and be around friends for a while. By the end of the night I found myself dancing salsa music with newly made friends while questioning the traditional leadership roles. At no point did I feel threatened, confused or fearful of an unwarranted advance. In fact, I felt flattered if someone thought me handsome. I had such a blast that I go back every now and then with our delegations after a full day of educational activities and introduce them to a side of Cuba they wouldn’t otherwise get to know. The gay community has seen several changes in the past two decades. At one point in history they were sent to re-education camps by the powers in charge. Ignorance spread easily in a traditionally macho culture and being gay didn’t help. Funny enough though, CENESEX, the Cuban National Center for Sex Education is directed by Mariela Castro Espin, niece of Fidel Castro and daughter of Raul Castro, the current president of Cuba. It struggles for gay rights and social inclusion. Even more interesting is that in 2008 a law was passed allowing free sex-change operations for individuals who qualify! How wild is that? While the LGBTQ community isn’t proclaiming they’ve founds solutions to every problem, they do recognize that they have come a long way since the camps.

Education here is what probably has astounded me the most. I have felt comfortable handing text to a rural farmer feeling relatively sure that they will be able to read it. In other countries I wouldn’t do it for fear of embarrassing situations. It turns out that the illiteracy rate here is almost 0%. Shortly after the revolution a campaign was launched to empower every Cuban with the skills to read and write. Young adults and students volunteered in droves to live and teach in the rural country side. The alphabetization campaigns came to be known as the Conrado Benitez campaign after a young man who was killed at the onset for carrying out such activities. The stories are inspirational; the young volunteering to teach the old, the illiterate, farmers and housewives basic reading and writing skills. It was a golden age for popular education. I often wonder what it would look like in the states, perhaps AmeriCorps?

I will end my first ramble by mentioning that the Pope was here recently. Historically the Catholic Church has had a strong presence in Cuba, however, after the revolution relationships became estranged and each establishment viewed the other with suspicion. Things have steadily been improving. The Pope’s visit points towards a continued warming of ties. This year marks the first time in Cuba’s history that Holy Friday is celebrated as a national holiday. As far as I can recall we have never celebrated Good Friday as a national holiday in the states. It makes me wonder if Santeria, a commonly practiced Afro-Cuban religion throughout Cuba, will also have a day in history where its holidays are celebrated nationwide. It’s only been a a few months that I’ve spent a lot of time here and as a foreigner I can hardly tell that there was ever a religious struggle. Things have changed. Everyone acknowledges the turning of a page when religion was viewed with suspicion and Christians concealed their faith. While Cubans aren’t necessarily rejoiced about being able to celebrate Good Friday, they do appreciate a day off. A day off from the daily struggle is always a welcomed treat. And I will end my ramble with that. Clearly there is a lot left to talk about, not least of which is an economic embargo initiated during the Kennedy administration and kept in place by every administration since. This country has suffered tremendously because of it. There is practically no trade happening between the U.S. and Cuba, and any foreign ships using U.S. ports are prohibited from travelling to Cuba for a period of 180 days. It is an archaic policy that we as Witness for Peace work hard to raise awareness on. Yet, despite all the hardships, Cubans forge ahead and steadily experiment with a Socialist system they have embraced and we have demonized. Most importantly it is done in solidarity. A word I wish we used more often back home.

As I start this Cuba rambling blog I would like for it to serve the purpose of raising awareness on issues that aren’t spoken about in the states. So please feel free to ask me any questions that on issues you’d like to know more about and I will do the best to do the research and respond. Internet is slow here, but with enough time I will get back to you.

The Summit of the People

by the Witness for Peace Colombia team

In the video below, Witness for Peace gives a preview of the Summit of the People, a counter-summit to the official Summit of the Americas sponsored by the Organization of the American States in Cartagena, Colombia. In this space, social movements and civil society throughout the continent will manifest their discontent with the neoliberal economic model pushed by the United States in free trade agreements and the militarization of the hemisphere.