A dangerous country for any trade unionist
A dangerous country for any trade unionist
Oct Saturday 3rd 2015
Morning Star editor Ben Chacko talks to Colombian trade unionist WITNEY CHAVEZ
TUC CONGRESS last month heard an emergency motion from train drivers’ union Aslef on continuing violence against trade unionists in Colombia.
Moving it, general secretary Mick Whelan pointed out that 69 activists were killed in the first eight months of 2015; that an academic, Miguel Beltran, has been arrested again on vague “rebellion” charges he was cleared of four years ago after spending two years behind bars; and that leading trade unionist Huber Ballesteros has now been locked up for over two years without trial.
So you might think Witney Chavez, an executive member of Colombian trade union federation the Central Union of Workers (CUT), has bigger fish to fry than the Tory assault on our right to organise over here.
Not a bit of it.
“You must fight for your right to strike,” he tells me gravely over a coffee as we meet on the sidelines of the conference.
“You lose that here and it will damage all of us, everywhere in the world.”
Unions in the CUT federation have some 600,000 members in total, around half of whom belong to FECODE, the country’s largest teaching union.
More:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-5b37-A-dangerous-country-for-any-trade-unionist#.VhBVWOSFOwk