Bush Plan to Push Colombia Deal: ‘Outrageous Disregard for Human Rights’

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/04/07/bush-plan-to-push-colombia-deal-outrageous-disregard-for-human-rights/

by James Parks, Apr 7, 2008

President Bush’s decision to send the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to Congress over the strong objections of the leadership of both the House and the Senate “shows an outrageous disregard for basic human and workers’ rights,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says.

In a statement, Sweeney says:

Workers in Colombia are terrorized every day for standing up for their economic freedom, and union supporters are routinely murdered. Our government should not reward the Colombian government for such callous indifference to the rights and lives of Colombian workers.

The AFL-CIO stands in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Colombia in opposition to violence against trade unionists. We stand for the rights of workers in both Colombia and the United States to organize and bargain collectively without fear of firing, retribution or bodily harm. The AFL-CIO is strongly opposed to the Colombia FTA and will mobilize with all of our might to defeat it.



Bush signed the agreement today, and it will be introduced in Congress tomorrow. Once the agreement is submitted, Congress has 90 days to act under the Fast Track trade authority rules that expired in July 2007, but still apply to deals pending at that time. (Click here to tell your representative to oppose a trade deal with Colombia until their government makes real progress in protecting the lives and rights of union members.)

In short, says United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard, no one but Bush

wants a deal with a corrupt regime that continues to rule over the most dangerous country in the world in which to be a trade unionist.

With just nine months left in his term, Bush has made the Colombia FTA a priority. But working people in the United States and Colombia are strongly opposed to the deal.

The agreement is another in a series of bad trade pacts negotiated by the Bush White House, deals that have contributed to a U.S. trade deficit of $712 billion in 2007, massive job loss and shrinking paychecks. Such trade deals have contributed to the loss of 3 million good manufacturing jobs in the United States alone since 2001.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) says the Colombia FTA is a “betrayal of the middle class.” In a statement, Brown says:

The proposed Colombia FTA betrays small businesses, it betrays workers, and it betrays consumers. Colombian workers earn little more than $600 a month. This FTA is much less about finding new markets for American goods than it is a continuation of this administration’s failed trade policy—a policy that exploits workers in developing nations, fosters unsafe working conditions, and allows unsafe products and food into our country.

FULL story at link.