“The report reveals a reality for Colombian workers that is riddled with threats, violence, illegal detentions, impunity, legal limitations, abuses of hiring laws, illegal dismissals and a system of governmental authorities that fails to protect workers from further violations or to remedy the existing ones,” says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson. Chavez-Thompson also is president of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT) of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which includes the Colombian trade union federations.

Similar to the failed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the U.S.-Colombia FTA labor provisions would require Colombia to enforce its existing labor laws regardless of whether those laws meet internationally recognized standards.

More trade union members are killed each year in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined, according to the ICFTU, which produces an annual report of people killed because of their union activities. In 2004, 145 unionists around the world were murdered. Of these, 99 were killed in Colombia, ICFTU said. Last year 70 trade unionists were killed in Colombia. So far this year, 29 union members have been killed there.

In the foreward to the report, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney lays out the basic steps that must be taken in Colombia:

Colombia doesn’t even comply with the most basic human rights. The first step is to end violence against working people. Colombia also needs to negotiate a just peace [with guerillas], create a democratic environment, build a fair economy, and establish the rule of law, with full support of the international community and every actor in Colombia’s political and economic life. As part of this process, the Colombian government must bring its labor law into harmony with fundamental worker rights and genuinely commit to its enforcement. For Colombia to prosper in peace, Colombian workers must first gain their most basic human rights.

The government must begin to enforce its own laws before Colombian residents can live in safety, Robert Perillo of U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project and author of the report said during a panel discussion today in Washington, D.C., that followed the report’s release.

Other panel participants included AFL-CIO International Director Barbara Shailor, Lisa Haugaard, executive director of the Latin America Working Group, Charles Key, secretary-treasurer of the Georgia State AFL-CIO, and Hector de Jesus Vasquez Fernandez, co-founder of Colombia’s Escuela Nacional Sindical (National Union School).

The Solidarity Center has worked with Colombian union activists by helping them relocate and bringing them to the United States temporarily where they work in organizing campaigns.

The Colombian legal and political leadership has done little to aid the workers, according to the report. The law severely limits workers’ rights to bargain collectively and strike. In some cases, where government officials have ties to paramilitary organizations, Colombian government pronouncements have put union leaders’ lives in jeopardy.

In its present form, the treaty would be a bad deal for workers in both countries, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said at today’s press conference:

If the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is approved in its present form, it will replace existing worker rights protections, eliminating the ability of the U.S. government to effectively use trade policy to gain improvements in worker rights in Colombia. Even if this administration will never use those tools, we want them available to the next administration, which may show some leadership.

And it will hurt workers rights in this country, perpetuating a race to the bottom in our hemisphere and the global economy. We cannot justify this policy to tax-paying American workers.