Open
World Conference of Workers
In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
"Workers' Rights in Colombia and the Fight to Stop the FTAA"
Presentation delivered by Alan Benjamin on September 20,
2003 in Washington, DC to the Fifth National Convention of Pride at Work
(AFL-CIO)
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
These are dangerous times. As the brother from the Organizing Department
of the AFL-CIO pointed out yesterday [at the opening session of the Pride
at Work convention], the trade unions are under attack in this country.
The right to organize, bargain collectively, protest peacefully and strike
are on the chopping block. The USA Patriot Act -- and the proposed Patriot
Act II -- provide the legal framework for the employers to deepen their
union-busting attacks.
This situation is bleaker still in countries south of the border, where
the corporate agenda is backed by right-wing paramilitary forces and death
squads funded with our tax dollars.
In Colombia, hundreds of trade unionists have been killed or disappeard in
the past eight years at the hands of these paramilitary forces. Earlier
this year, Brother William Mendoza, a leader of SINALTRAINAL, the
Coca-Cola workers' union, in Barranca Bermeja, Colombia, toured major
cities in the United States at the invitation of the United Steelworkers
of America and other unions and community organizations.
Brother Mendoza exposed the alarming situation facing unionists in
Colombia. He pointed out that eight leaders of SINALTRAINAL had been
assassinated in the past two months by paramilitary thugs who often work
in close collaboration with management. He noted, for example, that after
killing union officer Isidro Segundo Gil at his workplace, heavily armed
thugs returned the next day, called the workers together and told them if
they didn't quit the union by 4 p.m., they, too, would be killed.
Resignation forms were supplied by Coke's plant manager, who gave an order
to carry out the task of destroying the union, according to Brother
Mendoza.
Brother Mendoza also explained how his own family had been threatened.
To stop these crimes and to demand that Coca-Cola's parent corporation in
the United States insist that Coca-Cola's subsidiaries in Colombia respect
and abide by the collective-bargaining agreements signed with SINALTRAINAL,
trade unions across the globe have launched a concerted corporate campaign
to stop the killer Coke.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, for example, at its
convention this past April in San Francisco voted to endorse the campaign
to boycott Coca-Cola, and called on the national AFL-CIO to do the same. I
would like to urge the incoming national officers of Pride at Work to
endorse this corporate campaign. For more info on this effort, please go
to www.killercoke.org.
Sisters and Brothers:
What is happening in Colombia today points to what will occur tomorrow
across the Western Hemisphere if the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
is implemented -- as Bush is demanding -- in 2005.
Under the FTAA, Bush wants to step up the corporate plunder of the
hemisphere and the wholesale attacks on workers' rights, democracy,
environmental standards and the sovereignty of the oppressed peoples of
the continent.
Under the FTAA, Bush is proposing to set up more military bases in the
Western Hemisphere -- from the island of Alcantara (off the coast of
Maranhao in Northeast Brazil), to jungle outposts in Ecuador, Colombia and
Bolivia. The U.S. military bases are meant to assist local troops and
paramilitary forces in putting down any and all protests or uprisings
against the devastating consequences of the FTAA on the workers and
peoples of the region.
In fact, the uprisings have already begun. In 2002, to give but one of
many examples, the entire population of the city of Cochabamba in Bolivia
rose up in a major insurrection to protest the takeover of their municipal
and publicly owned water system by the San Francisco-based Bechtel
Corporation.
This is the same Bechtel Corp., which, together with Dick Cheney's
(former) Halliburton Co., the Stevedore Shippers of America (SSA),
WorldCom and others, have been awarded the huge contracts by Bush to
privatize, take over and plunder Iraq's economy. As Brother Howard Wallace
mentioned in his presentation last night, a large part of the $87 billion
Bush is demanding for the so-called "reconstruction" of Iraq
will end up in the pockets of Bush's anti-union corporate cronies -- all
of whom bankrolled his election campaign.
No, this was not a war for democracy in Iraq. It was a war to line the
pockets of Bush's corporate funders!
[For more on the role of these U.S. corporations in Iraq, I refer you to
the excellent website of US Labor Against War, which is www.uslaboragainstwar.org.]
This is why Bush needs the Free Trade Area of the Americas. He needs to
create a regional legal, political, economic and military framework to
promote union-busting, corporate takeovers of public assets and entire
national economies, and empire-making. He needs to have the ability to
advance this agenda by any means necessary -- including death squads.
Bush needs to be able to send in troops any time an enraged people stand
up and say, "We want to keep our healthcare, education, and social
security systems! We want to keep our pension and water systems! We want
to preserve our state-owned oil industries and waterways!"
Sisters and Brothers:
Last year 13 million people in Brazil voted in a nationwide informal
referendum organized by the CUT [the national trade union federation], the
Landless Peasants Movement and other popular organizations for Brazil to
withdraw from FTAA negotiations. Their vote sent an unmistakeable signal:
They want nothing to do with the FTAA. It is an agreement that from start
to finish runs counter to the interests of the people of Brazil and of the
entire continent. It must be rejected outright. It is not amendable.
Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva, the leader of Brazil's Workers
Party was running for president at the time of that referendum. In his
campaign speeches, he denounced the FTAA as being a "colonial
takeover of Brazil by the United States."
Today in Brazil, unionists and activists are calling on Lula, who was
elected to office last October 27th with the vote of 53 million working
people, to organize an official plebiscite asking the people if they think
Brazil should withdraw from FTAA negotitions.
Similar movements are being organized across the continent to demand
official plebiscites where the people can have the right to vote to stop
the FTAA. In fact, to help coordinate and deepen this movement, the San
Francisco Labor Council and other unions across the country and throughout
the Americas are convening a Western Hemisphere Workers Conference Against
the FTAA in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on December 12-14, 2003.
Sisters and Brothers:
In our own country, as we mobilize to repeal the Patriot Act and to stop
Patriot Act II, as we mobilize to stop the war and occupation of Iraq, as
we mobilize to defend workers' rights in Colombia, and as we mobilize to
expose Bechtel Corporation's plunder of public services -- from Iraq, to
Bolivia, to Massachussetts -- let's mobilize to stop the FTAA.
Let's help the AFL-CIO gather millions of signatures on its postcard
ballots for submission to the 34 trade ministers of the Western Hemisphere
who will be meeting in Miami on November 20-21.
If we don't stop the FTAA, it won't just be death squads in Colombia. What
is happening in that war-torn country will be extended across the
continent.
We in this country have stoop up to such injustices in the past -- and we
have prevailed. From the bitter struggles against Jim Crow to the powerful
antiwar movement of the 1960s, we have shown that when we organize we can
win.
Let us all stand up to wage this good fight, with Pride at Work showing
the way forward -- as it has done on so many fronts in its short but rich
history. Together, we can win!
Thank you.