Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to address a committee of Parliament. I'm deeply honoured to be here with you.
I'm the vice-president of the Unified Workers Confederation. I was the founder of the mining trade union in Colombia in the seventies. I'm also a member of the CUT, the Central Union of Colombia. I have 20 years of experience in the trade union business. I was the president of the banana trade union. Since I was 15 years old, I've been a member of this union.
Because of this political career, because I have been working as a trade unionist, I have lost five members of my family. I have suffered a lot of losses in my family, as you can see.
I want to try to answer some of the questions that are being posed at the international level. First, why are union members being killed in Colombia? Union leaders are being killed because there is a culture that has developed between the government and the employers. The unions are considered responsible for all the companies that are being lost in Colombia. To most employers and the government, unionists and union members are very expensive. They are the reason the companies are going bankrupt, and that's why they have to be killed and gotten rid of.
Union members are being killed in companies where there are no trade unions. They are being killed because they are asking for the collective agreement to be respected, for negotiating a collective agreement, for going on strike, or for starting or launching a negotiation. They're also being killed because they are being identified by employers and the government as people who are considered guerillas, who are supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC. In a single word, those who are not with the government are against the government. Those who are not with the government are enemies of the government. Those who are not with the government are supporting terrorism. Unfortunately, that's the way union members are considered in Colombia.
The Uribe administration hates trade unions. When Uribe was a senator in the congress, he promoted a bill that threatened security for the workers. That's one of the reasons. Another situation we are going through in Colombia is that the union member is seen as related to FARC, to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and is considered a terrorist.
I should tell you that our position is not in support of FARC. We do not agree with FARC. We do not agree with the kidnappings and the terrorist attacks being carried out by FARC in the country. We believe the guerrilla movement has become a real problem--a threat, an obstacle, and a barrier to the development of social struggle in the country--because those who do not share the views of the government are linked to the FARC.
To us, it is necessary to develop a political negotiation. As long as we are being connected...we will not be able to fight a social struggle. We deal with social issues, with the political cause of workers, and the popular cause of the country and the workers.
I wanted to emphasize this because we currently face a very serious issue; the union movement is being killed in Colombia. At the same time, the government says that the number of our ILO people killed has been reduced. That is true to a certain extent, but we also need to say that trade unionism has disappeared. The right to collective negotiation and collective agreement has vanished. Last year, only 3% of the workers were members of the unions and had the right to collective agreements and negotiation.
Everything is being outsourced, and they are creating what they call the “work cooperatives”. ILO calls them pseudo-cooperatives because these cooperatives end up in the hands of two or three individuals. That is the situation we're currently going through in Colombia in terms of collective agreements.
The collective agreement--as a contract between the workers and the companies--has vanished. More than 66% of the workers are a part of the informal economy. They're being exploited, because through outsourcing, workers have to work without social security, with no right to employment, and they are forced to work under severe conditions of exploitation. More often than not, they are being paid under the minimum wage.
So the situation in Colombia is very dire for workers. We are convinced that with the free trade agreement conditions will not improve, and they will not improve because with FTAs...in particular, this free trade agreement that was negotiated with the United States is a free trade agreement that was not the result of a consultation with the Colombian people; the Colombian people were not asked whether or not they agreed with the agreement. The only ones who will benefit from that free trade agreement will be the multinational companies, in particular the U.S. companies.
I should also point out that companies like Chiquita have provided funds to the paramilitaries and the guerrillas, and they have contributed to violence in the country. Drummond, a coal company on the northern coast of the country, has done the same thing. They are going to be strengthened; they will be fortified, and the small to medium-sized enterprises will go out the window because they will not be able to compete with multinational corporations. These small and medium-sized companies are the ones that create the highest number of jobs in Colombia. The free trade agreement is no doubt very negative to the Colombian people and the Colombian workers in particular.
I would also like to say that there is some kind of a partnership between the Uribe administration and the paramilitary groups. These paramilitary groups are responsible for 24 deaths. There's a change here now: trade leaders are being murdered; they're being stabbed to death with machetes and knives, because a person who's murdered without firearms looks like they were killed by regular criminals--or because of some kind of personal vendetta--without an apparent political cause.
The CTC, the CUT, and several NGOs in the country were threatened by illegal groups. They are called the Black Eagles. These are groups of paramilitaries who don't want anything to do with trade unions or trade unionism. These groups are usually linked to companies.
I also want to say that I've been the target of seven murder attempts in Colombia. That happened to me in San Alberto, in the department of del Cesar. We had a negotiation there, and the Black Eagles killed the president of the board of directors' brother, Juan de Jesús Gómez, who was the president or the chair of the union, because he was negotiating a collective agreement. I saved my life because God didn't want me by his side that day.
These are concrete facts, evidence that shows that these groups are fighting the trade union movement.
The employers are benefiting because the trade union movement is disappearing. There is no doubt that the Colombian economy has been growing at a rate of over 6% a year, but poverty and misery among the people and the workers in Colombia is widening. The employers are getting all the fringe benefits as a result of a labour amendment fostered by the government. They have kept over six billion pesos. They cancel guarantees, they cancel salaries, they cancel a lot of claims by the workers for the employers to generate jobs--but that remains to be seen. There are no jobs and they are keeping the money. So this is the result.
There is no equity. There are no conditions that we could call favourable to workers and the people in Colombia. So this government is clearly supporting the employers. I say also that many of these paramilitary leaders that were extradited to the United States were extradited so they will not speak up in Colombia. Because they are interested in re-election, they take the scandal out of Colombia. They don't want them to speak in Colombia.
Over 50 members of the Colombian congress who are supporters of Uribe are being investigated by the supreme court in Colombia. It is obvious that they are close to the president. The members of Parliament who are being investigated are members of the party or supporters of Uribe.
There's no grey zone here.