Colombia Free Trade Agreement – Bad for Colombian and U.S. workers! Globalize Workers Solidarity! Featuring: * Colombian Trade Union leader Edgar Paez on union struggles in Colombia and how to unite the struggle for workers rights globally.

Edgar Paez, International representative of SINALTRAINAL (Food Industry Workers Union) of Colombia will visit Philadelphia on Tuesday April 1st, 2008, as part of a national tour of the U.S. - http://www.sinaltrainal.org Edgar Paez has dedicated his entire life to organizing workers and has worked actively connecting social struggles in Colombia and the world over. More than 4000 trade unionists have been killed in Colombia in the last 20 years — more than in the rest of the world combined. Nine have been killed so far this year. SINALTRAINAL represents Colombian workers of several well-know multi-national corporations in the food and beverage industries. Many SINALTRAINAL activists have been killed. SINALTRAINAL is conducting mass campaigns and legal battles to defend trade unionists against these attacks. Sponsored by: AFSCME DC 47, the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), the International Action Center President George W Bush is trying to force a vote in U.S. Congress for the approval of the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia. So far, Congress has refused to do so based on the numerous assassinations of union leaders in that country and the lack of will of the Colombian government to stop and to investigate these murders and to prosecute the criminals. Bush however, considers the interests of U.S. corporations more valuable than justice and the lives of workers in Colombia. In a letter written on February to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, USW President Leo W. Gerard stated that "In the course of the trip, the delegation (of the AFL-CIO) also heard from unionists about how the Colombian military entered the offices of Telecom to forcibly eject 8,000 workers from their jobs after (Colombian) President (Alvaro) Uribe illegally liquidated this state-run telephone company by decree. The delegation also heard about the heroic struggle of workers in the flower sector (which employs a total of 100,000 individuals) to try to unionize, only to be crushed by Dole Foods which went so far as to close its largest flower plantation in order to destroy the unionization campaign. " "We note that Dole Foods has yet to suffer any sanction as a consequence of its being credibly accused last year of making regular payments to the illegal AUC paramilitaries. Indeed, Dole was named as the point company which actually collected the payments from all of the banana companies in Antioquia and passed them along to the AUC. This connection between the banana companies and the AUC is important in considering the Colombian FTA which, as written, will greatly benefit large landowners such as the multi-national banana companies as well as paramilitaries who have laundered their drug monies through the purchase of large tracks of land." For more information, please contact: PhillyIAC@action-mail.org or Call Berta at 267-257-7742.

Responder

Su nombre: *

Correo-e: *

El contenido de este campo se mantiene como privado y no se muestra públicamente.

Página principal:

Asunto:

Comentario: *

• Las direcciones de las páginas web y las de correo se convierten en enlaces automáticamente.
• Saltos automáticos de líneas y de párrafos.

Más información sobre opciones de formato

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

What code is in the image?: *

Copy the characters (respecting upper/lower case) from the image.