CWA 1180 - Solidarity Works

Privatization through assassination
Unions in Colombia are defending their country from corporate profiteers

April 2003

In March, Local 1180 Communications Director (and webmaster) Dorothee Benz was one of eight U.S. trade unionists who traveled to Colombia on a labor solidarity exchange. Part of the purpose of the trip was to accompany home the first set of returning Colombian unionists who had been in the U.S. under an AFL-CIO sanctuary program; one of them, Hector Giraldo, was hosted in part by CWA District 1 and met with 1180 members in September 2002. In addition, the U.S. delegation met with Colombian unions to learn about their situation, exchange information and talk about common problems. This is Benz's report from their 11-day trip.

by Dorothee Benz

"We the workers are absolutely committed to a patriotic defense of this common wealth," said Luis Hernandez standing amidst armed guards at the water treatment plant in Cali. Hernandez, who survived one assassination attempt last year and had just received a fresh set of death threats the week he said these words to us, is president of SINTRAEMCALI, a union of public sector workers who provide water, electric and telephone service to this city of over two million. The 2,400 members of SINTRAEMCALI and the community of Cali together have waged a seven-year battle to keep the Colombian national government from privatizing their public utility, EMCALI. They believe—like Local 1180 members believe—that the provision of basic human needs should be left in public hands, publicly accountable, and not turned into yet another source of profit for multinational corporations.

SINTRAEMCALI members have good reason to be concerned. On Colombia's Atlantic coast, where privatization has already been implemented, some 40% of the people do not have access to running water. In fact, water privatization is a growing trend throughout the developing world and it is a graphic illustration of all that is wrong with corporate globalization. International institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO, the object of the watershed protest in Seattle in late 1999), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are advocating the commercialization of water, and so-called "free" trade agreements like NAFTA and the proposed FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) are giving corporations unprecedented access to countries' water supplies. Many nations, like Colombia, are saddled by crushing debt loads and are essentially at the mercy of these corporate-controlled entities in order to get the debt-financing they need. Companies like Bechtel, meanwhile, are lining up to rake in the cash while water prices soar, poor people are cut off because they cannot pay, water quality is reduced, and bribery and corruption are increasing.

Through Intergen, a joint venture with Shell, Bechtel is already involved in the Cali case through its role as an EMCALI vendor. Local 1180 members may remember Bechtel from another privatization struggle right here in New York. In late 2001, then Mayor Giuliani proposed contracting out the cleanup operation of Ground Zero to Bechtel. The city backed off this idea after too many people protested. It was, after all, public sector workers who died saving lives on 9/11, public sector workers who did the grim work of the recovery operation and public agencies that coordinated the whole thing—all to much praise. Even amidst the usual arguments about the supposed efficiency of the private sector, the Bechtel grab was too much for New Yorkers to stomach.

Your tax dollars are used to kill your union brothers and sisters in Colombia

U.S. aid for Colombia (sometimes referred to as "Plan Colombia") is mostly military aid, and it ends up in the hands of military and paramilitary forces who use it to kill unionists. When we asked union leaders and members what we should do back home, they all told us to stop our government from sending military aid. Colombia needs money for social needs, not any more weapons; and any aid to the government should be tied to human rights standards.

What you can do: Write to your Congressional representative and Senators and ask them not to support military aid to Colombia. If you don't know who your representative is, click here to look it up on the Political Action page.

It the same reflexive dogmatic demand for privatization that Giuliani exhibited that drives corporate globalization in Colombia and all over the world. And while its advocates always feign concern for the better provision of services, the reality of privatization has too often been just the opposite: higher prices, less access, less accountability, cronyism and corruption. Remember former HRA Commissioner Jason Turner's shrill lectures to the poor about responsibility while he handed out a $104 million contract to a company connected to a former administration aide? The city's Conflicts of Interest Board fined him and found him guilty of "textbook violations of core provisions of the city's ethics laws." In Cali, too, sweetheart deals are part of the problem. SINTRAEMCALI has done its own research uncovering a series of contracts based in corruption and greed.

Human rights abuses

It's no wonder, then, that the union sees its fight against EMCALI's privatization as a patriotic struggle to defend the people of Cali from the plunder of corporate profiteers. They are fighting against the systematic decimation of their city's and their country's social infrastructure—and because of it they are the targets of a violent retaliation campaign. Hernandez is not the only one facing threats; the entire executive board of the union is under death threat. Nor does it stop with threats. Ten members of the union have been killed, and two more have disappeared.

Like the issue of EMCALI's privatization, this appalling record of human rights abuses is also typical for Colombia. There are more trade unionists killed in Colombia every year than in the entire rest of the world. In 2002, 184 union members were killed, and there were an additional 164 death threats. Among the cases where the responsible groups could be determined, 57% of homicides and 98% of death threats came from right-wing paramilitary groups. The paramilitaries' links to the government are widely known and treated as an open secret in Colombia. Overall, some 3,800 union members and leaders have been killed since 1986, and one local government official told us he did not know of a single case in which the perpetrators had been arrested, tried and successfully prosecuted. Understandably, Colombian unionists see that as further proof that paramilitary violence against them is part of the government's systematic efforts to crush the unions. By having the paramilitaries do their dirty work, the government has essentially privatized its human rights abuses.

Returning Colombians win protection

Hector Giraldo spent a year in the U.S. as part of an AFL-CIO program that brings threatened Colombian unionists to America. While he was here, he spent part of his time working with CWA District 1 (1180's district) and meeting with District 1 members.

When we were in Colombia we brought Giraldo and two other returning unionists, Samuel Alarca and Orlando Herran, with us to meetings with government officials and the U.S. Embassy to insist that they be given protection against the threats made on their lives. After our meeting with the Ministry of Interior, the three were promptly given temporary protection while the government officially considers their cases.

Giraldo's stay with District 1 was part of CWA's international solidarity program in which individual districts engage in concrete exchange programs. The district is continuing this work through financial help for Giraldo's union work back home. He is an official with SINTRAOFAN, the public sector union in Antioquia. For more information on the District 1 program, click here.

Union members are the targets of violence precisely because they are fighting back against the government and the multinationals' program of privatization and austerity. Public sector unions, like SINTRAEMCALI, are the hardest hit for this reason as well; it is union members in the public sector who are on the front lines in the battle to keep social goods—like healthcare, education and water—out of the hands of corporate profiteers. Sixty-seven percent of the 2002 homicides of unionists were of public sector workers.

While the Colombian government is implementing a globalization program through terror and bloodshed, it is also using legal means to demolish the country's social infrastructure and weaken the unions. Some of these have taken the form of economic and political policy, such as the 1993 law that cut off funding for non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The effect of this law, among other things, was to shut down Colombia's premiere medical facility, San Juan de Dios hospital in Bogota. Because the hospital was not "profitable," i.e., could not support itself without NGO support, it was starved to death. Founded in 1568, the hospital not only was the country's most advanced research and treatment facility, it was also the only hospital in Bogota that provided care to the indigent. Workers there—who still come to work every day to keep the government from raiding the equipment and to continue their fight to try to reopen the hospital—told us that people are now literally dying on the doorsteps of other hospitals. On the corporate globalization agenda there is no room for places like San Juan de Dios, whose social profitability is immense, because there is no economic gain in it for private corporations.

In addition to these kinds of policy shifts, the Colombian government under President Alvaro Uribe has increasingly curtailed labor rights and civil liberties. His policy of "democratic security" (which is neither) has redirected money from social needs to military spending and restricted union rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Sound familiar? Colombian unions, who are independent and not involved in the armed struggle of the country, point out that there can be no lasting military solution to the civil war, because its underlying causes are social inequality and exclusion. The road to peace in Colombia is social justice and negotiations, not military power and repression.

More articles and information on Colombia:

Colombian union leader meets with 1180 members

Colombian unionists are target of terror campaign

National Mobilization on Colombia

But under "President" Bush, the U.S. has increased military aid to Colombia and sought to abandon any human rights conditions for aid. Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, and 70% of that aid is military. Because of the connections between the Colombian government and the paramilitaries, that money only furthers the bloodshed. "Your tax money is being used to kill union members," Hector Giraldo told 1180 members when he was here last year. U.S. aid "isn't used to open schools or hospitals. It's for helicopters and weapons. The unity of the paramilitary and the state military means these resources are used to kill us," he explained.

Common struggles

Yet despite the campaign of terror and violence against them, unions like SINTRAEMCALI continue to fight. The death threats and assassinations and police harassment and intimidation have not silenced them. SINTRAEMCALI represents not just the public sector in Cali, but the public good, or as Hernandez put it, the common wealth. They've laid their lives on the line for it, as well as their time and energy and money. Once a month, members of the union who are part of "community works teams" go out into the poorest sections of the city and help maintain services for free; they volunteer their time, spend their own money to provide medicine and bring doctors and nurses and even hairdressers to the people in the community. This work is part and parcel of their defense of EMCALI, because what they are fighting is not just the privatization of one public utility but the injustice and immorality of a worldview that says that those who cannot afford to pay can be left behind to die.

It is part of the same fight that Local 1180 members are waging here at home. Whether it's fighting Giuliani's attempt to privatize our public hospitals, or Pataki's budget slashing education funding while handing out tax cuts to the rich, or Bush's union-busting in the name of "national security"—it is the same struggle our Colombian sisters and brother are waging, and ultimately, we can win it only if we are fighting together.

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