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LAWMAKERS, UNIONS HIT BUSH PLAN TO SUBMIT COLOMBIA FREE TRADE PACT BY END OF MONTH
Friday, March 14, 2008
(PAI)LAWMAKERS, UNIONS HIT BUSH PLAN TO SUBMIT
COLOMBIA FREE TRADE PACT BY END OF
MONTH
WASHINGTON
(PAI)--Lawmakers and unions are
turning
their fire on a plan by the
anti-worker GOP Bush
regime to submit the
proposed U.S.-Colombia
“free
trade†agreement, and its
implementing legislation, to
Congress by
March 31.
The
deadline--at the end of the present
congressional
recess--was announced by Bush
USTR Susan Schwab on
March 13, a day after
Bush once again pushed for
passage of the
pact in a speech to the U.S.
Hispanic
Chamber of
Commerce.
The
U.S.-Colombia FTA was negotiated under the
old,
since-lapsed “fast trackâ€
trade rules. That means
both houses of
Congress get just one up-or-down vote
each
on legislation to implement it--not the
treaty
itself--and they can’t amend
it to guarantee
labor
rights.
Under pressure, Colombian President
Alvaro Uribe
agreed earlier to insert some
pro-labor provisions
into the trade
pact’s text. But unions and
lawmakers
say they’re not good enough
to overcome Colombia’s
notorious
track record of more than 2,000
unionists
murdered by Right Wing
paramilitaries--some paid off
by U.S.
multinationals--over the last 15 years,
or
Uribe’s lack of prosecution of
perpetrators.
Rep.
Phil Hare (D-Ill.), a longtime UNITE HERE
shop
steward, called Schwab’s
statement “further proofâ€
Bush
“has no interest in working with Congress
to
truly reform our broken trade
policies. It shows
complete disregard
for the views of American people
who know
the Bush trade agenda has been a boon for
big
business at the expense of working
families and their
jobs.
“Furthermore, the Colombia FTA
rewards a country
whose record of violence
against union organizers is
nothing short of
disgraceful,†he added. Hare
called
the pact a human rights cause as well
as a labor
cause.
A pro-worker blog that unveiled the
Bush-Colombia
trade deal submission plan
before Schwab did added:
“Colombia has
a horrific human rights record. More
union
organizers are executed there than in the
rest
of the world combined. Its
president has been tied to
the leaders of
paramilitary gangs who execute
these
organizers.
“Meanwhile, polls show
Americans are opposed to more
NAFTA-style
trade deals, like the Bush
administration's
Colombia proposal. And yet,
Bush--the
most unpopular president in
contemporary
history--is apparently looking
to make his last big
"accomplishment"
another NAFTA-style deal as a final
favor to
K Street,†the center of powerful
business
lobbies.
The Steel Workers, who were part of an
AFL-CIO
delegation to Colombia last month,
and who put the
unionist death toll there at
2,283, were equally
blunt. Not only
did they cite the death toll and lack
of
prosecutions but said a new law Uribe
pushed
through gives the murderers light
terms, when they’re
caught at
all--which is rarely.
“The so-called Peace & Justice
law passed by the
Uribe administration
guaranteed the paramilitaries
convicted of
killing unionists will receive sentences
of
at most 8 years in prison and as little as
3-1/2
years,†USW said.
“In the meantime, death
threats
against trade unionists in Colombia
persist, with more
than 200 occurring last
year, and one union with which
the USW works
closely in Colombia, Sinaltrainal,
received
numerous death threats against its
leadership
last year from the extremely
violent ‘Black Eagles’ of
the
AUC paramilitaries. Two
Sinaltrainal members
were murdered last
year.â€
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