http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/colombiaftaletter

Hold off on the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement

As a labor rights activist, why do I care about the Amazonian rainforest and indigenous groups?
Labor rights abuses are human rights abuses and vice versa. Social activists, indigenous activists, environmental activists and labor activists are often treated similarly by repressive government police forces, militaries and paramilitaries.

For asserting their  rights to freedom of association, land, or environmental preservation, corporations in collusion with repressive governments consider activists to be enemies of the state--hindering business interests.

Social protest is commonly criminalized in some of our most favored trading partners--Colombia​, the Philippines​, Guatemala and Peru. While labor rights clauses in currently implemented and pending free trade agreements have no teeth and are largely unenforceable, it's important to address the roots of exploitation.

Exploitation of workers often occurs as a result of, or in conjunction with, environmental and social exploitation. The most exploited workers are often indigenous peoples who have been displaced from their lands due to agribusiness or extractive companies and can no longer survive as small farmers--they look for work on plantations or migrate to the cities to work in sweatshops.

Our current free trade agreements favor the interests of corporations over people or the environment--(Why else would the Obama Administration even be considering ratification of a pending free trade agreement with a country like Colombia, where hundreds are murdered every year for being social activists? Because intense business lobbying in an economic crisis may overtake human rights concerns.)

Obama has a confirmed a meeting in Washington, DC with the controversial President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe assumedly to talk about benchmarks towards an FTA.

Such a step would be suggesting that Uribe is moving in the right direction, while Uribe has been implicated for ties to the paramilitaries who continue to murder Colombian social activists (the situation is only worse.) Click here to read about the labor situation.

Click here to tell your representatives that Colombia is not ready for an FTA!

http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/colombiaftaletter

Tell Congressman about the Colombia FTAColombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist yet the Colombian Government has failed to curb violence against union leaders. Union related murders have remained extremely high with a count of 48 murders in 2008 and 19 (as of June) in 2009.
Please join us in calling on Congress to hold off on the proposed US-Colombian Free Trade Agreement. Tell me more