LAWMAKERS, UNIONS HIT BUSH PLAN
TO SUBMIT COLOMBIA FREE TRADE PACT

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 track” 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 proof” 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.”