Colombia | Workers' Liberty

Seven weeks on, Colombia's rising is still strong

15 Jun 2021 |

Mohan Sen

Colombia’s trade unions began a general strike on 28 April, in response to a bill seeking to increase taxes on basic foodstuffs and essential services like water and electricity, and to other social policies threatening to widen inequality, including healthcare “reforms”. The tax and health plans have been dropped, and the finance minister of Colombia’s right-wing government has resigned, but the struggle has widened into what looks like a powerful social uprising involving many different popular constituencies. Colombia, whose population is not much smaller than the UK’s, is the world’s 16th...

Oil workers strike and occupy in Colombia

10 Jun 2010 |

Colombia Solidarity Campaign

On 21 May workers involved in construction operations in BP’s Tauramena installation entered into occupation demanding: • a wage increase; the establishment a wage scale; • due process in disciplinary decisions; • labour guarantees for the workers. On 2 June army forces entered the plant. At time of writing they are harassing the workers, who stay overnight chaining themselves to plant equipment so that they cannot be dislodged. Since BP began oil exploration and production in Casanare, Colombia in the early 1990s, six thousand people have been assassinated and three thousand people...

Colombian students seek solidarity

25 Apr 2008 |

Daniel Randall

Numa Andrés Paredes Betancourt, a member of the National Executive Committee of the ACEU (one of Colombia’s main student union federations), visited Britain recently as part of a trip organised by Justice for Colombia, the labour movement campaign in solidarity with workers and students in Colombia. Daniel Randall spoke to him at the National Union of Students conference in Blackpool. DR: Could you tell us something about the campaigns you’re running currently? NAPB: In international terms we want people to focus on campaigning to get the UK government to stop funding the Colombian military...

Army assassinates agricultural workers

20 Apr 2005

The Colombian army has assassinated three members of the agricultural workers trade union FENSUAGRO, from the town of San Juan de Sumapaz on the outskirts of the Colombian capital Bogotá. On 18 March the men were travelling to another town to inspect some cattle, when they went missing. Some days later the Colombia media reported that the army had killed three guerrillas in the area and, on 27 March the families of the three men identified their bodies. The army’s claim the men were guerrillas is the same claim they made last year when they assassinated three senior trade union leaders in the...

Stop the killing!

04 Mar 2005

From Justice for Colombia The National Trade Union School [NTUS], a EU funded research institution based in Medellin, Colombia, records 94 assassinations of trade unionists in 2004, an increase on the 90 trade unionists that both the NTUS and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) registered killed in 2003. The NTUS has also reported an increase in “disappearances” and arbitrary detentions. This deterioration contrasts with Colombian government claims that human rights abuses against trade union members are declining. Send messages of protest to: President Alvaro Uribe...

Colombian army murders leader of agricultural workers

02 Feb 2005

From Justice for Colombia: Just after midday on Saturday January 29th some 500 members of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian Army entered the rural area of Jiguamuando. The soldiers spent some six hours terrorising the Afro-Colombian inhabitants of the area accusing them of being supporters of leftwing FARC guerrillas. Homes were raided, local people beaten up and supplies and livestock were destroyed. During the incursion a group of soldiers near the community of Cano Seco shot and wounded the 50-year-old leader of the local peasant farmer union Pedro Murillo. Some minutes later the same...

Workers of the world Round up

17 Jul 2004

By Pablo Velasco Inside: Strike wave in South Korea Soldiers terrorise workers Haitian workers Victory for Colombian banana workers' strike General strike in Nigeria stops petrol price rises Strike wave in South Korea Korean taxi drivers and metal workers went on strike this month for wage increases and better working conditions, joining hospital workers on their week-long walkout. About 4,600 drivers of the Korean Federation of Taxi Workers' Unions, an affiliate of the independent Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), are demanding the introduction of a minimum wage, a strengthened...

International caravan to save the lives of Colombian workers

27 Apr 2004

From the Colombian trade union federation, CUT In 2003, 78 trade unionists were killed in Colombia by paramilitary groups. Since the foundation of the Colombian Trade Union Federation (CUT), 3,800 trade unionists have died that way. The State has not had the political will to find those responsible, to judge them and thus mitigate the pain of the victims. The vast majority of the legal cases has been archived or remain in preliminary stages, without possibility of showing to the world the truth about these crimes against humanity. The state, as always, has responded in a violent way to our...

URGENT: Solidarity With Coca Cola workers on hunger strike

26 Mar 2004

IN LONDON Vigil 7.30 p.m. Friday 26 March onwards to coincide with negotiations between union and senior managers in Bogotá Picket 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday 27 March Both outside Coca Cola Great Britain and Ireland HQ headquarters, 1 Queen Charlotte Street, Hammersmith, London W6 (adjacent to Hammersmith tube). more information below STATEMENT FROM SINALTRAINAL Thirty workers at the US multinational have for 11 days been on hunger strike, in rejection of the corporation's collective sackings, in defence of their jobs and for the survival of their union SINALTRAINAL. After 264 hours of fasting...

Workers of the world Round-up

06 Mar 2004

By Pablo Velasco Colombian oil workers halt privatisation: solidarity works! "Massive summer strikes" planned in Korea ANC against anti-privatisation activists Argentine workers fight for a six-hour day Colombian oil workers halt privatisation: solidarity works! Colombian oil workers have won their struggle against privatisation, thanks to their resolute strike action backed up by international solidarity. In the last issue of Solidarity we reported on how the Colombian government was trying to break the month-long strike at Ecopetrol, the national oil company, using military force. The Uribe...