Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

While Labour Day is a time to celebrate labour and our role in building a better world, it also provides us the opportunity to strategize and plan for upcoming challenges. All across the country we must be prepared to mobilize in support of collective bargaining, and, in the face of a looming federal election, to get our message out about the importance of defending quality public services for all Canadians.

It is also appropriate on this day to pay tribute to the many victories of organized labour in the struggle for workers’ rights, better pay and safer jobs. We must be ever vigilant in protecting our hard-won gains and our right to free collective bargaining.

Thinking about our role in building a better world, we must also defend the rights of our brothers and sisters who risk their lives daily fighting for the rights of labour in countries where to be a trade unionist may mark one for violence or murder.

In July, I joined the leaders of Canada’s largest public sector unions and undertook a fact-finding mission to Colombia to examine: human and labour rights, the privatization of public services, working conditions, the impact of free trade and the absence of labour and human rights guarantees. Meeting with union leaders, indigenous groups, politicians, diplomats, and human rights groups, we were able examine first-hand the problems that afflict Colombia, especially given the current government’s human rights record and the concerns about the recent free trade agreement with Canada.

What we learned on this trip deepened my commitment to social justice and need for greater international solidarity. There are 3.8 million internally displaced persons in Colombia, 57% of which are women. The numbers are staggering: 15,000 disappeared, 3,000 kidnapped, 20,000 political assassinations over past 20 years, and 6,500 arbitrary detentions in the past six years.
The UN calls this the worst humanitarian disaster in the Western hemisphere, and it is growing.

Free collective bargaining in Colombia is a fallacy; 95 per cent of Colombian workers do not have an enforceable collective agreement. The state is killing trade unionists: 2,600 assassinated (one every three days since 1986), 194 disappeared, 7,200 attacked, 58 murders admitted by paramilitary leaders, who get away with murder in 97 per cent of the cases.

Free trade will hurt, not help our Colombian Sisters and Brothers. It will only exacerbate an already horrifying list of human and labour rights abuses that are shocking the world.

Canada should actively engage with Colombia to help it address the significant challenges it faces with respect to human rights and labour rights and the environment. However, to conclude a free trade agreement with Colombia at this time, before it has demonstrated the political will to actively address these issues, would send the wrong message and imperil Colombia’s most vulnerable citizens.

Mobilizing in support of our collective bargaining and quality public services, we must remember our Sisters and Brothers around the world. Our fight for equality and social justice is a global one, and we all have a role in working to build a better world.

In Solidarity, John Gordon, National President