Colombia Meets June 15th Action Plan Commitments

June 14, 2011

On June 13, 2011, United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced that Colombia has met its commitments for June 15^th under the Action Plan Related to Labor Rights, moving the Colombia FTA one step closer to achieving congressional approval. Ambassador Kirk stated, “The Action Plan is designed to significantly increase labor protections in Colombia, and we are pleased that Colombia is meeting its commitments. We are eager to see Congress move the Colombia trade agreement forward as soon as possible along with the Korea and Panama agreements and a renewal of Trade Adjustment Assistance.” Disputes in Congress over passage of Trade Adjustment Assistance may also delay advancement of the Colombia FTA, as well as the Korea FTA and the Panama FTA.

To gain final approval from the Administration, Colombia still must meet Action Plan commitments throughout the rest of the year. These commitments include Colombia’s prosecutor general’s office finishing its analysis of earlier homicide cases involving union organizers in July and formally asking the international Labor Organization for advance and technical assistance implementing labor rights provisions in the fall. Once passed, the U.S.- Colombia FTA would eliminate over 80 percent of Colombian duties on U.S. exports of consumer and industrial products. Most Colombian exports already have duty-free access to the U.S. under trade preference programs.

According to the USTR’s June 13^th news release, Colombia has recently taken the following actions to meet its Action Plan commitments:
 

• Secured legislation establishing a separate Labor Ministry to provide better institutional capacity to protect labor rights.
• Secured legislation to establish criminal penalties, including imprisonment, for employers that undermine the right to organize and bargain collectively or threaten workers who exercise their labor rights. The law includes a provision making it a crime to offer a collective pact to non-union workers that has superior terms to those offered to union workers.
• Accelerated the effective date from July 2013 to June 2011 of new legal provisions, including significant fines, to prohibit and sanction the misuse of cooperatives and other employment relationships that undermine workers’ rights.
• Issued regulations that implement these new legal provisions on cooperatives and other employment relationships, clarify earlier cooperatives laws, and ensure coherence among these laws. The regulations include significant fines for companies that violate these laws and create tools for the Government to promote the establishment and maintenance of direct employment relationships between the user companies and affected workers. The new regulations also strengthen and clarify rules to ensure that only legitimate, autonomous, and self-directed cooperatives are allowed to operate.
• Launched an outreach program through television, newspapers and electronic media to inform workers of their labor rights, with a focus on the new laws governing cooperatives, criminal anti-union conduct, and abuse of collective pacts, and the remedies available to workers to enforce recognition of a direct employment relationship.
• Developed and began disseminating relevant Colombian laws and jurisprudence on essential public services, with guidance on how to challenge the constitutionality of any law establishing a public service as essential and therefore exempt from the right to strike.
• As part of an overall strengthening of the government protection program for threatened union activists, reduced by 75 percent the backlog of risk assessments for those unionists applying for protection.
• Issued internal guidance to prosecutors to accelerate action on labor violence cases with leads, including a special focus on the priority labor cases identified by Colombian labor unions as well as labor violence cases from recent years.
• Developed a plan to strengthen the capacity and number of prosecutors and judicial police investigators in regional offices of the Prosecutor General.
• Developed a plan and identified budgetary needs for victims’ assistance centers specializing in human rights cases, including those involving crimes against unionists.
• Included in the 2012 budget proposal the necessary financial resources to increase the Prosecutor General’s Office’s institutional capacity and to expand personnel and measures designed to reduce impunity and to implement the Action Plan.
• Developed a methodology for posting aggregate information about all completed criminal cases involving labor violence to date on the Prosecutor General Office’s website.

For further information, continue to visit www.barnesrichardson.com or contact a Barnes/Richardson attorney.