The Price of Privatization and the Trade-offs of Free Trade: Labor Violations in Colombia on the One Year Anniversary of the Free Trade Agreement

Monday, April 29 at 6:00 p.m.

CWA Local 7200 hall

3521 East Lake Street, Minneapolis

Witness for Peace, MN AFL-CIO, MN Fair Trade Coalition, Labor Education Service and SEIU 26 are excited to host Sohely Rua Castañeda, the Secretary of Women and Labor for Colombia’s National Union School. A native of Medellín, Colombia, she holds a Master’s Degree in Education and Human Rights from the University of Manizales. She has written extensively about women’s labor rights, employment in the informal sector and the feminization of poverty.

A voice from the labor sector in the deadliest country in the world for trade unionists is especially significant on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Despite the Obama-Santos Labor Action Plan, an April 2011 prerequisite to the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement implemented on May 15, 2012 that was meant to ensure protections for Colombian workers before the implementation of the free trade agreement, 29 trade unionists have been murdered since 2011 and over 300 new death threats have been received. Furthermore, there is still 95% impunity for cases of violence against trade unionists.  The FTA is particularly harmful to women, who remain one of the most vulnerable groups in Colombia’s labor sector and face lower wages, discrimination and largely informal employment that provides no protections or benefits. Please join us in welcoming Sohely Rua Castañeda and hearing her first-hand testimony of the struggle for labor justice for women in Colombia.