Colombia trade deal dead this year, U.S. unions say

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2008/02/12/colombia_trade_deal_dead_this_year_us_unions_say/

By Hugh Bronstein
February 12, 2008

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A trade deal with Colombia will not pass the U.S. Congress until it is revamped to protect union members being killed at a rate of almost one per week in the Andean country this year, U.S. labor leaders said on Tuesday.
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A delegation from the AFL-CIO, the United States' largest labor organization, is in the capital city Bogota to lobby the government to crack down on right-wing militias that have assassinated hundreds of union members.

"They will have to renegotiate the deal in 2009," said Dan Kovalik, a delegation member and lawyer for the United Steel Workers, a union with strong ties to the Democratic Party.

Since 2002, when President Alvaro Uribe was first elected, 470 union members have been killed in Colombia, Kovalik said. There have been five killings so far in 2008, he said, or nearly one a week.

The government says only three have been killed since the start of the year and that the cases are being investigated.

Few of the slayings have been prosecuted through the years, but Colombia says it has tripled its budget for protecting union leaders with bodyguards and bulletproof cars, cutting murder rates sharply.

FULL story at link.