Unions deny Andi’s accusations about the Tripartite Commission

After the president of Andi, Bruce Mac Máster, revealed in an interview with Yamid Amat that the businessmen filed a formal complaint with the International Labor Organization in which they warn that due process was not followed during the process of the reforms labor and pension, the central workers came out in defense of these initiatives and stated that everything was within the legal framework.

Through a letter to the ILO, the Unitary Central of Workers (CUT), the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the Democratic Confederation of Pensioners (CDP) and the Confederation of Pensioners of Colombia (CPC), stated that all processes, agreements and standards that regulate conversations about social reforms and spaces that must occur between employees, unions and the Government; have been complied with and duly informed to the parties.

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Particularly, this new meeting between workers and employers takes place through the Tripartite Commission, a scenario in which work tables are established that allow workers to be advised on compliance with labor standards. employers, workers and union organizations to prevent or overcome labor conflicts.

For the unions, what Mac Máster said is a strategy that was already used at another time and that ended up proving the unions and the Government right, since authorities such as the CAN (ILO Committee on the Application of Standards) maintained that All parties have been summoned and that only the actions carried out should continue to be reported.

“Today he returns to the charge again, maintaining that in the cases of the reforms labor and pensions, the current government of Gustavo Petro and his minister of labor did not consult either the workers or the businessmen. That is absolutely false. The Tripartite Concertation Commission met at least twice and 16 meetings of the technical subcommittee on labor reform and 12 related to pension reform were held between the months of October to December 2022,” the unions warned.

In their letter to Gilbert Houngbo, director general of the ILO, the labor confederations added that what was denounced “are facts that unfortunately the IOE (International Organization of Employers) and the Andi, in a tendentious manner, deny, trying to impress the national community and international. Therefore, it cannot be accepted that under a lie you want to make people believe, Mr. Director, that Convention 144 on social dialogue is violated.”

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Likewise, they were emphatic that Andi has been applying “double discourse and double standards,” since they denounce that they have opposed the reforms expressing the conventions and recommendations of the ILO international standards on union freedoms, the rights of association, negotiation and strike; which It finally ended with the elimination of the articles of the labor reform that regulated this.

CUT joins the strike called by Fecode against amendments to the Statutory Education Law.

Mauricio Moreno/ Portfolio

“It is therefore paradoxical that knowing that the governments of Colombia in the last 30 years have been in the CAN, on at least 20 occasions for violations, especially of ILO conventions 87 and 98, for open anti-union violence, in the always Colombian businessmen have been involved,” they concluded in the letter.

It should be noted that Bruce Mac Master pointed out that at the time he met with Gilbert Houngbo in Switzerland and in that meeting he expressed his concern about the “pure clientelism” that has been seen during the process of the pension and labor reform, which is still going through Congress.