You could not find a more striking physical contrast than that between AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Nohra Padilla. Trumka's a big, strongly built son of the coal fields; Padilla a slight, waif-like woman from Bogota, Colombia.

When Maria Roa arrived in Medellin 10 years ago, her primary focus was to provide a better life for her three children. She took a job as a domestic worker, as many Afro-Colombian women do, but quickly realized the position was underpaid and overworked. Despite the nature of this physically and emotionally challenging work, domestic workers like Maria have been successful in their organizing efforts to form a new union to combat workplace discrimination, improve benefits and establish job security.

Afro-Colombians are far likelier than other Colombian workers to earn less than the minimum wage and to be employed in jobs where they cannot form unions  to improve their working conditions. And all of this exclusion “has a strong current of racial discrimination under it,” said Agripina Hurtado, the newly elected president of the Afro-Colombian Labor Council (Consejo Labor Afrocolombiano). A quarter of Colombia’s population is Afro-descendant, yet Afro-Colombians comprise more than three-quarters of the country’s poor.

Over the weekend, two prominent Colombian union leaders survived an assassination attempt in Cali, a city of more than 2.2 million in western Colombia.

The targets—Luis Miguel Morantes Alfonso and Adolfo Devia Paz of the Colombian Confederation of Workers (CTC, after its name in Spanish) and Emcali Union (USE)—survived unharmed inside a bullet-proof SUV provided by the Colombian government, according to a communiqué released by the National Labor School (ENS), a Colombian nonprofit organization dedicated to the empowerment of workers in the country. 

Celeste Drake, trade policy specialist for the AFL-CIO, sends us this. 

It’s been more than seven months since the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (Columbia FTA) went into effect, and many U.S. workers are wondering exactly how the agreement is benefiting workers in either country. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. For America’s workers, the U.S. trade deficit with Colombia is on track to exceed last year’s deficit—never good news for job creation or wage growth. Meanwhile, Colombian workers still face momentous obstacles when trying to exercise even the most basic of workplace rights, including the right to organize unions and act collectively for better working conditions. 

This morning, the Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of General Motors Colombia (ASOTRECOL) announced that they had reached an agreement with General Motors (GM) and its Colombian subsidiary GM Colmotores to enter into mediation to resolve a labor dispute that has been going on for more than a year.  Twelve ASOTRECOL members have just announced an end to their hunger strike, organized to shame GM Colmotores into coming to the table to discuss a variety of issues including wrongful termination and compensation for occupational injuries.

This is a cross-post from The Huffington Post by Stan Sorscher, labor representative for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace/IFPTE Local 2001 (SPEEA/IFPTE).

The other day, I had lunch with an economist I respect and admire. I asked him, what would it take for China to become a modern democracy and build a strong middle class?

OK. I didn't ask him that. I told him that China would need strong institutions of civil society and a deeper sense of a social contract to become a stable modern democracy with a dynamic middle class.

The AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions have called for immediate action in Colombia around the mistreatment of the members of ASOTRECOL, an association of ex-workers and injured workers at Colmotores, a General Motors (GM) subsidiary in Colombia.

Colombian unionists visited Washington, D.C., to meet with U.S. government officials and ask for their support in ensuring the Colombia Labor Action Plan. The delegation included Miguel Conde, general secretary of the Puerto Wilches local of Sintrainagro, an agricultural worker union representing workers on palm oil plantations; Jhonsson Torres, a founding member and vice president of the cane cutters union; Sinalcorteros; and Jose Luciano Sanin, executive director of the Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS, National Union School). Getting assurance of continued support for implementation made the trip worthwhile for the Colombians, who are in the midst of a long-term struggle for an economy that provides workers with dignity, fair pay and benefits and respect for the exercise of free association and other fundamental rights. 

Today, Colombian trade unionists, representatives from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS, Colombia’s National Union School) and the AFL-CIO participated in a panel discussion on the implementation of the Colombian Action Plan Related to Labor Rights. The panelists reached a grim conclusion—so far, the Labor Action Plan (LAP) has failed to stop serious labor and human rights violations in Colombia, even though the U.S. government has declared it a success and has allowed the related Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to go into effect.