Colombia’s Labor Action Plan that was billed as a major step to ending violence against trade unionists and protecting the right of workers to come together in unions “has failed to achieve improvements on the ground for Colombia’s working families,” a new AFL-CIO report finds.

As a result, workers who wish to better their lives by forming a union and bargaining collectively continue to be the victims of threats and violent acts, including murder. Moreover, Colombian law continues to provide broad avenues to deny workers the ability to exercise their most basic rights.

With Congress expected to vote on a free trade agreement with Colombia this month, the AFL-CIO has distributed the report—”The Ineffectiveness of Colombia’s Action Plan”—to key lawmakers. Click here to download the report.

The action plan was agreed to between Colombia and the United States in April in hopes of swaying opponents of the trade deal. The Colombian government said it would issue new laws, regulations and other measures aimed at ensuring workers’ rights, stopping the violence against trade unionists and bringing those behind the deadly violence to justice. But there was nothing in the action plan that required Colombia to show improvements in workers’ rights and a reduction or end to the violence before a trade agreement could be approved.

Twenty-three union leaders have been killed so far this year in Colombia, including 16 since the labor action plan went into effect.

The report also finds that workers  are forced to join cooperatives or cooperative-like structures to prevent workers from forming a union. Workers also are illegally fired for legitimate union activity and threatened and even killed.

Yesterday, hundreds of union members from around the country were on Capitol Hill telling Congress to vote “No” on the Colombia trade agreement and proposed trade deals with Korea and Panama. Call your members of Congress at 1-800-718-1008 and tell them to stop these job-killing trade deals. You also can send your message via e-mail by clicking here.