Colombia: Cooperation Agreement Between CUT, UNAC and IUF Opens New Organizing Perspectives

Posted to the IUF website 02-Feb-2007

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On January 27, the Colombian national center CUT, the IUF-affiliated agrofood federation UNAC and the IUF Latin American regional organization signed a groundbreaking cooperation agreement committing the three organizations to further develop their mutual support and solidarity. Through strengthening organizing and education work in particular, the agreement seeks to consolidate and extend the pattern of sector-wide organization and bargaining exemplified by SINTRAINAGRO, the rural workers union which is a pillar of UNAC and has brought the Colombian banana sector under a single collective agreement. In addition to addressing the need for sectoral consolidation in Colombia's highly fragmented union movement, cooperation will extend to organizing in TNCs, strengthening links between rural workers, small cultivators and urban unions and repulsing the attack on food security embodied in the proposed free trade agreement between the US and Colombia. The agreement also aims to strengthen ties between rural trade unionism in Colombia and the Latin American region.