REUTERS
Sunday, 29 August 1999
 

Colombia Unions Gear Up For General Strike

BOGOTA -- Colombian labor leaders laid final plans Sunday for a massive nationwide strike this week amid fears of more violence following a wave of urban bombings.

Up to 1.5 million union members from the public and private sectors were expected to participate in the strike to call for an end to government austerity measures and free-market economic policies.

The action is to start Tuesday and could last indefinitely.

Military sources said they believed Marxist guerrillas could stage attacks to coincide with the strike and block major highways in a bid to snarl traffic across the country.

The Communist Party, a close political ally of the guerrillas, issued a statement Sunday backing the strike.

``We're saying enough to the politics of hunger, misery and extermination that this and previous governments have conducted to maintain their privileges ... thanks to the sweat and work of those who produce the wealth,'' it said.

Newly appointed Labor Minister Gina Riano told the respected El Espectador newspaper that the strike would be a grave mistake.

``It will cost the country about 250 billion pesos ($130 million) a day and poses a very serious risk at a time when the law and order situation is so fragile,'' the minister was quoted as saying.

Public sector workers staged a 21-day stoppage last October. The strike collapsed when President Andres Pastrana refused to give in to workers' demands.

Colombia's most violent strike in recent memory was in 1977 when 20 protesters were killed in a single day amid widespread rioting in Bogota.

The looming action, which the government estimates would cost the country $130 million a day, comes against the backdrop of one of Colombia's worst recessions on record. Gross domestic product contracted 5.9 percent in the first quarter and urban unemployment has hit a record of around 20 percent.

``This is a political strike that includes aspects of labor rights,'' said Luis Eduardo Garzon, a senior Communist Party figure and head of the Unitary Workers' Confederation (CUT), the country's largest labor movement.

Labor organizations have called for grass-roots social organizations, students and housewives to join teachers, health, communications and oil workers and truck drivers in a bid to bring the country to a standstill.

Security forces have been placed on alert for possible violence and alcohol sales and firearms have been banned in Bogota and many major cities from Sunday.

Last Thursday, seven bombs were detonated outside savings and loans corporations in the capital, causing heavy damage but no injuries.

Military sources suggested the blasts could have been carried out by Marxist guerrillas in support of the general strike.

Overnight Saturday, two bombs exploded in the northwest industrial hub of Medellin -- one outside a regional human rights office and another outside a union building, police said. A third bomb planted outside local offices of the powerful oil workers' union USO was defused.