| In a country where more than
55 percent of the population lives in poverty, organized labor groups are
demanding more social spending rather than the cuts contained in the 2000
budget now awaiting approval in Congress.
REUTERS Thursday, 14 October 1999
Colombia Hit By More Labor Unrest
BOGOTA - Colombian workers staged a one-day nationwide strike
Thursday against the increasingly unpopular economic policies of President
Andres Pastrana, who has called for a public sector wage freeze next year.
Organizers of the stoppage --the latest of more than a dozen since Pastrana
took office-- said it was backed by virtually all the country's 700,000
state employees, including the powerful oil workers' union known as USO.
The strike comes as Pastrana's 14-month-old government, weak and widely
criticized, is seeking to ram through a series of austerity measures during
Colombia's most severe recession in decades.
The measures, including the proposed wage freeze and a deep cut in social
spending in 2000, are aimed at narrowing the government's yawning budget
deficits while complying with terms of a recently announced $2.7 billion
loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
Labor leaders have been vague in spelling out their demands for changes
in economic policy under Pastrana, a center- rightist and free marketeer
who has made peace talks with Colombia's main Marxist rebel group his top
priority.
But unions have called for a suspension of privatization plans and a
moratorium on foreign debt payments.
In a country where more than 55 percent of the population lives in poverty,
organized labor groups are demanding more social spending rather than the
cuts contained in the 2000 budget now awaiting approval in Congress.
"You can't shore up the economy by creating more poverty among the country's
poorest," said Wilson Borja, head of the main public sector union.
A two-day general strike early last month was marred by some of Colombia's
worst political violence since a rebel offensive in July, which brought
fighting to the southern outskirts of the capital.
Riot police used tear gas to disperse protesting workers blocking a
major thoroughfare in the northwest city of Medellin Thursday. Traffic
was snarled throughout the downtown area of the capital, Bogota, as thousands
of workers marched on the city's main plaza for a day-long series of meetings
and speeches by union bosses.
In a rural area of southwest Narino province, meanwhile, authorities
said a young girl had committed suicide to avoid being pressed by rebels
into forming part of a human barricade that halted traffic on the key Pan-American
highway.
Interior Minister Nestor Humberto Martinez said the girl, whose name
and exact age were not immediately available, shot herself with a gun she
grabbed from a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Colombia's economy fell into recession under Pastrana's predecessor,
Ernesto Samper, who went on a public spending binge while defending himself
from charges he used Cali cartel drug money to finance his 1994 election
campaign.
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