Sugarcane Laborers of Colombia

With Adolfo Tigreros

Successful outcome for
sugarcane cutters' strike
Refineries grant most of the workers’ demands

-Which refineries have already reached an agreement?

-We’ve already signed an agreement with five of them -del Cauca, Central Castilla, Pichichí, Providencia, and Central Tumaco-, and we’re still negotiating with another three -Manuelita, Mayagüé, and María Luisa. We hope that in a few days, all of the refineries will have adopted the general basic agreement that’s been approved by the parties. This means that approximately 75 percent of the workers can now lift the strike.

-What are the conditions agreed?

-We obtained the mean wage increase of 15 percent; the recognition and payment by the refineries of the first three days of sick leave that are not covered by Social Security; the initiation of housing programs for workers in all the refineries, the most important of which is in Cauca, with the commitment to grant 120 houses a year; the establishment of an education fund in all the refineries, and here also the most important is the Cauca fund, with one thousand study grants for workers and their children.

It was established that workdays cannot extend beyond 4 p.m., which means eight hours of work plus a maximum of two hours overtime, compared to the 12 to 14 hour workdays we were forced to work until now; the companies have undertaken to respect the workers’ right to free association, and we have expressly set forth that we will continue fighting until we are all hired under direct contracting schemes and until the system of associated work cooperatives is abandoned for good. In the cane sector there’s only one percent of these cooperatives, and breaking the model on our own is very difficult. We’ll need to have a broader movement. We also achieved a commitment from the companies to assume Safety and Social Security costs, so that sugarcane cutters will now be in the same conditions as the rest of Colombia’s workers.

-That’s a lot of gains. What other issues did you agree on?

-I was forgetting one that is essential: we’ve obtained control over the weighing of the sugarcane we cut, which has always been problematic, because the refineries and their foremen pull a lot of stunts to change the actual weigh and cheat workers. As of now we will have cane cutters overseeing the weighing. We’ve achieved huge gains, and the most important thing is that we’ve strengthened labor organization enormously: from a membership of 900 workers that we had, we’ve come to the end of the conflict with over 3,000, which means that workers are realizing how important and necessary it is to organize in unions, because it puts us in a better position to fight future battles.

-So the workers’ morale is very high now…

-This has been very encouraging for us all. We hope that in a few days the refineries that have still not signed will recognize that a general framework has been achieved for the sector, and that they’ll accept and use it to build a constructive relationship with organized workers.

-How important has international solidarity been in this conflict?

-These 56 days would definitely not have been possible without the determination of the cutters and the solidarity of the Colombian people, but the support of international organizations was also key. Not only in terms of material support, but also because it pressured the Colombian government into bringing the parties together and forcing the companies to negotiate and abandon their unyielding position.

The government had already decided to use force against our movement, and the solidarity of international organizations was essential in preventing that and in enabling us to achieve our labor gains. We value their help enormously, and this will lead us to improve our bonds of collaboration and solidarity with all the fellow workers that came to give us their support. Among these is the regional secretary of the Latin American Office of the IUF, Gerardo Iglesias, and Luis Alejandro Pedraza, of the IUF’s Latin American Executive Committee, who came out here with us and met with the Governing Committee of SINALCORTEROS. We were able to see for ourselves what the IUF means and what its international solidarity campaign in support of our struggle has meant. The IUF has played a huge role in this struggle, and we hope to continue our close collaboration and exchange. At the Assembly that we hope to hold next week with the participation of all our members and delegates, we will propose our immediate application for membership in the IUF so that we can join this great international labor movement and learn about the struggle of other unions and what unionists are doing in other countries.

-This has been a historical conflict for you…

-The conflict is historical for Colombia’s working class, which has been treated very harshly by this neoliberal government, which set out to destroy the labor movement. The struggle of the cane cutters has revived our unions, encouraging us to reorganize and mobilize to recover the rights that have been taken away from us and to achieve new gains.

-Which refineries have already reached an agreement?

-We’ve already signed an agreement with five of them -del Cauca, Central Castilla, Pichichí, Providencia, and Central Tumaco-, and we’re still negotiating with another three -Manuelita, Mayagüé, and María Luisa. We hope that in a few days, all of the refineries will have adopted the general basic agreement that’s been approved by the parties. This means that approximately 75 percent of the workers can now lift the strike.

-What are the conditions agreed?

-We obtained the mean wage increase of 15 percent; the recognition and payment by the refineries of the first three days of sick leave that are not covered by Social Security; the initiation of housing programs for workers in all the refineries, the most important of which is in Cauca, with the commitment to grant 120 houses a year; the establishment of an education fund in all the refineries, and here also the most important is the Cauca fund, with one thousand study grants for workers and their children.

It was established that workdays cannot extend beyond 4 p.m., which means eight hours of work plus a maximum of two hours overtime, compared to the 12 to 14 hour workdays we were forced to work until now; the companies have undertaken to respect the workers’ right to free association, and we have expressly set forth that we will continue fighting until we are all hired under direct contracting schemes and until the system of associated work cooperatives is abandoned for good. In the cane sector there’s only one percent of these cooperatives, and breaking the model on our own is very difficult. We’ll need to have a broader movement. We also achieved a commitment from the companies to assume Safety and Social Security costs, so that sugarcane cutters will now be in the same conditions as the rest of Colombia’s workers.

-That’s a lot of gains. What other issues did you agree on?

-I was forgetting one that is essential: we’ve obtained control over the weighing of the sugarcane we cut, which has always been problematic, because the refineries and their foremen pull a lot of stunts to change the actual weigh and cheat workers. As of now we will have cane cutters overseeing the weighing. We’ve achieved huge gains, and the most important thing is that we’ve strengthened labor organization enormously: from a membership of 900 workers that we had, we’ve come to the end of the conflict with over 3,000, which means that workers are realizing how important and necessary it is to organize in unions, because it puts us in a better position to fight future battles.

-So the workers’ morale is very high now…

-This has been very encouraging for us all. We hope that in a few days the refineries that have still not signed will recognize that a general framework has been achieved for the sector, and that they’ll accept and use it to build a constructive relationship with organized workers.

-How important has international solidarity been in this conflict?

-These 56 days would definitely not have been possible without the determination of the cutters and the solidarity of the Colombian people, but the support of international organizations was also key. Not only in terms of material support, but also because it pressured the Colombian government into bringing the parties together and forcing the companies to negotiate and abandon their unyielding position.

The government had already decided to use force against our movement, and the solidarity of international organizations was essential in preventing that and in enabling us to achieve our labor gains. We value their help enormously, and this will lead us to improve our bonds of collaboration and solidarity with all the fellow workers that came to give us their support. Among these is the regional secretary of the Latin American Office of the IUF, Gerardo Iglesias, and Luis Alejandro Pedraza, of the IUF’s Latin American Executive Committee, who came out here with us and met with the Governing Committee of SINALCORTEROS. We were able to see for ourselves what the IUF means and what its international solidarity campaign in support of our struggle has meant. The IUF has played a huge role in this struggle, and we hope to continue our close collaboration and exchange. At the Assembly that we hope to hold next week with the participation of all our members and delegates, we will propose our immediate application for membership in the IUF so that we can join this great international labor movement and learn about the struggle of other unions and what unionists are doing in other countries.

-This has been a historical conflict for you…

-The conflict is historical for Colombia’s working class, which has been treated very harshly by this neoliberal government, which set out to destroy the labor movement. The struggle of the cane cutters has revived our unions, encouraging us to reorganize and mobilize to recover the rights that have been taken away from us and to achieve new gains.