Some 18,000 sugar industry workers of the Department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia have gone on strike to demand wage improvements, a stop to the increasing casualization of labor, and an end to the pseudo cooperatives of associated work.

In Valle del Cauca there are 198,000 hectares planted with sugarcane, occupying practically 50 percent of the region’s total cultivated area. In 2007, 21.1 million tons of cane were ground, yielding 275 million liters of ethanol and 2.28 million metric tons of sugar, 31 percent of which was exported.

Ninety percent of the 18,000 cutters in the region is employed through one of the 23 associated work cooperatives. These pseudo cooperatives have been developed under an umbrella of government policies aimed at “protecting business” and they constitute a system of labor relations parallel to the labor regulations established by law. Through the cooperatives, an informal contracting scheme is imposed on the vast majority of the workers, who perform the most grueling tasks in the agro-industrial process of sugar production.

These “associated work cooperatives” are fashioned from similar schemes implemented in Brazil, where the responsibility of sugar-alcohol industry employers is diluted through outsourcing schemes and the use of subcontractors known as “cats.” This mechanism imposes a semi-slavery regime of production and working relations. In that country, as denounced by our affiliate, the Federation of Rural Laborers of the State of Sao Paulo (FERAESP), “the aim of these pseudo cooperatives is not the creation of new jobs; their aim is to degrade to a maximum the working conditions of laborers, curtailing their rights and undermining union strength, as workers are transformed into ‘partners’ of the company.”

For its part, the Argentinean Union of Rural Workers and Stevedores (UATRE) has been struggling for over ten years against this kind of cooperatives, which they label as “phony” or fake. According to Gerónimo Venegas, general secretary of UATRE, “We have been warning workers, the business sector, the government and the community at large about the existence of pseudo cooperatives that prevent workers from fully exercising their labor rights, and which distort the solidarity-based origin of this form of association. These entities are commonly used to evade Social Security obligations, thus directly harming workers by preventing them from full enjoying their labor rights, including family benefits, health care benefits, pension and retirement rights, and unemployment compensation.”

The human grinder

In Colombia, the practical effects of the associated work cooperatives has translated into long workdays that add up to 70-hour weeks, with an average salary of barely 230 dollars. Moreover, due to this pseudo cooperative system, sugarcane cutters are responsible for their own social security and industrial safety contributions, as they are at the same time workers and their own bosses.

In the absence of effective health services and professional risk programs to cover occupational health issues, there is a proliferation of cases of total and partial paralysis, arm and leg injuries, and infectious outbreaks caused by polluted waters and agrotoxic substances. There is also a great number of workers suffering from serious back conditions, arthrosis, herniated discs, and repetitive strain injuries (RSI), which are not classified as occupational diseases because they do not receive medical treatment in time. The workers that are affected by serious back injuries receive no attention whatsoever from their employers, who claim to have no legal connection with the workers. The same thing happens with retirement rights, which are a benefit that does not exist in practice, and very often elderly people are forced to work past their time in order to survive.

FTA, ethanol and poverty

The “alternative energy” cocktail

According to the United Workers’ Federation (CUT) of Colombia, “ethanol production in the region, as it currently stands, responds to a demand from the countries of the North, who need to solve their power shortage, and who could care less if local oligopolies profit from the expansion of sugarcane single-crop agriculture at the obvious expense of workers, indigenous communities, farmers, consumers, the environment and food sovereignty.”

Ethanol production in Colombia receives substantial subsidies. “Ethanol -the CUT reports- is exempt from the VAT (16 percent), the surcharge on gasoline (25 percent) and the general tax, all of which adds up to approximately 153 million dollars a year that are not going into the coffers of the State and which are being pocketed by the sugar mills. In addition, the government has classified the territories of the agrofuel plants as Special Free Trade Zones, which means they are only required to pay 15 percent of the Income Tax.”

As occurs in Brazil with sugarcane cutters, in Colombia the huge profits reaped by the sugar-alcohol industry never trickle down to the workers or the peasants. “Instead, the living and working conditions of the sugarcane cutters are worsening, and this forces them to struggle to achieve their demands and fight against an almost colonial situation, which placed workers under slavery conditions. The situation of the sugarcane planters grouped in the organization PROCAÑA, who own of the plantations that supply the sugar mills, has also deteriorated greatly. They currently receive 30 percent less for the raw materials that go into ethanol production,” the CUT points out.

We are all Valle del Cauca sugarcane cutters

The strike of the sugar workers of Valle del Cauca needs national and international support and solidarity. In the face of this situation, Artur Bueno de Camargo, president of the Latin American Federation of Sugar Workers of the IUF, declared: “This situation reveals once again that the Free Trade Agreements with the United States are clearly for the exclusive benefit of the national oligarchies. Ethanol, the new star of alternative fuels, will not translate into benefits for workers and peasants if the system of production does not change, as it is an absolute nonsense in social, economic and environmental terms.”

“Making the struggle of the Valle del Cauca workers ours and supporting with all our strength their just demands will be instrumental in expanding the global struggle for a society based on justice and solidarity where, among other things, the needs of car owners of the United States and Europe will not be placed above the quality of life and food sovereignty of millions of people,” Camargo stressed.