Injured GM workers on hunger strike in Colombia
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
At a General Motors auto plant in Bogotá, Colombia, workers
enter whole, and leave disabled. John Walsh, a Portland printer and
local union officer, wants GM to take responsibility.
The cause of the workers disabled at GM subsidiary Colmotores
received international attention in August, when outside the U.S. em-
bassy in Bogotá a dozen of them declared a hunger strike, and seven
sewed their own mouths shut with surgical thread. That spurred
union activists around the United States to take action, especially be-
cause it shows the connection between workers in the United States
and Colombia now that the two nations are joined by a NAFTA-style
trade deal.
But the story doesn’t start or end outside the embassy. It begins
years before.
Jorge Parra, 36, walks with a cane. He can’t bend or squat easily,
nor lift or push. Screws in his spine help him stand, but he says his
condition is getting worse.
When he went to work at GM in 2001, Parra was given a com-
prehensive physical, which declared him to be in good health. He
was hired for the equivalent of $1,050 a month as welder at a GM as-
sembly line making Chevrolet cars and trucks for sale in Colombia.
But nine years of that work — which required him to move heavy
welding guns suspended from rails above the assembly line — took
a toll of pain in his back, shoulders and hands. In 2010, he com-
plained, and went to the medical center GM had set up for workers.
Doctors gave him injections of painkillers and sent him back to work.
Then one day near the end of his shift, Parra found himself unable
to move. The plant’s doctors referred him to a private outside clinic,
where he was told he had carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands, ten-
dinitis in his shoulders and elbows, and a severely herniated disc that
required an immediate operation. A second surgery followed. Doc-
tors put screws in his back to hold his spine together and another in
his wrist. GM terminated Parra Nov. 29, 2010, as he recovered from
the surgery.
But Parra fought back. Under Colombian law, the labor ministry
has to authorize such a firing, and they had not done so. Parra won re-
instatement. He soon found other workers with the same problems
— dozens of co-workers, some as young as 28, had been dismissed
after developing herniated discs and shoulder and hand problems.
Parra faults the assembly line’s fast pace — and the requirement that
workers move too-heavy equipment.
Parra formed a group, ASOTRECOL, to protest unsafe working
conditions. (The name is a Spanish-language acronym for Associa-
tion of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of GM Colombia.) In re-
sponse, GM made improvements at the plant, rotating workers into
different jobs, and installing robots to do the welding work Parra
once did. But Parra was branded as a troublemaker and fired again on
July 29, 2011, on accusation that he had instigated his co-workers to
take actions against GM.
Jorge Parra, injured on the job at a GM auto plant worker in
Colombia, sewed his lips shut in a hunger strike to demand
reinstatement.
Three days later, he and 67 other injured workers began a 24-
hour-a-day protest outside the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, demanding
compensation and reinstatement with retraining for jobs they’re
physically capable of performing. They asked the U.S. government
to intervene, because they considered the U.S. government to be part
owner of GM.
Workers had another reason to choose the embassy: safety.
Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for labor union
activists, with nearly 2,700 slain in the last two decades. Parra says he
was threatened and followed. He complained to authorities, who au-
thorized police protection, but the police didn’t provide it. Outside
the embassy, on the other hand, videocameras and police keep a 24-
hour vigil. For protesters to be murdered within view of the U.S. em-
bassy would be a scandal for GM and the Colombian government,
which was especially sensitive to human rights concerns at a time
when the free trade agreement was before Congress.
It was that trade agreement that brought Portland resident John
Walsh to Colombia. Walsh works graveyard shift in the Graphic Arts
Center’s Northwest Portland bindery, and serves as shop steward,
executive board member, and regional vice president at 514-member
Local 767M of the Teamsters Graphic Communications Conference.
U.S. unions fought to oppose the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agree-
ment, and Walsh wanted to see for himself the country the United
States would be partnering with. He took part in a trip organized by
the group Witness for Peace, and then in 2011, organized a delega-
tion of trade unionists which met Parra and the other protesters out-
side the embassy.
On their return to the United States, Walsh and other labor ac-
tivists worked to publicize the cause. With help from AFL-CIO Sol-
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idarity Center, United Auto Workers (UAW) and Labor Notes mag-
azine invited Parra to attend a May 2012 conference in Michigan.
The United States denied his visa, until U.S. Rep. Sander Levin (D-
Michigan) stepped in. Parra was able to tell his story at the confer-
ence and meet UAW President Bob King.
Parra returned to Bogotá, but outside the embassy, the protest was
dwindling. GM had not agreed to meet. With the 24-hour-a-day
protest turning one-year old, Parra and 11 others declared a hunger
strike and sewed their mouths shut — both as proof they would not
be eating and as a symbol that no one had listened to them in more
than a year of protest outside the embassy.
That act — on video — got GM’s attention. Twenty-two days
into the hunger strike, GM agreed to negotiate. Several GM execu-
tives flew to Bogotá, joined by three representatives of the UAW and,
at the insistence of the hunger strikers, mediators from the U.S. gov-
ernment’s Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which medi-
ates private sector labor agreements in the United States.
GM insisted that the mediation pertain only to the 12 workers
who’d engaged in the hunger strike, not all 68 who remained outside
the embassy. The mediated talks took place in a hotel. GM executives
refused to meet the hunger strikers face to face, “as if we workers
were terrorists or guerrillas,” Parra told the Labor Press in Spanish.
Mediators shuttled between the GM execs and the hunger strikers
three stories below, cordoned off by security.
GM’s offer was $6,000 to each hunger striker — to set them up in
small businesses that would have no connection to GM, an amount
later upped to $30,000. But the hunger strikers stuck to their de-
mands: back wages, return to jobs at the plant suitable for their phys-
ical limitations, and the right of workers at the plant to form a union.
On Aug. 31, after three and a half days, talks ended with no resolu-
tion.
The protest recommenced outside the embassy, and Parra flew to
the United States with the help of U.S. activists to seek a meeting
with GM corporate higher-ups. For weeks he stayed with Walsh in
Portland while others tried to arrange a meeting with GM in Detroit.
Parra visited the Northwest Oregon Labor Council Oct. 22, and met
with the Oregon AFL-CIO and with staff at local Congressional of-
fices.
Weeks later, with GM still refusing to meet, Parra flew to Detroit
Nov. 15 to make the case in person. On Nov. 21, Parra — together
with Melvin Thompson, former president of UAW Local 140 — de-
clared a renewed hunger strike. Eight others in Bogotá also renewed
the hunger strike. On Nov. 28, Parra took part in a protest outside
GM’s world headquarters. On Nov. 30, Parra and the other Colom-
bians sewed their lips shut once again. They say they will not lift the
hunger strike until there is a final and just resolution.
HOW TO HELP: At asotrecol.com, an online donation portal
sponsored by the Wellspring United Church of Christ in Centreville,
Virginia, makes it possible for supporters to make donations to sup-
port the families of the hunger strikers.
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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