Oscar Lopez Trevino was killed by paramilitaries in Colombia

Striking Nestle worker and union organizer Oscar López Triviño was shot by multiple paramilitaries in Colombia last month. For years Colombia has been considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for trade unionists, with 3,000 killed since the mid-1980s.

Two years after a major free-trade agreement was signed between the United States and Colombia, a key roadmap aimed at cleaning up the latter’s atrocious labor practices is failing on the ground, two members of the U.S. House of Representatives warned recently.

Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and James McGovern (D-Mass.), both members of a congressional oversight committee on the issue, recently returned from a fact-finding mission in Colombia aimed at gauging how things had changed for workers and organized labor. But in a report released Tuesday, they warn that reforms have had little impact thus far.

“The Government of Colombia has fallen woefully short of fulfilling its obligations … Many of those who testified before the delegation reported that conditions have worsened since the implementation of the U.S.-Colombia [free trade agreement],” the report states.

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