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<DIV class=subheadlinestyle><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt" size=3><STRONG>Global
Capital's Death Squads and Night-Riders</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<H1 class=article-title><FONT size=3>They Are Still Killing Trade Union
Leaders</FONT></H1>
<DIV class=mainauthorstyle><FONT size=3><STRONG>by DAVID
MACARAY</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=main-text><FONT size=3><STRONG>Make no mistake. We had some ugly
anti-labor mischief of our own during the late 19<SUP>th</SUP> and early
20<SUP>th</SUP> centuries, where union organizers, political radicals, suspected
anarchists and Bolsheviks were blackballed, beaten, imprisoned, deported,
murdered, and state-executed—all in the name of “law and order.” But while many
of these men (and women, too….they deported Emma Goldman to Russia) were clearly
railroaded, at least the high-profile figures were given the semblance of a jury
trial.<BR>Question: So what happens these days in developing countries when a
prominent, charismatic union activist—with the courage to stand up to sinister,
government-supported business groups who have, on more than one occasion,
already threatened his life—attempts to get the country’s underpaid,
under-benefited workers to join a labor union? Answer: They kill him.<BR>It was
reported Monday, April 9, that the body of Aminul Islam, the charismatic and
widely respected union leader of Bangladesh’s garment industry, had been found
(on Friday, April 6) dumped along side a road in Ghatail, a town approximately
60 miles northwest of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital. Not only had Islam been
murdered, local police reported that the corpse bore evidence of “severe”
torture.<BR>Since 2006, Aminul Islam had been a major thorn in the side of the
garment bosses, as he fought for higher wages, safer working conditions, and
increased employee dignity. Many Bangladeshis work 12-14 hour days, make as
little as 21-cents per hour, and don’t even get regular breaks. With a reported
$19 billion in overseas sales in 2011, Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest
apparel exporter. The stakes are enormously high. With an estimated 5,000
factories cranking out fabric night and day, the textile industry is
single-handedly keeping Bangladesh’s economy afloat. Which is why they were so
frightened of Aminul Islam.<BR>Most recently, Islam had been trying to organize
workers at factories owned by a company called the Shanta Group. According to
shipping records, Shanta produces garments for many well-known American
companies, including Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, and Ralph Lauren. Because Islam’s
activism was acknowledged to have been largely responsible for worker uprisings
and demonstrations in 2010—demonstrations that nearly crippled the
industry—business groups weren’t going to stand idly by and watch him convince
Shanta’s 8,000 workers to join the union. They weren’t going to allow it. So
they killed him.<BR>Mind you, these atrocities aren’t happening only in faraway
Bangladesh; they are happening in our own hemisphere as well—in Central and
South America. In fact, the place where they have occurred the most—and continue
to occur with chilling regularity—is Colombia. According to the Solidarity
Center (the labor federation’s international arm, headquarted in Washington
D.C.), nearly 4,000 Colombian trade unionists have been murdered over the last
20 years. Indeed, more trade unionists are killed in Colombia each year than in
the rest of the world combined.<BR>The United States supports the government of
Colombia. We support this anti-labor government that gives lip service to
initiating programs designed to stop the violence, but who, in truth, has done
little to prevent death squads and night-riders from tooling around the country
murdering trade unionists.<BR>And that’s where the arrangement now stands. Our
clothing is made by workers whose factory conditions are deplorable; our produce
is harvested by pickers whose field conditions are deplorable; and our
government supports regimes whose human rights records are a joke. The U.S. has
more than 800 military bases strewn around the word, we spend more money on
defense than the rest of the world <EM>combined</EM>, and Barack Obama is
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s a very weird
trifecta.<BR><EM><EM><EM><EM><EM><EM><EM><EM>DAVID MACARAY</EM><EM>, an LA
playwright and author (“It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor”), was a
former union rep. He is a contributor to </EM></EM><EM><EM><A href="">Hopeless:
Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion</A>, forthcoming from AK Press. He can
be reached at <A
href="">dmacaray@earthlink.net</A></EM></EM></EM></EM></EM></EM></EM></EM><BR></STRONG></FONT></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>