Colombia Eliminates Public Postal Service

UNI: Regional Office to the Americas

At 6.30 p.m. on August 25, 2006, the President of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, hit hard again on the Colombian trade union movement. At that exact time, through an executive order, he made public that he will wind up the Administración Postal Nacional (National Postal Administration - Adpostal), a public service institution created over a century ago.

At that same time, the police arrived at Adpostal facilities and forced the workers to leave the place. Then, all Adpostal offices throughout the country were sealed off. The liquidation of ADPOSTAL means that its 935 employees will be rendered jobless. There are seven persons with disabilities and some pregnant women among them. Adpostal was created in 1963 under the aegis of the Ministry of Communications. Until 1994, the company handled 80% of the correspondence market but at present, as a consequence of privatization and competition in public services, it only has 20%.

Of a total of 800 postal service companies, only half seem to be operating legally. Adpostal used to be the exclusive correspondence operator for state companies and institutions, but as time went by, contracts were awarded to private operators under different excuses. In addition, the recent past administrations resorted to subcontracting, and this brought about poor service quality-a good excuse to promote competition and pave the way for privatization.

The Colombian government has justified its decision by claiming that Adpostal has pension liabilities totaling 700 billion pesos and that since 2001 it has posted a negative net worth. The same argument had been used to privatize Telecom, Caja Agraria, ECOPETROL and other state-run institutions that today are privately owned. After the wind-up, the workload will be taken over by Servicios Postales Nacionales (National Postal Services - SPN), an Adpostal subsidiary which, curiously enough, was created last year with the purpose of doing complementary activities to those of the mother company.

In light of this hard blow on such a large group of workers, numerous members of Sintrapostal, an organization affiliated to Union Network International (UNI), have made their voice heard through a strong statement addressed to President Álvaro Uribe in which UNI-Americas Regional Secretary Rodolfo Benítez said, "It is clear that in Colombia, just like in other countries in the region, government policies are aimed at transferring the basic responsibilities of the State to private individuals through various mechanisms, such as restructuring, company name changes, mergers, winding-up and divestiture, which in the long run are nothing but camouflaged privatizations used to justify the layoff of workers while destroying trade unions and collective bargaining agreements." Furthermore, CUT-Colombia, the Colombian unified trade union center, has publicly stated that "Only by uniting to build a strong front of people affected by neoliberal policies will Colombians be able to prevent the approval of the FTA and reaffirm sovereignty and democracy."

For more information, please contact rodolfo.benitez@union-network.org