Effect given to the recommendations of the committee and the Governing Body - Report No 343, November 2006

Effect given to the recommendations of the Committee and the Governing Body

1. 59. The Committee last examined this case at its June 2006 meeting [see 342nd Report, para. 83-86]. On that occasion, the Committee requested the Government to keep it informed of the final outcome of the appeal lodged by SINTRAIME against the ruling of the Territorial Directorate of Cundinamarca, which had declared that it was not competent in the matter of the suspected irregularities at the GM Colmotores enterprise. In this respect, the Committee notes the Government’s communication of 8 August 2006, forwarding a communication from SINTRAIME informing it that it was abandoning the complaint in view of an improvement in relations between the trade union and the enterprise, manifested in the recent conclusion of a new collective agreement. The Committee notes this information.
2. 60. With regard to the allegations concerning the murder of Mr. Luis Alberto Toro Colorado, a member of the National Executive Committee of the National Union of Workers in the Weaving, Textiles and Clothing Industry (SINALTRADIHITEXCO), concerning which the Government had informed it of an ongoing investigation by the Attorney-General’s office which had been assigned to the Bello District Criminal Court, the Committee observes that it has not yet received any further information from the Government on the matter and requests it to continue doing everything within its power to establish the identity of the murderers so that they may be duly punished, and to keep it informed of any developments related to the case. Bearing in mind that equally serious allegations are pending before the Committee under Case No. 1787, the Committee will continue its examination of these allegations under that case.
3. 61. The Government sent a communication of 27 June 2006 on matters that had already been examined. For its part, the SINALTRADIHITEXCO sent additional information in a communication of 30 May 2006. That information refers to the unilateral annulment by the Tejicóndor enterprise of the signed collective agreement following its merger with Fabricato. In this regard, the Committee had noted that, according to the Government: (a) the agreement signed by the workers at Tejicóndor enterprise was applied to these workers once Tejicóndor had merged with Fabricato until its expiry date; (b) after that the collective agreement signed between Fabricato and the SINDELHATO trade union, which represented 56 per cent of workers in the company, was extended to them; (c) SINALTRADIHITEXCO had initiated lawsuits in the ordinary courts against the enterprise and SINDELHATO, in which the courts ruled in favour of the enterprise; the ruling was upheld in the Court of Second Instance where it was shown that the agreement concluded with SINDELHATO was much more to the advantage of the workers than that concluded with Tejicóndor; and (d) at present, a new collective agreement signed on 5 April 2005 with SINDELHATO is in force, and will remain so until 4 April 2008. However, in its new communication, the trade union denies the truth of the Government’s assertions. In particular, it denies that the enterprise duly applied the collective agreement that was in force up to 31 July 2003 [see 338th Report, paras. 135-138, in which these matters were examined for the first time], and maintains that in regard to the refusal by the enterprise to bargain with SINALTRADIHITEXCO on the grounds that it is a minority union, its status as a minority union does not date back to 2003, when the collective dispute arose as a result of the refusal, but to 2005, when the Government sent its observations to the Committee. The Committee notes that the Government has not sent its observations on the matter and requests it to do so without delay.