Colombia - Anti-union practices at La Cabaña sugar mill (2013)

La Cabaña sugar mill refused to formalise its employment relationship with its workers by continuing to hire them through intermediaries. It also refused to recognise the branch union of the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria Agropecuaria (Sintrainagro) and to discuss the collective bargaining proposal submitted by the union in December 2012. Threats were also made against workers and their families. On 3 January 2013, La Cabaña dismissed 86 workers, including the members of the union’s executive board. Workers affiliated to the union received threats and, on 28 January, trade union activist Juan Carlos Pérez Muñoz was murdered in the municipality of Corinto, in Cauca. In March 2013, some 400 sugarcane workers affiliated to Sintrainagro declared a strike at La Cabaña.