Colombia’s labor unions and social organizations announce national strike on May 28 and 29 – Colombia News

Colombia’s labor unions and an array of social organizations announced a 48-hour national strike seeking congressional support for the main reform proposals of President Gustavo Petro.

The strike will be seeking popular support to shut down Colombia on May 28 and 29, and for at least 24 hours on June 11 in an attempt t0 force the Senate to approve a referendum on labor and healthcare reforms, Fabio Arias, the president of labor union CUT, told hundreds of social leaders at a summit in Bogota.

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The so-called Social, Popular and Social Summit was attended by Labor Minister Antonio Sanguino, who formally filed the government’s second referendum immediately after the meeting at the Pedagogical University.

Student activists, the main force behind national strikes that all but shut down Colombia in 2019 and 2021, barely took part in Monday’s summit.

Some of the young people who did attend the summit urged the strike organizers to involve student organizations and to add the release from prison of the young people who were arrested in 2021 as a strike demand.

The involvement of students was no priority in the action list presented by the newly founded strike organization committee after the summit.

What was immediately made a priority was a grassroots propaganda campaign to mobilize family, friends and neighbors.

Strike committee’s list of actions

• Propaganda campaign to inform the people on the strike, and to educate families and friends on the oligarchy
• Community councils and support committees in support of referendum
• Provincial and municipal assemblies to coordinate the strike
• Assemblies of the union, social, popular and political organizations to mobilize their bases
• Neighborhood committees for cultural and propaganda purposes
• National poster campaign to denounce the political and business elites opposing Petro’s reforms
• National strike on May 28 and 29
• Noise protests with pots and pans
• Rural caravans to occupy the cities of Bogota, Medellin, Cali and Barranquilla on June 11.

Ahead of the call for a strike, the president had already ordered the security forces not to intervene in protests and strikes in support of his government.

More than 70 people were killed, mainly by the security forces, in an attempt to violently repress the national strike in 2021.