Luc Cortebeeck, the president of the Belgian trade union confederation CSC and the workers' group spokesperson within the ILC Committee on the Application of Standards (CAS), stated that this agreement represents "the fruit of twenty years' work by trade unions within the ILO".
It, in fact, means that the government will not have to be called to appear before the CAS this year. The Committee on the Application of Standards, a key legal body of the ILO, has been examining the case of Colombia without interruption for almost twenty years.
On addressing the Committee following its welcome of the agreement, Cortebeeck said that it should serve as "an inspiring example of the possibilities offered by the ILO and by social dialogue in general, and, in particular, the ILO missions in the countries concerned".
Ed Potter, the employers'spokesperson within the CAS said that the agreement "shows there is a better alternative to the discussions within the Standards Committee, that is, tripartite agreements". Potter called on the countries that have avoided being called before the CAS this year to resolve their problems by means of such agreements.
Both Cortebeeck and Potter had taken part in a high-level tripartite mission of the ILO, which visited Colombia in October 2005 in the wake of a last minute compromise reached by the Standards Committee during the previous International Labour Conference. The tripartite mission was closely followed by Colombian and international trade unions. The ICFTU and the World Confederation of Labour had sent observers to accompany this unprecedented ILO mission.
The Colombian trade unions expressed their view that the permanent monitoring to be carried out by the ILO was extremely important and that they expected "significant progress to result from the implementation of this agreement".
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
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