Solidarity Center Report: Afro-Colombian Labor Council Tackles Discrimination

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Afro-Colombians are far likelier than other Colombian workers to earn less than the minimum wage and to be employed in jobs where they cannot form unions to improve their working conditions. And all of this exclusion “has a strong current of racial discrimination under it,” said Agripina Hurtado (right), the newly elected president of the Afro-Colombian Labor Council (Consejo Labor Afrocolombiano). A quarter of Colombia’s population is Afro-descendant, yet Afro-Colombians comprise more than three-quarters of the country’s poor. Hurtado spoke this week at the Solidarity Center. Read more at the Solidarity Center. - photo Hurtado discusses the goals of the new Afro-Colombian Labor Council; photo by Tula Connell