News

Colombia Kimberly Colpapel S.A., a Colombian company that manufactures high quality paper, decided to unilaterally withdraw the collective agreement’s benefits from all Tocancipá Cundinamarca plant workers who had joined the local sub-branch of SINTRAPULCAR union on April 20.



The company, which was born from the partnering between Colpapel SA and the multinational Kimberly-Clark, renewed the collective agreemenet on March 21 with all of its employees, as it has been doing for the past 18 years. The decision not to renew the agreement produced inequality between unionised and non-unionised workers, given that until today unionised workers do not have a collective agreement. Faced with this situation, unionised workers decided to demand actions against the company, requesting protection of the right to equality and freedom of association and unionisation.



On July 30 this year, a judge ruled in favour of 4 workers, forcing the company to restore all the benefits and extra legal advantages of the collective agreement signed in March, until the coming into force of a collective agreement with unionised workers. The judge's ruling was based on the fact that collective agreements cannot be used to affect fundamental rights of workers and unions; supported by the Constitutional Court decree T-201 of 1996, and explained in the ruling that "it affects the right to equality when the collective agreement contains working condition provisions for non-unionised workers which are different than those provided for unionised workers.”



The judge added that "the factual circumstances do not justify from the point of view of their difference, rationality, reason and purpose a different treatment" and states that "it violates the right to association, because the aforementioned differences in working conditions foster workers to leave the union, resulting in a union that was once majority to become minority, with the corresponding legal consequences and maybe even disappear.”



The judge concluded by stating that for companies with unionised and non-unionised workers, the employer must provide equal working relationships to ensure the right to equality and freedom of association. In this particular case, inequality is clearly seen in the working conditions of non-unionised workers; the immediate effect is that the person feels they will lose their labour rights if they join a union, but it also affects those workers who have thought or wanted to join a union and decide not to because doing so would immediately affect their earnings. The judge concluded that Colombia Kimberly Colpapel SA failed to meet constitutional mandates developed in various rulings of the Constitutional Court, thus a violation of fundamental rights of equality and freedom of association.