About the Report

Download Report

In December 2012, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) awarded a $1.5 million grant to Colombia’s Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS) to implement the project Strengthening Protections of Internationally Recognized Labor Rights in Colombia (Workers’ Rights Centers) over three years. In 2015, ENS received a one-year extension with an additional $600,000 in funding for a total of $2.1 million.

The project focuses on increasing the awareness of workers’ rights and sustaining the Colombian government’s efforts to strengthen labor rights. As part of the United States–Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (TPA), which went into effect on May 15, 2012, the Colombian government agreed to develop and implement an Action Plan Related to Labor Rights as a precondition for the TPA to take effect. Under the Action Plan, the Colombian government committed to take specific steps to bring Colombian labor laws and practices into greater conformity with internationally recognized labor rights.

ENS believes that the best way to realize the full potential of reforms initiated by the Colombian government is to engage workers and assist them in presenting well-supported claims of workers’ rights violations (WRVs) to the proper administrative or legal authorities. To engage and assist workers, ENS established three Centros de Atención Laboral (CALs) [Workers’ Rights Centers], in Bogotá, Cartagena, and Bucaramanga, and expanded an established CAL in Medellín. Law student interns and volunteers at the CALs provide free legal assistance services to workers to facilitate the effective protection of their rights. These activities are designed to achieve the project’s two main outcomes:

• Outcome 1: Workers, with the assistance of the CALs, will improve their knowledge of and ability to defend their labor rights.
• Outcome 2: Workers will make more frequent and more effective use of the administrative and legal mechanisms to protect their labor rights.

In September 2013, ILAB contracted with IMPAQ International, LLC (IMPAQ) to conduct an independent evaluation of the project under the contract titled ILAB Impact and Implementation Evaluation for Colombia. The report presents the final implementation evaluation of the ILAB Colombia Workers’ Rights Centers project. The report provides an assessment of ENS’s progress toward achieving its objectives, identifies lessons learned from the program strategy, provides feedback to ENS with regard to its achievements, and makes recommendations to ENS and ILAB for future consideration of similar projects.

Key Takeaways

• Researchers assessed that the project has contributed to the immediate goal of assisting workers in their ability to defend their labor rights (Outcome 1) and assisting workers in making more frequent and effective use of the administrative and legal mechanisms to protect their labor rights (Outcome 2).
• Implemented by a non-governmental organization that specializes in workers’ labor rights, the project was designed to assist both independent workers and unionized workers by focusing on three main mechanisms: providing basic legal assistance to workers, documenting and monitoring CAL trends and cases, and using these data to pursue “emblematic cases” (i.e., strategic cases that have the potential to establish new legal precedents or impact a large group of workers). Although the project undertakes significant efforts to collect information in these areas, it did not set measurable targets to evaluate the project’s overall success in reaching its goals and outcomes, thus limiting the extent to which the evaluation team can make specific conclusions in this report.
• The project appears to have been more effective at reaching urban populations than rural populations, which is an unsurprising observation, given that the CAL offices are centrally located in urban areas and open to the general public for most of the year. The level of workers reached in rural areas, however, varies by city.

Citation

Pedersen, S., Paredes, M., Prieto, W., Zapata, D. (2016). IMPAQ International. Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), Department of Labor (DOL) Independent Implementation Evaluation for the Strengthening Protections of Internationally Recognized Labor Rights in Colombia Project: Final Implementation Evaluation Report. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

Download Report

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) sponsors independent evaluations and research, primarily conducted by external, third-party contractors in accordance with the Department of Labor Evaluation Policy and CEO’s research development process.