Julio Roberto Gómez, the CGT’s top union leader, died of covid-19

According to reports from the press office of the CGT, General Confederation of Workers, Julio Roberto Gomez, leader of said union, He died on January 26, 2020, after reporting complications related to comorbidities such as diabetes and having a critical picture of covid-19.

The place of his death was the Cafam Calle 93 Clinic where he was hospitalized since December 27, after being admitted for the virus. Gómez accessed an intensive care unit, ICU, where he began the pertinent treatment for his health condition.

The union leader was diagnosed positive for covid-19 in previous days, however he kept his virtual chair in the Concertation Commission to negotiate the increase in the minimum wage for 2021.

At the time of admission, both the CGT and his family, asked the affiliates of the labor union to raise their prayers for Gómez, who was in critical condition.

Despite an improvement in his condition, in recent days he was again referred to the ICU with the aggravation of a comorbidity that, in the end, cost his life: diabetes.

This was Julio Roberto Gómez, the visible face of the CGT

Born in 1951 in Cachipay, Cundinamarca, Gómez built a 40-year career in Colombian unionism as the top leader of the CGT (General Confederation of Labor), the oldest in Colombia.

Its beginning, like that of so many young people in the sixties, was marked by Liberation Theology and the presence of Camilo Torres, the so-called ‘Cura Guerrillero’, one of the founders of the ELN guerrilla.

Gómez, a seminarian by training, soon drifted from ideological romanticism to union commitment. From the age of 17, as a typographer, he affirmed his commitment to workers’ struggles.

In the CGT he consolidated a career that turned 30 years old; In this union he was his visible face in the negotiating tables for the minimum wage, as well as he tried a failed political career when, precisely, he launched himself into the National Constituent Assembly, an entity that he could not enter after being ‘burned’ by five thousand votes .

With a great presence in the media, the late president of the CGT managed to be a fundamental part of the discussions about the ‘minimum’ in Colombia; For years he was the representative of the confederation in international positions such as the presidency of the Central Latin American and Caribbean Workers’ Organization, an organization with a representation of 20 million workers, which was later integrated into the International Trade Union Confederation; in 2008, he was deputy president of the Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores de las Américas, CSA.

He will also be remembered for his political alliances, which gave us something to talk about at the time: in the first government of former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the CGT aligned itself with the president regarding certain of his strategic purposes, which promoted discussions within of left-wing parties for the role of the CGT in Colombian politics.

With the departure of Julio Roberto Gomez a stage of Colombian unionism concludes.

Reactions

In the early hours of January 26, Colombian political figures as well as the trade union movement expressed their condolences to the family of Julio Roberto Gómez.

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