PITTSBURGH, Penn. — The United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and the International Labor Rights Fund filed suit on July 20, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Miami) against Coke and Panamerican Beverages, Inc., the primary bottler of Coke products in Latin America. Additional defendants include owners of a bottling plant in Colombia where trade union leaders have been murdered.
The case was initiated by SINALTRAINAL, the union that represents workers at Coke facilities in Colombia. SINALTRAINAL has long maintained that Coke is among the most notorious employers in Colombia and that the company maintains open relations with murderous death squads as part of a program to intimidate trade union leaders.
Colombia holds the terrible distinction of being ranked number one in the world for the number of trade union leaders murdered each year. The suit alleges that Coke plays a key role in maintaining that distinction. Other Plaintiffs include the Estate of Isidro Segundo Gil, a trade union leader who was murdered while working at the Coke bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia. The suit alleges that the manager of that facility, owned by an American, Richard Kirby, who is also a defendant in this case, specifically threatened to kill the leaders of the union if they continued their union activities, and that he made good on the threat and ordered the murder of Mr. Gil.
The other Plaintiffs are Luis Eduardo Garcia, Alvaro Gonzalez, Jose Domingo Flores, Jorge Humberto Leal and Juan Carlos Galvis, all leaders of SINALTRAINAL, who, while employed by Coke, were allegedly subjected to torture, kidnapping, and/or unlawful detention in order to intimidate them into ceasing their trade union activities. These Plaintiffs allege that Coke employees either ordered the violence directly, or delegated the job to paramilitary death squads that were acting as agents for Coke.
”This case is extremely important for trade union and human rights,” said Steelworkers President Leo Gerard. “If we can’t get Coke, one of the best known companies in the world, to protect the lives and human rights of the workers at its world-wide bottling facilities, then we certainly have a long way to go in making the global economy safe for trade unionists.
”While the offenses detailed in the Complaint occurred in an industry outside the Steelworkers’ core jurisdiction,” he added, “we are filing this case to show our solidarity with the embattled trade unions of Colombia. We absolutely must stand together to stop such criminal activity against our union brothers and sisters, regardless of where or in what industry it occurs.”
The case is based on the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), a law passed by Congress in 1789 aimed at protecting the new nation’s international reputation by enabling non-citizens to use federal courts to hold Americans accountable for violations of international law. A copy of the Complaint will be available at www.laborrights.org