Reply #44: Nestle, like Chiquita, and Drummond Coal of Alabama, hired paramilitaries to kill union workers [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Murder in Colombia Prompts Group to Sue Nestle Units in Miami
Miami Herald

October 28, 2006

» View nestlesuit_miamiherald_102806.pdf

The widow of a brutally murdered Nestlé worker joins others in a lawsuit against the firm over her
husband's death.
BY JANE BUSSEY
[e-mail]

Colombian trade unionist Luciano Enrique Romero died a slow death. The fired Nestlé factory worker, whose body was found in a paramilitary-controlled area of Colombia a year ago, was tied up, tortured and then stabbed 40 times.

Now Romero's widow, Colombian labor union SINALTRAINAL and the Washington-based International Labor Rights Fund have filed a lawsuit in Miami charging Nestlé USA and Nestlé of Colombia with complicity in his death.

Nestlé USA, headquartered in Glendale, Calif., said in response to questions Friday: ''We have not been served with a copy of the lawsuit, and therefore we have no comment at this time.'' The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Switzerland-based Nestlé SA, the largest food and beverage company in the world.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court, charges that Romero was killed by members of Colombia's paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces because the union leader helped expose Nestlé's use of expired milk in its Milo brand drink. The Colombian government later confirmed the 2001 allegations, the lawsuit said.

Nestlé operated in complicity with the paramilitary; plant managers met openly with them inside the factory in Valledupar, in northern Colombia, the lawsuit said.

In October 2002, Nestlé fired Romero, a 20-year veteran. Romero also received numerous death threats, and two years ago he fled to Spain, where the Organization of American States International Committee on Human Rights placed him under a protection program.

More:
http://www.laborrights.org/end-violence-against-trade-unions/colombia/969

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sounds as if both companies, Parmalat and Nestle, just like American-based multinationals see Latin America as one huge area to plunder, and use slave-wage laborers to do their work for them in the process.

(I have had to look for excerpts in tiny windows of time as I've been tied up elsewhere in my life. I can easily add more material when time permits, if I feel it's needed. These articles by no means should be seen as representing what is available: they are merely what I grabbed when I only had a few seconds to come up with something. This is often the case, unfortunately, for a lot of us who have to work in time here around our responsibilities in our immediate lives.)