Lawsuit Charges Coca-Cola with Complicity in Attacks on Colombian Union Activists

Interview with Terry Collingsworth, executive director of the International Labor Rights Fund, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

Trade unionists who organize in Colombia are the target of more violent attacks than in any other nation in the world. Four thousand union members have been murdered in the past 15 years, mostly by the country's right wing paramilitary organizations.

The International Labor Rights Fund, based in Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit against the Atlanta-based Coca Cola company, charging that it is complicit in the violence against workers at its bottling plants in Colombia.

Last week, a judge in Miami dismissed the lawsuit against Coke, but allowed the continuation of lawsuits against two bottlers in Colombia affiliated with Coca Cola that plaintiffs allege used paramilitary groups to assassinate and intimidate union leaders.

Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Terry Collingsworth, executive director of the International Labor Rights Fund, and an attorney who is representing seven targeted unionists and the family of one union leader who was killed inside the bottling plant where he worked. Collingsworth discusses the goals of the lawsuit, as well as what his organization and the bottlers union is up against in going after Coke.

For more information, contact the International Labor Rights Fund at (202) 347-4100 or visit their Web site at www.laborrights.org

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