Labor leader: a perilous job
A U.S. business will face claims it had a role in the deaths of Colombian unionists.
By DAVID ADAMS
Published July 6, 2007
VALLEDUPAR, Colombia - When Stevenson Avila goes to work, he says a prayer and tucks a pistol in his belt.
He walks out the door escorted by two state security agents toting Uzi submachine guns.
Avila has one of the most dangerous jobs in one of the world's most dangerous countries.
As president of a local trade union in northern Colombia, he represents more than 2, 000 miners in coal-rich Cesar state. Most work at the Pribbenow open pit coal mine, owned by Alabama-based Drummond Co.
Three union leaders, including two previous presidents of his local, were assassinated by masked gunmen in 2001 on their way home from the Pribbenow mine. Monday, a federal court in Birmingham, Ala., will hear a landmark case to decide if Drummond bears any responsibility for the three deaths.
The lawsuit, brought by the United Steelworkers International Union, accuses Drummond of paying paramilitary hit men to carry out the killings as part of an alleged campaign to break the union.
"We think it's a very strong case, " said United Steelworkers attorney, Dan Kovalik. "We have a number of witnesses who can directly link Drummond to the paramilitaries who killed the three leaders."
Drummond denies any involvement in the killings. But the secrets emerging as paramilitary fighters confess their crimes under an unfolding peace process are fueling an intense debate in the U.S. Congress over Colombia's human rights record that could derail a free-trade treaty between the two countries.
"We now know that major companies working in Colombia paid 'taxes' to the paramilitary, as well as the left-wing guerrillas, " said Gustavo Duncan, author of Los Senores de la Guerra, a detailed history of paramilitarism in Colombia.
"The question is what this money was used for. Was it just extortion, or did these companies enjoy a closer relationship with the paramilitaries and use their influence to kill workers and break the unions?"
'Hurts your soul'
Drummond's Pribbenow operation covers 25, 000 acres outside La Loma de Calenturas, a dusty town in the sweltering lowlands east of the Andean foothills.
Each morning tired miners pile out of company buses just off the town square where peasants bring their produce to market by mule. Before they go home, miners get breakfast in a company cafeteria. Barefoot children wait outside to beg for leftovers.
When Pribbenow opened in 1995 miners flocked to the American company, attracted by salaries of about 1-million pesos ($500) per month - twice the minimum wage.
But complaints about harsh work conditions - long 12-hour shifts, abusive treatment by supervisors and safety and health issues - led to a rapid rise in union membership. Hernias went untreated and company doctors systematically denied medical claims, miners say. Today, roughly half the work force is unionized, 10 times the national average.
Before going to work for Drummond four years ago, Stevenson Avila, 45, says he had never joined a union.
"The only thing I belonged to before was a prayer group, " he said. His family and friends were surprised. "I told them you have to see the conditions inside the mine to understand. It hurts your soul to watch the inhuman treatment that goes on there."
Cost of doing business
Drummond's biggest problem after Pribbenow opened was the left-wing guerrillas fighting a decades-long conflict with the state who routinely sabotaged a rail line carrying coal 120 miles north to the company's port.
Business leaders have long accused the unions of being fronts for the guerrillas. Union leaders admit that in the 1960s and '70s links between the guerrillas and unions were close. That changed in the 1980s, union leaders say, when unions became more independent.
For many companies, paying protection money to guerrillas or paramilitaries was the price for staying in business, experts say. The government's lack of military control in rural areas gave them little choice, they argued.
"The paramilitaries were like murderous Pinkertons, " said Adam Isacson, a Colombia expert at the Center for International Policy. "It was so accepted and so common that no one bothered to investigate or punish it."
In February, the Cincinnati-based banana company Chiquita Brands International pleaded guilty to charges it made payments to right-wing paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia in a criminal case brought by the U.S. Justice Department. Chiquita agreed to a $25-million settlement.
Chiquita says it made the payments to protect its workers. Unlike Drummond, Chiquita has not been accused of directly ordering killings.
Thousands murdered
One evening in March 2001, masked paramilitary gunmen stopped the bus carrying union president Valmore Locarno and his deputy, Victor Orcasita, home from La Loma.
"The paramilitaries boarded the bus and asked for Locarno and Orcasita by name, saying that these two had a problem with Drummond, " according to court documents.
At the time, Locarno, 38, and Orcasita, 37, were in contract talks with Drummond over wages and workplace safety.
Locarno was shot immediately. Orcasita's tortured body was found later by the side of the road, a bullet in his head and his teeth knocked out.
Seven months later, farmers found the body of Locarno's successor, Gustavo Soler, 36. He had been shot twice in the head. He was the fifth union activist at Pribbenow slain that year.
Security has improved under the government of President Alvaro Uribe. The Colombian justice department has opened a number of investigations into union murders. The Pribbenow case is one of them, though no arrests have been made.
Colombia remains the most dangerous country for union organizing, say experts. About 4, 000 union leaders have been assassinated since 1986, according to the U.S. State Department.
"Do they still kill unionists in Colombia? Unfortunately, yes, " said Carlos Franco, the government's top human rights official. "But today we can show that they kill fewer unionists, and many who are killed aren't killed because of their work."
Free trade at risk
One key witness, former state security official Rafael Garcia, says he was present when Augusto Jimenez, the president of Drummond's Colombia operations, delivered a suitcase with $200, 000 cash to a representative of paramilitary warlord Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias Jorge 40, as payment for the murder of the union leaders.
A former paramilitary, Edwin Guzman, testified before a congressional panel last week that a commander told him that paramilitaries killed Locarno and Orcasita. He said paramilitaries and the Colombian army agreed that the miners union "represented a subversive organization and consequently a legitimate military target."
In sworn testimony Drummond's CEO, Garry Drummond, says that he gave "firm instructions" that the company would not deal with paramilitaries or other illegal groups in Colombia.
Other witnesses say they saw paramilitary fighters eat in Drummond's cafeteria and fill their vehicles at Drummond's gas tanks. Paramilitaries patrolled company property and the railroad to the port, the union says.
That kind of evidence could doom Drummond in court. It could also sink free trade with Colombia. President Uribe has fought hard to save the trade agreement, visiting Washington several times to lobby Congress.
But his efforts have run into tough opposition from U.S. unions, human rights groups and members of Congress.
"Colombia's atrocious human rights record sets it apart from the rest of the world, " AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said in May after meeting Uribe.
"There is no labor language that could be inserted into the U.S.-Colombia FTA (Free Trade Agreement) that could adequately address the extraordinary - and unpunished - violence confronting trade unionists in that country."
Another one gone
On June 19 another miner in Valledupar, Julio Calvo, 49, was shot twice in the back after leaving home to catch a bus to work at 2:45 a.m. He managed to stagger two blocks before he collapsed in the street and died.
David Adams can be reached at dadams@sptimes.com.Fast Facts:
Unions in Colombia
Union membership in Colombia has been in steady decline in recent years. According to the Colombia's National Labor College, which analyzes union data, there were 2, 357 unions registered in the country at the end of last year with 830, 099 members. This represents less than 5 percent of the labor force. In the United States, unions represent approximately 13 percent of the work force. "Violence against union members and antiunion discrimination remained obstacles to joining unions and engaging in trade union activities, " the U.S. State Department reported last year. Union leaders complain that perpetrators of violence against workers operated with near impunity. The government admits that less than 4 percent of cases involving unionists are brought to trial. The government has increased its protection for trade union leaders, providing security for 19 union headquarters and residences in 2006, as well as more than 1, 200 trade unionists. According to the Ministry of Social Protection, 25 trade unionists, nine of whom were union leaders, were killed last year, compared with 13 in 2005. Labor groups cite a higher figure of 37 dead unionists.
For more information on violence against trade unionists read the recent report by Amnesty International: www.amnesty.org