The Daily Background
| US company charged with hiring right-wing militias to kill pro-union workers
by Arlen Parsa
Recently, I wrote about a situation where Democrats were accusing a coal mining company called Drummound, based in Alabama, of hiring violent right-wing militias to stop workers in Colombia from unionizing. The Colombian government has also accused these right-wing militias of murder and terrorizing workers.
Naturally, Republicans defended Drummound, despite evidence that several companies have hired these right-wing militias, and evidence that Drummound was doing the same. For example, Chiquita, the banana company, paid these right-wing militias $1.7M over a period of years and was caught by the Department of Justice (and subsequently fined $25M).
This is a very serious matter and now since the Department of Justice is apparently unwilling to bring charges against Drummound, a civil suit has begun:
The bus had just left Drummond Co. Inc.’s coal mine carrying about 50 workers when gunmen halted it and forced two union leaders off. They shot one on the spot, pumping four bullets into his head, and dragged the other one off to be tortured and killed.
In a civil trial set to begin Monday before a federal jury in Birmingham, Ala., union lawyers have presented affidavits from two people who allege that Drummond ordered those killings, a charge the company denies.
Multinationals operating in Colombia have admitted paying right-wing militias known as paramilitaries to protect their operations. But human rights activists claim the companies went further, using the fighters to violently keep their labor costs down.
[…]
Three people unaffiliated with the union told The Associated Press that Drummond paid paramilitaries to guard its 25,000-acre La Loma mine and its coal trains against leftist rebel sabotage. They said the company supplied the mercenaries with pickup trucks and motorcycles and routinely fed them and let them gas up on mine property.
This is the most vicious type of union-busting there is: murder and terrorization. “We don’t want American companies to fuel the unacceptable level of violence that exists in Colombia today,” Democratic Representative Bill Delahunt (MA) has said. He’s absolutely right, and the Department of Justice needs to start looking into these allegations– a civil suit is not nearly enough. Said a United Steelworkers lawyer who is involved in the case, “I think they thought they could get away with anything, literally get away with murder.”
This Company has given money to both presidential campaigns in US and Colombian as well as many political party campaigns in the US.
So do you think the families of the murder union leaders will have their say, maybe, but in the end Drummond will cash in on all those political contributions.
Well, we’ll see what happens.