GMB and Unite members employed at Nestlé in Britain have called on the company to address allegations of anti-union practices and labour rights violations in Colombia.
It comes in response to accusations made by the Colombian trade union SINALTRAINAL, which represents food sector workers. Around 1,800 of the union’s roughly 5,000 members are employed by Nestlé and based at four plants around the country: Bugalagrande (Valle del Cauca), Dosquebradas (Risaralda), Mosquera (Cundinamarca) and Valledupar (Cesar). A fifth plant in Florencia (Caquetá) was closed in 2023 with most workers there uncompensated.
In a letter addressed to Nestlé executives, including the CEO, Laurent Freixe, and its top official in Colombia, Felipe González, the Nestlé UK National Forum Trade Union Reps, formed of GMB and Unite members, addressed SINALTRAINAL’s complaints. These include, according to the Colombian union, ‘serious violations of labour and human rights’, particularly at the plant in Bugalagrande. A SINALTRAINAL statement said that ‘the labour situation in [Nestlé’s] plants has deteriorated severely, putting at risk the health, dignity and labour, human and fundamental rights of workers, as well as systematically attacking the trade union organisation SINALTRAINAL’.
The GMB and Unite letter details issues such as alleged targeting of sick or injured workers for dismissal, intimidation and the unfair dismissal of 90 workers from the Florencia plant in 2023 and another 12 from the Bugalagrande plant in January this year. The British unions called on Nestlé to ‘take immediate steps to guarantee safety in the workplace, to launch a transparent investigation into alleged labour rights violations and to reinstate all workers dismissed unfairly’.
Nestlé has long faced accusations of labour rights abuses at its operations in Colombia, while trade unionists employed at the company have faced violence. At least 12 unionised Nestlé employees have been killed since 1985.
In 2005, a Colombian judge ordered an investigation into possible Nestlé relationships with paramilitary groups following the conviction of two paramilitaries for the murder of SINALTRAINAL member Luciano Romero. At the time of his killing, Luciano was preparing to testify over alleged links between paramilitary groups and Nestlé’s Colombian subsidiary Cicolac. An investigation began – but soon ended without reaching any conclusions – into whether Cicolac officials had deliberately smeared Luciano as a member of guerrilla groups.
In 2012, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) filed a criminal complaint against Nestlé in Switzerland over Luciano Romero’s murder, arguing that the company was aware that the smears against him and the involvement of paramilitary groups with Cicolac suppliers and officials represented a major threat against his life. However, the case was eventually dismissed on statute of limitations. In 2015, the ECCHR brought a lawsuit against Switzerland at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in an attempt to force an investigation into Luciano’s death but the court dismissed it.
Three SINALTRAINAL members employed at the company, and the wife of one of them, were murdered in 2013. In June 2018, the GMB passed a conference motion condemning the previous month’s murders of three more SINALTRAINAL members employed at the Bugalagrande plant, Gilberto Espinosa on 13 May and Cristian Andres Lozano and Luis Eduardo Dominguez on 23 May. The men were killed close to the plant after having been named on a threatening pamphlet delivered to SINALTRAINAL’S offices in Cali, the regional capital.
Download or read the GMB and Unite letter to Nestlé below