Second of Three Parts (See Part I and Part III)

Wal-Mart, once a believer in buying American, extracts ever lower prices from 10,000 suppliers worldwide. Workers struggle to keep pace.

By Nancy Cleeland, Evelyn Iritani and Tyler Marshall, Times Staff Writers

By JUAN FORERO

LA LOMA, Colombia — In March 2001, during what union members describe as a labor dispute, two union leaders were pulled off a company bus after it left the coal mining compound here and were shot dead by paramilitary gunmen. Six months later another union leader was also assassinated.

For Colombia, such killings are routine; nearly 90 percent of union leaders reported killed worldwide die here. Few of the murders are ever resolved.

Editorial

In 1996, American lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit accusing Swiss banks of withholding the assets of Holocaust victims. Two years later, the suit was settled, and a fund of $1.25 billion was established to pay those with legitimate claims. The suit was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act -- a little-known statute that is a powerful tool for promoting human rights. But now the Justice Department wants to end the law's use in such suits, a reversal that would effectively grant impunity to those who abuse human rights abroad.

The International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) announced today it would pursue legal actions against the U.S. Customs Service for not enforcing its law on importation of goods made by “forced or indentured child labor.”