Assessing our past actions and identifying new strategies to go on growing and strengthening our work, developed in the past years, were the purposes of the 3rd Meeting of the Executive Committee of FELATRAC, held on 22 August in Honduras.

Founded on the 7 May, 2008 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Latin American Federation of Coca Cola Workers (FELATRAC) has not stopped growing and acting in defense of the interests of  Coca Cola workers of the region.

“After two years of existence,  FELATRAC is not only a reality but also a need recognized by all unions of the industry as an essential instrument which needs to be strengthened with a view to the future", stated the general secretary of the Latin American Regional Secretariat of the IUF, Gerardo Iglesias, during his opening presentation of the event.

After expressing their solidarity with the just struggle of the Honduran people, union delegates from  twelve countries of  Latin America discussed the situation in each country in relation to  Coca Cola.

Also “the agenda of  FELATRAC for the October meeting with Coca Cola Company in Atlanta, United States, was revised, and the final membership of the  Executive Committee was approved”, explained Pablo Quiroga, General Secretary of FELATRAC.

The meeting received the warm greeting of the Executive Board and delegates from different local divisions of the Union of Beverage and Related Industry Workers (STIBYS) of Cervecería Hondureña (SABMiller)

"We live the same situation that you live in your countries and we are trying to counter the precarization of employment.

In this sense, we wish to join the work of the  IUF, and the work of all of you. We need to be united and coordinated because when union wins are not defended, they are lost”, said Neptalí Castro, General Secretary of STIBYS.

With 64 unions from eleven countries of the Region,  FELATRAC is today an instrument for “accumulating and assembling forces, defining and developing strategies based on unity of action.

It is a response to circumstances where the weakness of the labor movement, in many of our countries, is a consequence of ideological confusion, unfocused programs and organizational dispersion”, concluded Iglesias.