WHAT’S UP WITH COKE?
Union Busting in Colombia
By Elisabeth Perham
It’s a multinational juggernaut of a company turning over US$23 billion a year and one of the most recognisable brands in the world. Its corporate body speaks from Atlanta, Georgia, ensuring its consumers that the company adheres to the “highest ethical standards” and aims to be “an outstanding corporate citizen in every community we serve.” Why then have numerous colleges across the USA and around the world terminated their contracts with Coca Cola? Why was the 2005 annual Coca Cola stockholders meeting overtaken by activists demanding answers? What’s up with Coke?
Article Twenty-Four of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in part that “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.” Some recent actions (and inactions) of the Coca Cola company in Columbia suggest they don’t rate this human right very highly. Many employees of the Coca Cola bottling plants belong to a trade union called SINALTRAINAL (the Columbian food workers union). In the years between 1989 and 2002 eight Coca Cola workers with connections with the union have been killed, forty eight have been forced into hiding and a further sixty five have received death threats.
In 2001 a lawsuit was made in Miami against the Coca Cola company by the union. It was reported in this lawsuit that years of intimidation of the Coca Cola workers belonging to the union was stepped up in 1996, reaching its highest point on December 5 when a squad of paramilitaries turned up at the gates of a Coca Cola bottling plant in the small Columbian town of Carepa. The paramilitaries shot and killed the gatekeeper, a member of SINAlTRAINAL’s executive board. An hour later another union leader was kidnapped and the offices of the union were set alight. The next day the paramilitaries returned to the plant, demanding the employees sign a statement saying that they resigned from the union.
It was alleged by the union that both Coca Cola and the company which owned the bottling plant were collaborating with the paramilitaries and that in fact, the manager of the bottling plant had ordered that something be done to break up the union. Adding clout to this story were claims that the statements of resignation, which the workers were ordered to sign, bore the letterhead of the bottling plant. Coca Cola, unsurprisingly, vehemently denied the claims made by SINALTRAINAL in the lawsuit. However, the fact that they did not immediately condemn the actions of the paramilitaries did little to back up their cries of innocence. Any commentary from such a large and influential company could have halted any more killings and prevented any more terrorism of union workers. But no such commentary was forthcoming.
The en masse resignation of union members following the killing in December of 1996 worked entirely in the bottling plant’s favour. In the ten years to 2004, SINALTRAINAL’s Coca Cola membership dropped from 1400 members to 400 members. Those resigning were replaced quickly by workers who were able to be paid a third of the wage of their predecessors. No longer was the union present in the plant to speak for the rights of the workers
Union work in Columbia is not easy. Every year workers are killed in a bid to keep the employer supreme in the troubled country. This however is no excuse for Coca Cola. The company has money to burn and the sorts of savings made through such vulgar and inhumane means can never be worth the human cost. A company, which according to their corporate responsibility policy prides itself on human rights and ethical practises, should be the first to stand up in Columbia and fight for, not against, the worker’s unions.
What can you do?
Still wanting to enjoy the Coke side of life? If not there are several groups of protestors who have set up websites which you can check out:
- www.cokewatch.org
- www.killercoke.org
- picketline.blogspot.com/2006/05/coca-colas-anti-union-abuse-in-haiti.html
And of course there is the option of making the decision not to drink Coca Cola on moral grounds. If everyone does it the company will have to sit up and listen, or face a fate even worse than that they have inflicted on their workers in Columbia and around the world.
Resources:
Look out for Part Two coming soon – Environmental Destruction in India
