But why Coca-Cola?
On July 22, 2003, the Colombian union SINALTRAINAL issued a call for an international boycott of Coca-Cola in response to the company’s complicity in the harassment, kidnapping, torture, and murder of union leaders working in Coca-Cola bottling plants. Right-wing paramilitary groups, often with the support of the Colombian military and government, make this nation the most dangerous in the world for workers. Since 1989, 8 Coca-Cola workers have been murdered by the paramilitaries, often on the factory floor, and countless major human rights violations have been committed against them. The workers of SINALTRAINAL, at the risk of losing their jobs and their lives, have accused Coca-Cola bottling plant management of being complicit in the seemingly endless string of assassinations, kidnappings, and torture; all as part of an effort to squash union activity.
In response to these allegations, a fact-finding delegation led by New York City Council Member Hiram Monserrate traveled to Colombia in January of 2004. After meeting with both SINALTRAINAL and Coca-Cola representatives, as well as with individual workers, their families, local human rights organizations, and various government and political officials, the delegation came to this conclusion:
The [Coca-Cola] company denies any involvement in the threats, assassinations, kidnappings and other terror tactics, but its failure to protect its workers even on company property, its refusal to investigate persistent allegations of payoffs to paramilitary leaders by plant managers, and its unwillingness to share documentation that might demonstrate otherwise leads the delegation to the conclusion that Coca-Cola is complicit in the human rights abuses of its workers in Colombia. (emphasis added)
How this complicity is actually carried out is best demonstrated by the case of Isidro Gil, a SINALTRAINAL union leader. In September of 1996, Ariosto Milan Mosquera became the new manager of the Bebidas y Alimentos (one of Coca-Cola’s bottlers) plant in Carepa. Mosquera threatened the workers, saying he would use the paramilitaries to “sweep away the union”, and began hiring paramilitary members into the sales and production departments of the plant, as well socializing with them outside of the plant. During contract negotiations later that year, Gil pleaded for official protection from the paramilitaries and was flatly denied by both Mosquera and the higher management of Bebidas y Alimentos. At approximately 9:00 AM on December 5th, 1996, Gil was shot to death by the paramilitaries inside the plant, and the local SINALTRAINAL office was burnt down. Two days later, the paramilitaries returned with resignation forms printed with company equipment and on company letterhead, demanding the resignation of all workers from their union under threat of death. The union was destroyed, most of the workers fled, and in 2000, Isidro Gil’s wife was murdered by the same paramilitaries, orphaning their two children. This is only one example of a pattern which has been manifesting itself at Coca-Cola’s Colombian bottling plants for years.
This information was made public in a case taken to the US Southern District Court in Miami by the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund on behalf of SINALTRAINAL, under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 and Torture Victims Protection Act of 1992. Ultimately, the court dismissed Coca-Cola as a defendant, arguing that it could not be held accountable for the actions of its bottling companies (which are still on trial), even though Coca-Cola was a major shareholder in these companies and has professed in documents of its own creation that it retains the right to control workplace practices and to “ensure that local managers abide by human rights conventions and domestic law”, according to United Students Against Sweatshops. A campaign is currently underway to have Coca-Cola re-included as a defendant in this case.
The fact that Coca-Cola has responded to these atrocities by devoting its resources toward a public relations campaign, and not toward the safety of its workers, and that Coca-Cola refuses to support an independent, legitimate investigation of its human rights record implies a desperate attempt to mask its complicity in these events.
The abysmal human rights record of Coca-Cola is not confined to Colombia, however. Indian courts and local governments are currently embroiled in a battle against the harmful effects of their own domestic Coca-Cola bottling plants. These effects include the depletion of water tables and subsequent devastation of small farmers, the pollution of the common ground water resource, the sale of Coca-Cola products knowingly contaminated with pesticides (now labeled as such as a 2004 order from the High Court in Rajasthan), and the distribution of solid waste “fertilizer” revealed to in fact be lead- and cadmium-heavy toxic waste by the BBC. On top of this, Coca-Cola has been engaged in anti-union repression and intimidation in both Turkey (2005) and Indonesia (2004).
Clearly the time to act is now. By joining this campaign, we, the students of Connecticut College, can send a message to Coca-Cola that says “We will not support a company that has no regard for the safety or for the lives of its workers, or for the environmental impacts of its production.”
