6-26-06, 11:30 am
The 'Coke side of life' is not paradise for thousands of Coke workers or the many communities forced to give up land and water resources to the multinational giant. Anger at the company’s practices have led to an international campaign to decrease Coca-Cola’s market share to punish the company for ongoing complicity in human, environmental and workers’ rights abuses in Colombia, India, Peru, Nicaragua, Chile and numerous other countries. One major organizer of this campaign, the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, is working with labor and students around the country to block Coke’s access to college campuses, public schools, union halls and other venues and to publicize Coke’s role in human rights abuses.
Ray Rogers, director of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, described the origins of this broad campaign in a recent telephone interview with Political Affairs. The main impetus for the current international campaign against Coke was the assassination and intimidation of members of the SINALTRAINAL union that organized workers at Coke-controlled FEMSA bottling plants in Colombia. Paramilitaries have assassinated a number of union members and leaders since 1990. It is widely understood that the killers are friendly with the bottling plant managers who want to rid the plant of the union in order to boost their power over workers and their bottom line.
Between 1990 and 2002, seven SINALTRAINAL leaders were assassinated, and in 2005, three members of the families of hunger strikers were murdered for protesting workers’ rights violations and human rights abuses. In addition, one plant manager who expressed sympathy for the workers was also killed. Indeed, a fact-finding mission led by New York City council member Hiram Monserrat in January 2004 to Colombia found that Coke managers are responsible for at least 179 incidents of human rights violations. This mission also described collusion by paramilitary groups listed on the State Department’s 'terrorist' list and Coke plant managers and those of other corporations as 'an open secret in Colombia' that have led to the murders of about 4,000 union members since 1986.
These killings and the subsequent failure of the company to investigate or even address the problem, Rogers stated, led to a 2001 USW and International Labor Rights Fund organized lawsuit under the Alien Tort Claims Act in conjunction with SINALTRAINAL against Coca-Cola for 'complicity' in these anti-union attacks on SINALTRAINAL members. Absent any agreement on Coke’s part to use its power to stop the violence and in the face of evidence that Coke ignored pleas by SINALTRAINAL leaders to intervene to stop the actions of the plant managers in the facilities they partially own and hold enormous power over, the call for a boycott arose.
Labor’s Role in the Campaign
Rogers expressed the need to be sensitive to concerns of the 18,000 workers who earn their livings by driving trucks that carry Killer Coke products that a boycott would harm them. Still, Rogers added, large sections of labor have sided with the campaign to stop Killer Coke. Some Teamsters locals, the men and women who drive the trucks that carry Coke products, have endorsed the objectives of the campaign to force Coke to address it role in human and workers’ rights violations in plants under its control. Members of the Teamsters joined a protest called by the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke at the company’s annual meeting in Wilmington, Delaware last April.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) endorsed the campaign at its recent national convention. Several SEIU locals in California, New York and other states have gotten rid of the Coke machines in their local union halls. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the United Steel Workers have endorsed the boycott.
The national convention of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) called for a boycott of Sun Trust bank, a company described by Rogers as 'Coke’s bank' that shares many interlocking directorates with the cola maker. The American Postal Workers Union has agreed to pull nearly $14 million of union funds out of Sun Trust and is working to get Coke machines out of postal facilities.
The New York State United Teachers called for a boycott and is working to pull Coke vending machines out of facilities under its auspices, including schools. The California Federation of Teachers has endorsed the boycott as well. Other labor organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) and several locals of the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW), which represents 3,000 Coca-Cola workers, have adopted resolutions supporting the goals of the campaign and or educating their members about the actions of Coca-Cola.
According to Rogers, international unions such as UNITE HERE and SEIU have, on this issue, broken with their parent international organization, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Associations (IUF), which 'has come to the aid of Coke' by denouncing the boycott, says Rogers. IUF opposes the boycott because of a jurisdictional dispute with SINALTRAINAL, the Colombia-based union that had organized most Coke bottling plant workers.
Great Britain’s largest union of public employees, UNISON, supports the boycott and calls for open investigations into human rights abuses leveled at union workers in Coke-owned or controlled bottling plants in Colombia.
Coke’s anti-union behavior has not been confined to Colombia, according to a report published by the UK-based group War on Want. In Nicaragua, workers at the Coke bottling company PANAMCO have been denied the right to organize. Members of the Sole Union of Coca-Cola Company Workers (SUTEC) have been fired or threatened for trying to organize Coke-controlled facilities there. In Peru, Chile and Russia, Coca-Cola workers attempting to organize unions since 2004 have been harassed and threatened with firings and other punitive actions by company official in order to block unionization. Coke workers in Guatemala fought to unionize since the 1970s, ultimately winning recognition after an international boycott of Coke products in the 1980s. Despite this victory, in 2002 union members were once against subject to death threats, unfair dismissal and other harassment in an effort to bust the union.
Student Activism
Along with union-based efforts to either boycott Coke products or use other means to pressure the company to address its record, university students have organized several successful campaigns on their campuses to stop the sale of Coke. Students at scores of colleges an universities from Harvard, Yale, Fordham, to several branches of the Universities of Michigan, California, Illinois, Wisconsin and smaller institutions like St. Louis University, West Virginia University, Oklahoma University and the University of Detroit Mercy are pressuring their administrations to accept some kind of restrictions on Coca-Cola until that company addresses human rights issues with some successes. Universities in Canada, Britain and Ireland have also conducted successful campaigns.
Lipscombe cited student work in hosting international delegations of students, community and labor allies to countries where Coca-Cola has been responsible for human rights violations. He also noted the conduct of many successful campaigns to get Coca-Cola removed from campuses with the most recent victories at New York University, Rutgers, and Oberlin. Students have also hosted tours of Colombian Coca-Cola workers in the US and have gathered thousands of signatures on petitions in support of the campaign.
Water Heist
Coke’s complicity in attacks on trade union members in Colombia and other countries isn’t the only issue fueling anger at the company. In the state of Kerala, India, where the South India Bottling Company manufactured the soft drink exclusively for Coke until 2004, labor union and environmental critics of the company charged the Coke bottler with depleting and contaminating the water table. The local city council and the Kerala High Court agreed with the community and withdrew the company’s license, forcing the plant to close. According to War on Want, subsequent analysis of the water in the area showed that it had become unfit for both human consumption and irrigation as a result of Coke’s usage. Communities in the states of Rajasthan, Utter Pradash and Maharashtra have had similar experiences, though Coke-controlled bottlers remain in operation in those places.
Last year, a local union leader in Kerala affiliated with the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), R. Karumalayan, said, 'The track record of Coca Cola in India is not encouraging. Moreover, several parts of Tirunelveli already face drinking water problems and if the company is to draw 5 lakh litres of water from the Tamiraparani River as proposed, the region is sure to face severe water crisis in the future.' In effect, killer Coke demands that local communities exchange their free drinking water for cola.
In 2003, Indian youth organization, All-India Youth Federation (AIYF), called for the closure of Coca-Cola bottling facilities due both to the water shortages and the increase in toxicity levels in well water created by the plant’s operations. While both CITU and AIYF have maintained strong pressure on Coca-Cola and the state and national government’s in India, neither organization has endorsed the international boycott. The Democratic Youth Federation of India, the largest youth movement in India with 12.5 million members, however, has endorsed boycotts of both Coca-Cola and Pepsi and other goods manufactured by US-based multinational corporations.
Killer Coke’s Publicity Stunts
Coke’s initial response was to ignore the charges. After the campaign for a boycott gained headway, the company changed its tack to simple denial. Still, it could not fend off the campaign’s growing list of successes. When the denial tactic failed to convince their critics and, most importantly, institutional consumers of its products, the company launched a multi-million dollar public relations campaign to give the impression that they are doing something about the problem.
Coke downplays the immense power they have over bottling companies and even local governments. Coke has tremendous control over the operations at its bottling plants as well as the actions of its plant operators and managers. Not only does Coke partially own these companies – in the case of the Colombia bottler FEMSA, they own 46 percent – but they also hold a monopoly over what the bottlers produce, Rogers said. In essence, this means that the bottling plant managers do little that is not in the best interest of Coke, as they see it.
One of the main demands of the campaign is to pressure Coke into addressing human rights and workers’ rights violations and use their influence to stop them. In fact, many universities and schools have told the company that they will stop selling Coke products until the company proves to them that they are producing real results. Coke has taken advantage of this good faith but creating phony commissions to produce official-looking reports to convince administrators that 'the Coke side of life' is a paradise once again.
In 2004 in a desperate attempt to convince one group of college students not to vote to remove Coke machines from their campus, Coke claimed to have been exonerated by an independent investigation of human rights abuse allegations. When campaign supporters confronted the company about the authors of the report, company officials admitted that a group called White and Case published it. But the company refused to release the report to the public. 'You and, I know,' Rogers opined, 'that if they had such a report that was legitimate that exonerated them, they would have printed up a million copies.'
Further digging revealed, however, that White and Case is the law firm that represents Coke in the lawsuit filed by the labor groups on behalf of the SINALTRAINAL members. In addition, one of the executive partners of White and Case sits on the board of directors of Coca-Cola-FEMSA, the plaintiff in the lawsuit and the very entity accused of complicity in the violence in Colombia.
In at least one case, Coke’s phony campaign has worked, Rogers said. After two years of hard campaigning, students at the University of Michigan convinced the administration to stop selling Coke products on campus this past January until the company could produce positive third party studies into the conditions at its plants.
According to Rogers, Coke then sent a letter to the university claiming that two important independent organizations were investigating claims of human rights and environmental abuses. The International Labor Organization (ILO), Coke claimed, would undertake an investigation of 'present and past labor relations practices.' The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Coke also claimed, would make 'an impartial independent third party assessment' of Coke’s water resource management in India. University of Michigan administrators subsequently dropped the boycott in April.
An investigation by Rogers showed, however, that Coke’s claims were at least serious misrepresentations of what was in fact is happening. Rogers said, that ILO representatives told him that they were not conducting an official investigation, but are merely making an assessment of current conditions only in some Coke bottling facilities.
Rogers expressed concern that Coke resources would be used to provide funding for the assessment and thus undermine its objectivity. He cited the example of the ILO’s 'Better Factories Cambodia' project, which sought to expose labor abuses in Cambodian sweatshops. According to the ILO itself, Rogers pointed out, Cambodian Garment Manufacturers were a major financial backer of the investigation. If a similar practice is allowed in Coke’s case, there can be no doubt that any resulting assessment will lack credibility as independent.
Added to that is Coke’s relationship to the United Nations, the parent organization of the ILO, through its various partnerships, as well as the fact that Coke’s head of global labor relations also heads up the business section of the executive council of the ILO, Rogers stated. The ILO is governed by a tripartite executive council composed of 28 members appointed by governments, 14 from labor unions, and 14 from the global corporate sector.
Likewise, TERI’s independent status is even more dubious. According to Rogers, Coke is listed as a corporate sponsor of TERI, one of the members of TERI’s governing council sits on the advisory board of Coca-Cola India and Coke has sponsored at least two major projects undertaken by TERI. 'TERI is interlocked with Coke in India,' Rogers said.
Similarly, Coke has boasted that it has built a number of rainwater harvesting projects to counter claims that its wastes the water supply in India. These projects, reports War on Want, have yet to function.
Rogers summed up Coke’s abuse of people and the truth in a concise statement:
The world of Coca-Cola is a world full of lies, deception, immorality, corruption and widespread labor, human rights and environmental abuses. When people think of the Coca-Cola Company, they should think of a company that has brought great hardship and despair to many people and communities throughout the world. When consumers think of Coca-Cola beverages, they should think of them as unthinkable and undrinkable until this company cleans up its act.Rogers praised the commitment of the Colombian Coke workers and student and labor activists in the US. SINALTRAINAL and its members 'aren’t just going to roll over,' Rogers said. Coke has come up against a 'very tough union that isn’t just looking for a settlement to save face.' Coke is going to have to really address its role in human rights violations before this campaign will end. 'Unless Coke does the right thing,' he concluded, 'they are going to have a hard time snuffing out this campaign.'
Nevertheless, Coke has not failed to include some of these misleading claims in an expensive nationwide campaign. It has paid for costly full-page ads in several university newspapers to head-off pro-boycott campaigns. It uses letters similar to the one sent to the University of Michigan to convince administrators to bring Coke back. In the end, Coke has spent millions, not to change the conditions of workers in its bottling plants or to improve the safety of the water supply in local communities, but to pressure, cajole and mislead consumers, to keep its products available and to suppress the truth. Living on 'the Coke side of life' is dangerous for Coke workers and pure fantasy for consumers.
--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs magazine and can be reached at
