News » February 24, 2004

Cokes Killers

Soft drink giant to review union deaths

By Mischa Gaus

Amanda Johnson, 7, demonstrates with her father in front of a Coca-Cola distribution center.

Coca-Cola representatives told a fact-finding delegation that its employees may have collaborated with paramilitaries in the deaths and torture of Colombian union members.

Despite the possible collaboration, Coca-Cola officials in Colombia have not undertaken any internal or external investigation into the assaults against its employees.

The company’s Colombian representatives insist any contact with paramilitaries, widely blamed for killing seven Coke unionists and thousands of others in recent decades, was unauthorized, according to a report released by Hiram Monserrate. This New York councilmember led a January delegation of U.S. unionists and students to Colombia.

In a written response to the delegation, Coca-Cola says it “does not anticipate supporting in any way any form of ‘independent fact-finding delegation to Colombia,’” and that allegations leveled against the company only would be reviewed locally. A company spokeswoman in Atlanta says she is unaware of any admission of complicity in the unionists’ killings and calls the allegations false.

Workers who say they were tortured at the hands of paramilitaries operating at the company’s behest sued Coke and its Colombian subsidiary in 2001 in a Florida federal court, although Coke was released from the suit last March. Monserrate’s report says company officials implied defamation and slander lawsuits filed in Colombia against workers who joined the U.S. suit were a “direct reprisal.” Some of those reprisal lawsuits were recently thrown out but others continue.

Colombia, whose civil war kills 3,500 each year, is the world’s most dangerous place for union members. It accounts for three of five people killed worldwide for union activity—about 3,600 in the last two decades. Paramilitaries are responsible for the vast majority of these killings, according to union researchers, although no killer of a union member has been convicted since 1995.

Monserrate’s report includes union assertions of uncounted death threats, forced displacement of membership, incarceration of workers on false charges, raiding of union offices and homes of union members, and the kidnapping of unionists in order to force them to renounce their right to associate. “It’s a systemic campaign of terror,” says delegation member Lenore Palladino.

Coca-Cola’s strategy has been to distance itself from its Colombian bottling subsidiary, although it recently acquired the company and holds bottling agreements with it, says Terry Collingsworth, executive director of the International Labor Rights Fund. “Clearly, Atlanta has the power to tell their bottlers, ‘you can’t do this.’ They just refuse to.”

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• Reader Comments

  the thing everyone needs to realize about coke is that they have been doing this for many years all over the world…in guatemala the coke union is the strongest union in the country, and coke is constantly at the minimum harrassing union members with threats of physical violence…and their are many unsolved cases where coke has been accused of hiring hit men to either beat or kill union leaders…
  this is a country who, in nicaragua, always sells two bottles of coke for the price of one bottle of milk, and where towns are owned by either coke or pepsi…all you have to do is go to these countries and you see that entire towns are either red or blue…there are stories of coke dropping pamplets out of airplanes warning drug dealers that they have 24 hours to leave the area or face death…and it is well known what coke has done in india, using unsafe water in its product…and the corporate headquarters always say the same…that they cannot control what these independent bottlers do…
  DONT DRINK COKE

  Posted by colbyfm on Feb 25, 2004 at 7:15 PM

  Dear colbyfm. We are an solidarity group who are involve on promoting the boycott on behalf of SINALTRAINAL in the UK. We have developed contacts with INDIA. We are looking for contacts in Guatemala ans Mexico. Can you help with that please?

  Posted by boycottcoke on Mar 2, 2004 at 4:59 PM

  Hey, Coca Cola scheint das erste Mal zuzugeben, dass fuer Sie Gewerkschafter umgebracht worden sind. Ich hatte euch ja schon oefter Mal zu der Situation was gepostet.

  Posted by Jan on Mar 2, 2004 at 5:09 PM

  As a member of the NYC LAbor delegation that went to Colombia with Council member Monserrate it is gratifying to see that the story of Coca-Cola’s subsidiaries heinous and illegal actionsw are finally seeing the light of day. We hope that with increased awareness regarding the repression of unions in Colombia by Coke will become a priority for people of conscience in the industrilized nations. We also hope that other transnational corporations guilty of the same crimes will take notice that the eyes of the world are upon them. 

  Posted by Jose Schiffino on Mar 4, 2004 at 7:43 PM

  As a member of the NYC LAbor delegation that went to Colombia with Council member Monserrate it is gratifying to see that the story of Coca-Cola’s subsidiaries heinous and illegal actionsw are finally seeing the light of day. We hope that with increased awareness regarding the repression of unions in Colombia by Coke will become a priority for people of conscience in the industrilized nations. We also hope that other transnational corporations guilty of the same crimes will take notice that the eyes of the world are upon them. 

  Posted by Jose Schiffino on Mar 4, 2004 at 7:44 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 16 posts.

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