Coke and Killing in Colombia

International Lawsuit Against Coke

The US based United Steelworkers Union is suing Coke on behalf of the Colombian union Sinaltrainal. The last of three hearings took place in Bogota, Colombia on Dec. 5, 2002, the 6 year anniversary of Isidro Gil’s assassination. Gil had replaced two previous union leaders, also murdered by right-wing death squads or paramilitaries. The lawsuit alleges that after these 1994 assassinations the paramilitaries presented the remaining workers at the Coke bottling plant with an ultimatum: resign from the union or flee Carepa.

World-wide Boycott to Stop Systematic Intimidation

These are good reasons for you and everyone you know to boycott Coca Cola products! An ongoing international boycott effort is working to pressure the Coca-Cola company to clean up its act in Colombia, where workers are kept from unionizing by “systematic intimidation, kidnapping, detention and murder” as argued in the international lawsuit the company currently faces.

Coke Denies Responsibility for Atrocities at Its Plants

Coke representatives at the headquarters in Atlanta claim they have no responsibility for what happens at the local level, saying, “the company did not own the bottling plants, which operated under contract” (The Guardian). But the prosecution says that “The management of [the Carepa bottling plant] permitted these paramilitary forces to appear within the plant to deliver this message to union members and leaders” and that the Coca-Cola Company closely controlled the operations of its contractors and was well aware of the brutal intimidation of workers in the bottling factories.

Paramilitaries Carry Out Killings In the Middle of the Day

Assassinations have claimed the lives of 16 Sinaltrainal members, eight of them workers at Coca Cola. I met the vice president of Sinaltrainal on an October human rights delegation to Barancabermeja, Colombia. He told us his family receives death threats daily. “The paramilitaries kill people downtown, in the middle of the day! Everyone, including the authorities, knows where paramilitary members live, but none are arrested or prosecuted.” A member of our delegation found that the most resent assassination victim on August 31, ’02, was a member of the union she had interviewed last time in Barrancabermeja.

U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Human Rights Abuses

There’s no way for Colombian unions to prosecute corporations like Coca-cola within Colombia’s legal system. And don’t count on the U.S. government to pressure U.S. businesses based in Colombia to play by fair rules. While many international observers including Amnesty International have reported Colombia as the worst human-rights crisis in the Western Hemisphere the U.S. continually turns a blind eye to the abuses of the Colombian military it supports and trains.

U.S. Tax Payers' $ Leak Into Para's Purses

The current Bush administration has tried to remove the human-rights stipulation on foreign aid completely. And the U.S. State Department itself has documented that the illegal, brutal paramilitaries receive funds not only from corporations but from U.S. tax-paying citizens! How? Our $1.3 billion in foreign aid, almost exclusively to the Colombian military, quickly leaks into paramilitary purses in the form of weapons, personal, and intelligence. While in Colombia I witnessed Police and paramilitary personnel openly driving together in caravans on numerous occasions.

Consumers Responsible to Stop Coke's Insideous Union-busting

That’s why it’s up to us, the consumers of Coca-Cola’s products, to make sure using such terrorist tactics to union-bust isn’t profitable for the corporation. Some student groups are pressuring their universities to refrain from renewing contracts with Coke, including Minute Maid products served in many cafeterias. Harvard students held a forum to hear Colombian workers’ complaints against Coke. Unions across the United States are supporting the boycott with letters to Coke’s CEO and resolutions against the consumption of its products. The strongest voice against Coca Cola’s human rights violations in Colombia is the threat of a fall in profits if the Company doesn’t change its ways.