Coca-Cola Case – the Unsweetened Version
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Coca-Cola, The Unsweetened Version
By: Sean Ramalho
It was a particularly warm and humid morning in December, a certain sticky feeling was in the air; as if one couldnt escape the heavy moisture in the atmosphere. This particular day in December would change my life forever though. It was December 5, 1996 and while I was busy operating the forklift at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa I was shocked to hear a loud bang; I had heard this sound before, it was a gunshot. I looked up from what I was doing and immediately jumped off the forklift to run to the front gate where paramilitary officers had shot and killed my friend and coworker Isidro Gil. As I “ran toward Gil the gunman fired several more shots. The assailant fled on a motorcycle,” recalls Luis Adolfo Cardona (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012). The killing of Isidro Gil was not an isolated incident, Gil is just one of eight individuals murdered in Colombia between 1990-2002. The reasoning behind the slayings of these employees you may ask? Profit.
“Coca-Cola, which is virulently anti-union, claims that any allegations that its bottlers in Colombia are involved in the systematic intimidation, kidnapping, torture, and murder of union leaders are false,” (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012). But this doesnt match up to the hundreds, if not thousands of eyewitness accounts and personal testimonies of former and current Coca-Cola employees. “Cardona said he was kidnapped hours after Gils slaying by the same paramilitary unit and narrowly escaped death. The militia torched the local union office and, the next day, told labor organizers to leave the area or die,” according to Luis Hernan Manco, then Sinaltrainals president at the Carepa plant (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012). Sinaltrainal is the National Union of Food Industry Workers, which had 1,440 members working in Coke plants in 1993, but by 2004 that number had fallen to 389 (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012). Two days after Gils murder heavily armed paramilitaries returned to the bottling plant and called the workers together and told them if they didnt quit the union by 4 p.m. that day, they would be killed just like Isidro Gil. Resignation forms were prepared in advance by Coca-Colas plant manager who had “given (them) an order to carry out the task of destroying the union,” stated the lawsuit that Sinaltrainal filed against Coca-Cola and its subsidiaries (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012).
The destruction of the union by Coca-Cola has been great financially for the Atlanta based corporation. Coca-Cola now considers the majority of Coke workers in Colombia to be “flexible” workers that are subcontracted out and are not considered full-time employees and therefore do not receive union representation, they also receive extremely low pay and meager benefits (if any) and have no job security (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012). “Experienced workers who made about $380 a month were replaced by new hires at $130 a month” (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012). It has been estimated that in 1990 Coca-Cola employed more than 12,000 workers in Colombia, 9,000 of which had permanent employment contracts. “By 2001 there were only 2,500 direct employees and by the beginning of 2005 less than 1,000 workers had stable employment contracts” (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012). There are still approximately 10,000 workers in plants across Colombia but 90% of these employees are now “flexible” workers. You can see how cutting the cost on 90% of their employees in a region can greatly increase profits. But is human life so expendable? Apparently to the Coca-Cola Corporation and many other large corporations it absolutely is. These paramilitary officials even kidnapped one union leaders child just to discourage his fathers union membership. And in America, if you kill people and wear a three-piece suit you get awards and profits instead of jail time because “no charges were ever brought against Gils killers or those who killed seven other workers. Nor has anyone been arrested for the murder of Gils wife in 2000 or the 2004 murders of Sinaltrainal union leader Efrain Guerreros brother-in-law, Gabriel Remolina, and his wife Fanny and one of their children,” (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012).
Coca-Cola insists that it wasnt involved in any of these actions and says the paramilitary officers were operating in accordance to their own rule and not under any corporate direction. “Coke states: (A) respected, independent third party found no instances of anti-union violence or intimidation at bottling plants. This refers to a bogus report issued in 2005 by Cal Safety Compliance Corporation, a Los Angeles-based company whose work was commissioned and paid for by The Coca-Cola Company” (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012). Not only was the study sponsored by Coca-Cola, but Cal Safetys monitoring record has been discredited in such publications as the Los Angeles Times and Business Week. In January 2004 Hiram Monserrate led a 10-day fact finding tour to Colombia and his report referred to “a total of 179 major human rights violations of Coca-Colas workers including nine murders. Family members of union activists have been abducted and tortured. Union members have been fired for attending union meetings. The company pressured workers to reign their union membership and contractual rights, and fired workers who refused to do so…” (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012). The most troubling of all the allegations was that of the paramilitarys violence toward workers “was done with the knowledge of and likely under the direction of company managers” (“Cokes Crimes in Colombia,” 2012). At the end of the day a Coke spokesperson said the company would be willing to accept an outside review but only if the findings were not admissible in the lawsuit filed by the International Labor Rights Fund on behalf of the murdered Colombian workers (Foust, Smith & Woyke, 2006). Of course they dont want to be held accountable for their actions in a court of law.
Colombia is just one example of the injustices being done by the Coca-Cola