UC-Coke

After nearly three years of campus struggle against Coca-Cola's human rights violations in Colombia, UC Berkeley students and human rights activists have had enough! Coke is continuing to twiddle its thumbs while union members in its Colombian bottling facilities endure torture, false arrest, and fear for their lives. In fact, eight Coca-Cola union members have been murdered since 1989, and others have narrowly escaped assassination.

Despite these abuses, many University of California campuses have lucrative contracts with Coca-Cola. Please join us in telling UC's Vice President for Business and Finance that Coca-Cola must either shape up or ship out!

Sample Letter for Campaign

Subject: Tell Coke to Shape Up or Ship Out!

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

I am writing to urge the University of California to demand an independent investigation into the Coca-Cola Company's egregious human rights abuses at its Colombian Bottling Facilities. If the company refuses to agree to such an investigation, the University must cut its contracts with Coca-Cola.

UC's relationship with Coca-Cola is tarnishing its long-standing reputation for demanding socially responsible business relationships. Campus pride is hurt when a product bearing UC's image is associated with murder and torture.

A great deal of credible evidence proves that over a period of more than a decade, managers of Coca-Cola's contracted bottling facilities have maintained a working alliance with paramilitary groups to threaten, kidnap, torture, and murder workers involved in trade union activism. Since 1989, eight union leaders from Coca-Cola plants have been murdered by paramilitary forces.

Coke might argue that the University should wait for a court decision regarding a lawsuit filed on behalf of some of the workers, but Universities have never waited for a court decision to express their concern about the practices of their business partners or licensees. University codes of conduct grant universities the authority to evaluate their licensees' compliance based on whatever evidence they view as credible and to request information from licensees about how they are enforcing the code. Because of the University's marketing and trademark licensing arrangement with Coca-Cola, its contracts with the company are subject to the standards of the UC Code of Conduct for Trademark Licensees and the Code of Conduct.

As long as Coca-Cola is complicit in human rights abuse, we view the University's relationship with Coca-Cola as an exchange of blood money. UC cannot in good conscience continue to associate itself with a company that is violating human rights.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
February 27, 2005

Background Information

Students at UC Berkeley have repeatedly met with UC administrators and Coke officials to demand that Coke take responsibility or the contract be cut, and nothing has happened- the contract stands and Coke allows more horrors to occur. Students have held protests, candelight vigils, wrote editorials in the school newspaper, were featured in Atlanta's Business Chronicle, handed out informational fliers, made presentations to the student body and administrators alike- to no avail. Administrators refuse to listen to the cries for help and student demands.

Coca-Cola is one of the world’s most powerful and profitable corporations. In 2002, Coca-Cola earned nearly $4 billion in profits, enough to pay its Chairman, Douglas Daft, $105 million in compensation. Yet, despite repeated pleas for help, Coca-Cola has not found the time or resources to insure the most basic safety of the workers who bottle its products or prevent massive environmental devastation in the communities where it does business.

Death Squads in Colombia

Colombia has long been the most dangerous country in the world to organize a union. Since 1986, roughly 4000 Colombian trade unionists have been murdered. In 2000, three of every five trade unionists killed in the world were Colombian. The vast majority of these murders have been carried out by right-wing paramilitary groups (aka death squads) on an ideological mission to destroy the labor movement. These groups often work in collaboration with the official U.S.- supported Colombian military, and in some instances with managers at plants producing for multinational corporations. In the case of Coca-Cola, according to numerous credible reports, the company and its business partners have turned a blind eye to, financially supported, and actively colluded with paramilitary groups in efforts to destroy workers’ attempts to organize unions and bargain collectively.

- Since 1989, eight union leaders from Coca-Cola plants have been murdered by paramilitary

forces. Dozens of other workers have been intimidated, kidnapped, or tortured.

- In Carepa, members of the paramilitary murdered union leader Isidro Gil in broad daylight

inside his factory’s gates. They returned the next day and forced all of the plant’s workers to resign from their union by signing documents on Coca-Cola letterhead.

- The most recent murder attempt occurred on August 22, 2003, when two men riding

motorcycles fired shots at Juan Carlos Galvis, a worker leader at Coca-Cola’s

Barrancabermeja plant.

- There is substantial evidence that managers of several bottling plants have ordered assaults to occur and made regular payments to leaders of the paramilitary groups carrying out the attacks.

These ongoing abuses have taken their toll on Coca-Cola workers’ efforts to organize. Their union, SINALTRAINAL, has suffered a dramatic loss in membership, as worker leaders are intimidated or forced into hiding. SINALTRAINAL has appealed for solidarity and allies in the U.S. labor and social justice movements have answered their call. The United Steelworkers and the International Labor Rights Fund have filed a lawsuit against Coca-Cola on behalf of the union and victims’ families in U.S. federal court. Other unions including the Teamsters and many community groups have launched public campaigns targeting Coke. If history is a guide, students could be the needed force that finally moves Coke to stop denying responsibility and take action to protect its workers’ lives.