The North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee Blog

Coke's Abuses in Colombia: Replay of the '70s & '80s

Some find it unbelievable that human rights abuses -- systematic intimidation, kidnapping, torture and murder -- are occurring at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia. But it's not the first time Coke has committed such atocities.

In a 1987 booklet, "Soft Drink, Hard Labour," the Latin America Bureau in London said:

"For nine years the 450 workers at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Guatemala City fought a battle for their jobs, their trade union and their lives. Three times they occupied the plant -- on the last occasion for 13 months. Three General Secretaries of their union were murdered and five other workers killed. Four more were kidnapped and have disappeared. Against all the odds they survived, thanks to their own extraordinary courage and help from fellow trade unionists in Guatemala and around the world.

"A huge international campaign of protests and boycotts was central to their struggle. As a result, the Coca-Cola workers forced concessions from one of the world's largest multinational food giants and kept the Guatemalan trade union movement alive through a dark age of government repression."

What happened at the Coke bottling plant in Guatemala in the '70s and '80s is still happening at Coke bottling plants in Colombia. The worldwide Campaign to Stop Killer Coke is dedicated to stopping such human rights abuses by Coke once and for all. We can't allow Coke's unsavory history to repeat itself anywhere in the world.

2. Colombian Human Rights Lawsuits vs. Coke

Lawsuits were filed against The Coca-Cola Company and its bottlers in Colombia in July 2001 and June 2006 by the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) and the United Steelworkers (USW), AFL-CIO. They sued on behalf of SINALTRAINAL, the major union representing Coke workers in Colombia, several of its members and the survivors of two murdered union leaders, Isidro Gil and Adolfo de Jesus Munera.

The 2001 lawsuit charged that Coca-Cola bottlers in Colombia "contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders."

Union leader Isidro Gil was killed on Dec. 5, 1996 inside the entrance of the Coke plant in Carepa by paramilitary thugs. Minutes after the thugs showed up, they shot and killed Gil, a member of the union executive board.

Two days later, heavily armed paramilitaries returned to the plant, called the workers together and told them if they didn't quit the union by 4 p.m., they, too, would be killed. Resignation forms were prepared in advance by Coca-Cola's plant manager, who had a history of socializing with the paramilitaries and had earlier "given (them) an order to carry out the task of destroying the union," the lawsuit says.

Fearing for their lives, union members working at the Carepa plant resigned en masse and fled the area. The company broke off contract negotiations and the union was crushed. Experienced workers who made about $380 a month were replaced by new hires at $130 a month.

The 2006 lawsuit charges that managers at the Coke bottling plant in Barranquilla, Colombia, conspired with both the Colombian Administrative Department of Security ("DAS") and another gang of paramilitary thugs to intimidate, threaten and ultimately kill SINALTRAINAL trade union leader Adolfo de Jesus Munera on August 31, 2002.

The complaint states that, "despite a number of warnings to Coca-Cola management in Atlanta that management in Barranquilla continued to meet with and provide plant access to paramilitaries, the paramilitary infiltration of this bottling plant continued unabated through 2006. These same paramilitaries continued to threaten SINALTRAINAL members and leaders with death and even kidnapped one union leader's child to discourage his father's union activities." (ILRF & USW, press release, 6/2/06)

Coke boasts that the company and its bottlers have been dismissed from the human rights abuse lawsuits by Federal Judge Jose E. Martinez, but doesn't tell you that his rulings didn't deal with the merits of the cases, but with procedural and jurisdictional questions.

Meanwhile, the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke in January 2007, called for the recusal of Judge Martinez because of possible conflicts of interest involving the University of Miami, his old private law firm and the Coca-Cola Company.

3. Judge Martinez: Conflicts of Interest?

In October 2006, after lawyers for SINALTRAINAL appealed Judge Jose E. Martinez's dismissal of the 2001 Colombian human rights abuse lawsuits, it was discovered that the judge may have had serious conflicts of interest. The Campaign to Stop Killer Coke believes Judge Martinez should be recused in light of his strong ties to the University of Miami and its athletics, which are intertwined with Coca-Cola. There are also questions regarding his work defending corporations in product liability matters. In addition, his former law firm has a relationship with a Colombian law firm in which a name partner was a vice president of Coca-Cola Colombia.

Martinez, the University of Miami and UM Sports

Martinez is very closely connected to the University of Miami and its athletics, which are in large part sponsored by Coca-Cola.

He's a graduate of the University and its law school. Back in 2002, the Miami Herald reported that "he is best known for his sideline: color commentator on Spanish radio for Los Huracanes [The Hurricanes]" and that "the judge's passion often returns to University of Miami athletics." The Herald specified that he is "active in UM law school and athletic department functions...(and) serves as color commentator for Hurricanes football and baseball broadcasts on Spanish radio." The Herald quoted UM athletic director Paul Dee at the reception for Martinez when he became a judge, saying the "crowd might be impressed that the Hurricanes have won 32 straight games...'but that's nothing compared to the fact that we've never lost a game on Spanish radio.'"

Judge Martinez's role as a sports analyst for broadcasts of UM football games as early as 2003 is also described on the University of Miami Athletic Dept. website, sponsored by Coca-Cola . The University has had an exclusive beverage contract with Coca-Cola for years.

Judge Martinez has also "been active in UM matters, serving as...a member of the Governing Board of the UM Hurricane Club," according to the biographical note supplied for an Oct. 30, 2006 luncheon at which he was the keynote speaker. UM identifies the Hurricane Club as "the primary fundraising arm of the athletic department," which is heavily subsidized by Coke. Judge Martinez continues his active participation with UM sports.

In March 2003, Judge Martinez dismissed The Coca-Cola Company from the lawsuit brought in 2001, but allowed the lawsuit to continue against its bottlers. When he inappropriately dismissed Coke's Atlanta headquarters from the lawsuit, it had nothing to do with the merits of the case. Lawyers for the Colombian union say the judge found prematurely, and in error, that The Coca-Cola Company didn't have sufficient ownership or control of its bottlers to be liable.

He ruled prior to any discovery and the opportunity for plaintiffs to show that The Coca-Cola Company does have ownership and control. Martinez's decision was also based on a single document -- a sample bottlers' agreement that Coca-Cola admitted wasn't the actual agreement with the Colombian bottlers cited in the lawsuit.

A Forbes magazine article in December 2003, "Coke's Sinful World," pointed out:

"The biggest bottlers aren't subsidiaries of Coke, nor are they completely independent. Coke effectively controls them by maintaining big equity stakes and a heavy presence on their boards, and by providing their main source of business. Yet it keeps its stakes in the bottlers below 50% thereby avoiding getting hit with their piles of debt and any unpleasant liabilities."

Coca-Cola FEMSA is Coke's largest Latin American bottler and a defendant in the litigation. FEMSA's website lists The Coca-Cola Company as owning either 31.6% or 39.6% of its capital stock (both figures are used) and 46.4% of its capital voting stock. Many of Coca-Cola's top executives serve as directors and alternate directors on Coca-Cola FEMSA's board.

When he gave The Coca-Cola Co. a pass in 2003, Martinez chose to ignore documents admittedly created by Coca-Cola, such as letters to consumers and a statement to shareholders that frankly acknowledged the company's control over workplace practices and its right to inspect the plants to ensure that local managers abide by human rights conventions and domestic law.

Martinez's Predisposition for Corporations

In 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Martinez to the Federal bench. At his confirmation hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Dem.-Calif.) drew attention to his having "specialized in product liability litigation...advising and defending large corporations in product liability suits." Predictably, Martinez promised to be an objective judge, stating: "I think that I will do the right thing and the fair thing." (Senate Hearing 107-584, Pt. 4; Serial No. J-107-23)

Another ethics question came up last year when Martinez overturned a unanimous jury conviction against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami. The judge neglected to mention that he is a Eucharistic minister, playing a role in Catholic services at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Coral Gables. Fla.

Judge Martinez was a name partner at the Martinez & Gutierrez law firm from 1991 until the time of his nomination, September 2002. Upon his appointment to the bench, the firm was renamed Gutierrez & Associates, but retained as its web address, http://www.MartLaw.com, apparently referencing Martinez. The home page of Gutierrez & Associates highlights Jose Martinez's work as a partner, reflecting his importance to the firm. The Gutierrez & Associates list of representative clients includes such major corporations and governmental agencies as American Airlines; Borden, Inc.; California Insurance Commissioner; United States Tobacco International; Ford Motor Company; The Philip Morris Companies; Florida Department of Insurance; Emerson Electric Co.; BAC Florida Bank; US Education Finance Corporation; Terrabank, N.A.; E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, and the government of Nicaragua.

Martinez himself, while at Martinez and Gutierrez, represented the Tobacco Institute in a case before the Supreme Court.

Gutierrez & Associates lists among its associated law firms a Bogota, Colombia firm, Gamboa, Chelela, Gamboa & Useche. That firm's website, in turn, identifies as a name partner Carlos Alberto Useche-Ponce de Leon, a former vice president of Coca-Cola de Colombia, S.A., who also serves as an "Advisor" to the Council of American Companies.

"Everything we have learned about Judge Martinez's connections to the interests of Coca-Cola, the University of Miami, its Coke-subsidized athletic department and his former law firm suggests at least the appearance of impropriety, if not actual bias," said Ray Rogers, director of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke. "To preserve the integrity of the judicial process, we believe he must be recused from the Coca-Cola cases."

4. Bogus 'Investigations' by Cal Safety and White & Case

Coke keeps claiming that it was exonerated of human rights abuse allegations by two judicial inquiries in Colombia and two "independent investigations" in the U.S. But no court in Colombia has ever ruled on the human rights claims against Coca-Cola. U.S. State Department human rights reports point out that only a handful of the thousands of murders of Colombian trade unionists in recent years have ever resulted in successful prosecutions. "Cases where the instigators and perpetrators of the murders of trade union leaders are identified are practically nonexistent, as is the handing down of guilty verdicts," said the State Department. So it's not surprising that the plaintiffs cannot secure justice through Colombian courts. That's why they're seeking redress through U.S. courts in the first place.

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. Cal Safety's monitoring record has been discredited in publications like the Los Angeles Times and Business Week. It is "not regarded as a credible monitoring organization within the mainstream worker rights advocate community as a result of its track record of missing egregious violations in high-profile cases and its flawed monitoring methodology," according to United Students Against Sweatshops, an international student movement fighting for sweatshop-free labor conditions and workers' rights.

USAS cites Cal Safety's poor monitoring track record as measured by Dr. Jill Esbenshade in her book, "Monitoring Sweatshops." Esbenshade conducted extensive interviews with Cal Safety auditors and directly observed the company's labor auditing in practice. She didn't find Cal Safety's poor track record surprising because she said they failed to adhere to minimum accepted standards for competent factory investigations.

Prior to the Cal Safety report, Coca-Cola repeatedly claimed that another group had investigated allegations of human rights abuses by Coke's bottlers in Colombia and exonerated both Coca-Cola and its bottlers. When students at Carleton College in Minnesota asked for a copy, they were told by a Coca-Cola representative that the report was done by White & Case, but was unavailable to the public. It so happens that White & Case is a large international corporate law firm that has represented Coca-Cola in lawsuits dealing with human rights abuses at its Colombian bottling plants. Alexis Rovzar, an executive partner at White & Case, serves as a director of Coca-Cola FEMSA, Colombia's largest Coca-Cola bottler and a defendant in the lawsuits.

5. Real Investigations by Monserrate, Gill & Higginbottom

In January 2004, New York City Councilmember and former police officer Hiram Monserrate led a delegation on a 10-day, fact-finding tour to Colombia to investigate allegations of human rights violations by Coca-Cola. "We heard one story after another of torture and injustice," said one member upon returning. "The sheer number of these testimonials was overwhelming."

The delegation issued a scathing report in April 2004 that said: "Coca-Cola is complicit in human rights abuses of its workers in Colombia...The conclusion that Coca-Cola bears responsibility for the campaign of terror leveled at its workers is unavoidable."

The report referred to "a total of 179 major human rights violations of Coca-Cola's 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 has pressured workers to resign their union membership and contractual rights, and fired workers who refused to do so...Most troubling to the delegation were the persistent allegations that paramilitary violence against workers was done with the knowledge of and likely under the direction of company managers...The delegation calls on the company to rectify the situation immediately, and calls on all people of conscience to join in putting pressure on the company to do so."

See Monserrate report, WB11 news feature and "State of the Union:"

Click here for the Monserrate Report

Click here for the appendices to the Monserrate Report

Click here or in the video for the WB11 News Feature

Click here to watch the "State of the Union," the story of Coke in Colombia, produced in Colombia in Spanish with English subtitles

In an Oct. 29, 2004 report prepared for the Human Rights Committee of the American Anthropological Assn., entitled "Labor and Human Rights: The Real Thing in Colombia," American University Professor Lesley Gill wrote: "Eighty percent of the Coca-Cola work force is now composed of non-union, temporary workers, and wages for these individuals are only a quarter of those earned by their unionized counterparts. Coca-Cola has consistently pressured unionized workers to resign...Coca-Cola is in fact a stridently anti-union company, and the destruction of SINALTRAINAL, as well as the capacity to drive wages into the ground, is one of the primary goals of the extra-judicial violence directed against workers..."

"Murdered unionists are not the product of indiscriminate, chaotic violence . . . They are the victims of a calculated and selective strategy carried out by sectors of the state, allied paramilitaries, and some employers to weaken and eliminate trade unions. It is a strategy that emerges from, and is facilitated by, pervasive impunity." Based on interviews and discussions held in Bogota from July 3-17, 2005, Gill believes there is little evidence to suggest that The Coca-Cola Co. has substantially changed its business practices in Colombia.

In July 2005, the London-based Colombia Solidarity Campaign published "The Anti-Coke Manifesto," a booklet by its secretary, Andy Higginbottom, a frequent visitor to Colombia. He reported that in 1993, SINALTRAINAL had 1,440 members working in Coke plants, but by 2004 that number had fallen to 389. Since at least the early 1990s, he says, Coke has used brutal methods to maximize return on its investments in Colombia and takes full advantage of the government's anti-labor policies.

6. 'Solid Relationships with Organized Labor:' A Big Lie

Coke CEO E. Neville Isdell boasts: "We have solid relationships with organized labor in Colombia."

Responding to inquiries in April 2003, The Coca-Cola Company stated: "Coca-Cola bottlers have ongoing, normal relations with labor unions in Colombia and throughout Latin America . . . More than half the employees of our bottling partners in Latin America are unionized; in Colombia alone, almost 12,000 bottler employees are unionized."

In response to another inquiry in August 2005, the company said:

"The Coca-Cola Co. and our bottling partners have been valuable members of the Colombian community for more than 70 years and we respect the rights of all employees, including those who choose to be represented by labor unions...more than 30 percent of Coca-Cola system workers in Colombia are unionized, in a country where the average for all companies is about four percent...and employs approximately 8,000 people in Colombia..."

These claims are simply preposterous. Coca-Cola considers the vast majority of Coke workers in Colombia to be "flexible" workers employed through various subcontracting schemes, not employees. These workers have no chance of union representation, receive low pay and meager benefits (if any), have no job security and often are mired in poverty. Due to Coke's lobbying efforts in Colombia and the campaign of terror directed at union leaders, only about 4% of Coke's workers in Colombia belong to unions.

Andy Higginbottom of England's Kingston University has written: "In Colombia, neoliberalism as an economic model -- identified especially by the policies of privatisation, deregulation and the 'flexibilisation' of labor -- was imposed from 1990 onwards." In that year new labour laws were passed that eliminated nearly every legal protection for permanent employment contracts, which encouraged subcontracting and temporary working. As a result, Higginbottom noted, "there are very few private industry trade unions left."

Higginbottom estimated that in 1990, the Coca-Cola "system" in Colombia employed more than 12,000 workers, of whom 9,000 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. The workforce employed...in Colombia is still nearly 10,000 workers, but 90% of these are now 'flexible' workers, employed indirectly through various forms of sub-contracting..."

7. The ILO and the 'Investigation' That Never Was

Coke's claims that the United Nations' International Labor Organization is doing an "independent investigation" of the company's past and present labor practices in Colombia have no credibility whatsoever. The company's extensive personnel and financial links with the ILO and other UN agencies make such claims ridiculous, and the ILO itself contradicts Coke's assertion that it is conducting such an investigation.

On April 12, 2006, the ILO's Sally Paxton told Campaign to Stop Killer Coke Director Ray Rogers in a telephone conversation that the ILO would only do an "assessment of current working conditions," not of past labor relations practices. She also insisted that the ILO was not going to conduct "an investigation," adding that there won't even be an "assessment" of the parent company, Coca-Cola. High-level ILO officials confirmed Ms. Paxton's interpretation in December 2006 and January 2007.

The ILO's very structure favors corporate interests. The ILO is made up of 28 representatives of governments, 14 from employers and 14 from labor. Labor observers and advocates who are familiar with the ILO say it's heavily skewed against workers, since most government representatives align themselves with the employers.

Coca-Cola's plans for worldwide growth specifically include partnerships with the United Nations, including a $1.5 million fund to support up to 100 projects over five years. The projects involve education, the environment, culture/arts and sports, but essentially serve as vehicles to promote Coca-Cola beverages to young people, the primary target group for Coke's marketers, through sponsorship of events like the national youth day in Turkey and a music festival called Rock 'n Coke. Because of Coke's partnerships and financial relationships with the United Nations, no arm of the UN could assess Coca-Cola's labor relations and labor rights practices in an impartial, independent manner.

Coca-Cola announced in March 2006 that it had signed on to the UN Global Compact, another public relations scam. Its senior officer, Gavin Power, described the Global Compact as "a voluntary initiative to promote and advance a principles-based approach to corporate responsibility." He emphasized that it "is not a regulatory body nor monitoring instrument...It is a platform for companies to work on universal principles and related challenging issues and improve their performance over time."

�The Global Compact is another public relations vehicle for imperfect companies,� said Ray Rogers. �Nothing is expected of them nor do they expect to do anything to become perfect or even respectable.�

When college students and others campaigning against Coke told the company that any investigation in Colombia must include both current and past issues and that issues relating to the human rights lawsuits already in process can't be excluded, they were rebuffed.

Why should investigators avert their eyes from murders, torture and kidnapping of union workers? Edward E. Potter, Coca-Cola's Director of Global Labor Relations and Workplace Accountability, can't or won't say.

One reason Potter apparently feels comfortable about the ILO's involvement in the controversy is that he is himself a member of its Applications of Conventions and Recommendations Committee. He has been and is currently the head spokesperson for the entire Employers' Group, a powerful role within the ILO structure that allows him to promote the interests of big business and Coca-Cola, in particular.

Potter was involved earlier, in 2005, in the creation of a "Commission" consisting of representatives of major universities and prominent worker rights advocacy organizations that were trying to develop a methodology for evaluating how or whether Coca-Cola aided the paramilitaries. When the commission asserted its independence by kicking Mr. Potter out, so it could then be truly independent, Coca-Cola began backing away from and creating reasons to delay and obstruct any meaningful investigation.

Finally, Mr. Potter insisted that Coke couldn't participate at all unless the attorneys who sued the company agreed that any evidence of Coke's abuses could not be used in their lawsuits. The lawyers refused this demand since compliance would require them to violate the rules of legal ethics, something Mr. Potter knew. Whether such a demand by Coke indicates its guilt is a legitimate question.

The proposed ILO assessment of current conditions still hasn't occurred as this is written in February 2007. If it ever does, it will be exactly what Coca-Cola and Potter have wanted all along: a blatantly biased evaluation that will ignore past abuses and will not hold the company accountable in any meaningful way.

posted by Alan  # 1:14 PM