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Students Charge Coca-Cola with Persecution

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Fund for Local Reporting! A group of UC Berkeley staff and students, concerned about the persecution of Latin American trade unionists, confronted a Coca-Cola Company representative this week at a campus meeting about the abuses.

The Atlanta-based multinational beverage conglomerate has drawn protests from human rights advocates who say managers at some of the company’s bottling plants in Colombia collude with paramilitaries to intimidate and murder union leaders fighting for improved working conditions.

S’bu Mngadi, director of media relations for Coca Cola, spoke Wednesday night at the monthly meeting of the Store Operations Board of the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). The board, which consists of six students and five faculty and staff members, oversees campus stores, the Student Union, the ASUC Art Studio and other income-producing activities.

Wednesday’s meeting marks the first time that Coca Cola has visited a university specifically to address the situation at its Colombian factories.

In an interview after the discussion, which was punctuated by challenges from human rights activists, Mngadi said he “appreciated the opportunity to present our side of the story” and reiterated Coca Cola’s position that all “allegations are completely false.”

The board invited the Coca Cola representative to come to campus after student groups pressured the ASUC last year to take a more active role in opposing the company’s alleged involvement in human rights abuses in Colombia. Members of the Colombian Support Network and other campus groups say UC Berkeley, which has a 10-year contract with Coca Cola, should use their leverage to pressure the company to stop the human rights abuses occurring at their factories abroad.

The groups have said they will consider calling for the university to sever its contract with Coca Cola and are encouraging students to take part in the worldwide boycott of Coca Cola products that will begin in July.

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Miami two years ago by the United Steelworkers of America and SINALTRAINAL, a trade union representing 15 percent of all workers of Coca Cola’s Colombian plants, alleges that the company and its Colombian bottlers used paramilitary forces to assassinate, abuse and intimidate union leaders at several Coca Cola plants between 1995 and 1996.

In April, District Judge Jose Martinez dismissed the case against the Coca Cola Company, but allowed the case to proceed against the other defendants named in the suit, including Panamco, Coca Cola’s main Latin American bottler, and Bebidas y Alimentos, which owns the plant at which several trade unionists have been killed. Coca Cola owns 25 percent of the Panamco stock and several of its employees sit on Panamco’s board of directors. Bebidas y Alimentos produces solely Coca Cola products.

At the board meeting Wednesday, Mngadi said that the claims against Coca Cola were politically motivated and that “the allegations are being used for shock value for furthering the objectives of groups who oppose multinational corporations.”

Mngadi said Coca Cola, far from colluding with paramilitaries to commit human rights abuses, is actually a victim of paramilitary violence, which he described as widespread in a country plagued by a breakdown of law and order and not limited to trade unionists.

“We are also at the receiving end of the murders,” he said. “Our senior managers have died. One manager was kidnapped for 15 months.”

Mngadi went over a list of protections and benefits that Coca Cola, its bottlers and the Colombian and U.S. government provide to workers who face threat from paramilitaries, including body guards, armored transportation to and from work, loans to improve safety of union offices, and loans to help threatened workers relocate to safer areas.

He added that Coca Cola has “extensive normal relations” with all 12 of its Colombian unions, which represent 3,000 employees at 20 Coca Cola bottling plants throughout the country.

“Only one trade union of the 12 unions representing Coca Cola workers in Colombia have made these allegations,” Mngadi said, referring to the plaintiff in the lawsuit, SINALTRAINAL. “There is a tiny fraction of workers employed by Coca Cola that is making these allegations. It’s not as if the workers are continually raising these questions.”

He said one of the unions, SINALTRAINBEC, has publicly rejected the allegations made by SINALTRAINAL, and said some branches of SINALTRAINAL oppose the central office’s stance against Coca Cola.

Some Store Operation Board members and most people in the audience said they weren’t convinced by Mngadi’s presentation. One audience member took issue with Coca Cola’s repeated insistence that there is no evidence inculpating the company in trade unionist murders.

“There are ongoing monthly payments from John Ordonez, an official of Panamco, to paramilitary leaders. There have been recent meetings between Panamco and Carlos Castano of ... a paramilitary group,” said Jeremy Blasi, an Oakland resident and UC Berkeley graduate student. “These are specific allegations of human rights abuse, not just flippant remarks by radical groups.”

Blasi, who sat on the committee that drafted the University of California’s anti-sweatshop policy, said Mngadi’s assertion that the claims against the company are simply allegations that have yet to be proven in a court of law shouldn’t stop the university from taking a stand against Coca Cola.

“We don’t wait for a lawsuit to go to completion before we express our concern over human rights abuses,” he said. “Nike was never convicted of using sweatshops in its apparel shops throughout the world but that hasn’t stopped the University of California from taking action to protect Nike workers in factories in Mexico and elsewhere.”

Mngadi said the allegations have been dismissed by the Colombian justice system on two occasions.

Board member Jessica Quindel said she appreciated Coca Cola’s willingness to speak to students, but was not yet convinced that Coca Cola was completely innocent or doing enough to stop the human rights abuses.

“I’m really grateful that they came out, that they realize that this is a big enough issue that they came to campus,” she said. “But I am not satisfied with some of their responses and would like to see them use their privilege more responsibly and not just say, ‘Oh that’s just how it is down there.’ They need to take a role in changing the situation.”

Likewise, Quindel said, students have an obligation to take the issue seriously as well.

“We have a million dollar contract with Coca Cola on this campus,” she said. “And on one hand that’s funds coming into the university, but on the other hand it’s blood money.”