I went to a meeting once with some socialist friends about trade unions in Columbia, where a Columbian trade unionist gave a very moving account of the struggle against corruption and violent oppression in his country.
Its a fact that hundreds of trade unionists go missing there every year, many are killed or never seen again.
It was suggested that Coca Cola was somehow involved (as I believe, were Esso and Shell) in this violence.
Is there any truth to this claim? What exactly is going on in Latin America with the paramilitary groups?
I read recently of “Operation Condor” which an ex-CIA man described as “A counter-insurgency program, masquerading as an anti-narcotics one”. Has this anything to do with it?
To be honest, my first thought was to get out the foil, but there may be something to it.
This site talks about a world wide Coke boycott from last summer based on the murder of several union reps in Columbia.
Columbia does seem to suffer a high rate of union violence, with over 200 deaths in both 2000 and 2001.
Does that mean that somebody at Coca Cola world wide HQ is plotting hits on labour leaders around the world? Doubtful. I’m not sure how Coca Cola SA is related to Coke in the US.
The depressing truth is that strongarm tactics have been used in the past in Latin America to preserve American corporate interests – for instance, the CIA has overthrown governments and supported dictators to keep things running smoothly for the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita). Claiming that Coca-Cola is working with paramilitary dictators is not as tinfoil-hat looney-tunes as it first sounds…
I did extensive research on this very topic about six months ago. The short answer is: no, the Coca-Cola Company is not using paramilitary groups to kill trade unionists in Colombia. However, some of the bottling companies Coca-Cola employs in Colombia have used paramilitary groups to kill trade unionists, and the Coca-Cola Company has not been as diligent as it should have been in protecting these workers.
There are certainly people who believe Coca-Cola itself was behind these killings, but there’s no evidence of that whatsoever. Most of the pro-boycott groups simply allege that the relationship between Coke and the bottlers is so close that Coke is responsible, legally and morally, for what the bottlers do. Coke has won a US federal court case saying otherwise, although this is under appeal.
There is a massive problem in Colombia with trade unionists being assassinated, but the majority of them are public sector employees. Only about 8 cases have been linked to Coke and in some cases it’s a pretty tenuous link (one victim was murdered five years after leaving the bottling company!). Bottom line is, Coke are essentially being made a scapegoat for a problem which they’re really no more than a fringe player in.
I don’t know what to say… Except that its nice to get such a conclusive answer, ruadh.
Is it possible that the assasinations are in fact part of a CIA operation to prevent a socialist revolution? It just seems really unlikely to me that bottling companies (or any company for that matter) would go to such lengths purely to protect business interests from normal trade union activity.
I suppose that it is possible that Coca Cola has not shown as much oversight of its subcontactors in Bolivia as it might. However, I have seen at least one very indirect bit of evidence that tends to not support that.
Northwest Ohio has a lot of tomato farms that supply the raw goods for several large ketchup and soup producers. Most of those farms are harvested by migrant workers, many (most?) from Mexico. Several years ago, Coke gobbled up one of those “soup” companies and the word went out that the workers were doomed. Instead, Coke went past the “soup” company, directly to the farm management people, and declared that the farmers were going to have to clean up their act regarding the services they provided their workers, making sure that health services were available and that the kids could get into schools instead of working alongside the parents, and similar things.
Now, it is possible that Coca Cola behaved that way in the U.S. to avoid being dragged into lawsuits while they have no such fear in South America. However, it remains that Coke initiated the reforms without any visible external pressures.
I’d heard these rumors before, but never took the time to investigate it myself. It’s good to know this particular company isn’t so evil, especially since I like drinking soda, and Coke has significant ties to the United Methodist Church, which I support.
ruadh, I’d like to know more about this. Do you have any sources that are easily available either online or from a public library and that would be either quick or interesting reading?
Just to clarify, the connections between Coke and the UMC are largely historical, through the Candler family, and through ties, including some stock ownership, with Emory University (which also has strong ties to the Candler family, at least historically). Sorry for the hijack, I just don’t want to be responsible for some new rumor like that urban legend that claims the Mormons own Pepsi. Coke is a publically traded company with no religious affiliation.
Coca-Cola did take some steps to protect its Colombian workers, although the workers themselves say the steps were insufficient. My reason for saying that they weren’t diligent enough is that they denied knowledge of the threat the workers were under. However, the employees submitted to the US court copies of the letters they had written Coca-Cola about it (which Coca-Cola denied receiving) and, quite simply, the sheer numbers of trade unionists that have been killed in Colombia over the past decade makes it pretty much impossible to believe the Colombia branch of Coke didn’t know there was a problem.
Alan Smithee, when I get to work I’ll email you the report I did on the subject, which has about a dozen web pages cited.
