posted April 13, 2006 (May 1, 2006 issue)
The Case Against Coke
Michael Blanding
.. "Coke has a long history of being a virulently antiunion company," says Lesley Gill, an anthropology professor at American University who has twice been to Colombia to document the violence. "It has been calculated and targeted, and it usually takes place during periods of contract negotiations." A 2004 investigation directed by New York City Councilman Hiram Monserrate documented 179 "major human rights violations" against Coke workers, along with numerous allegations that "paramilitary violence against workers was done with the knowledge of and likely under the direction of company managers." The violence has taken a toll on the union. In the past decade, SINALTRAINAL's Coke membership has fallen from about 1,400 to less than 400 ..
While student campaigns have mostly focused on the abuses in Colombia, some have included demands from other countries as well. Few companies have the kind of global reach of Coca-Cola, which has set up a network of bottling partners around the world that allows it to maximize profits by keeping distribution costs down and exploiting lax environmental and labor laws abroad. The first rumblings came from India, where villagers near several Coke bottling plants reported that their wells were dropping, sometimes more than fifty feet; meanwhile, the water they were able to get was tainted by foul-smelling chemicals. Starting in 2002 villagers near Plachimada, in the southern state of Kerala, began a permanent vigil outside the local plant. They finally won an indefinite closure in March 2004, although the case remains an issue in the Kerala High Court ..
At around the same time, new evidence of Coke's antilabor tactics emerged in Indonesia, where, according to USAS, workers were intimidated when they attempted to unionize; and in Turkey, where more than 100 union members were fired and then clubbed and tear-gassed by police during a protest. This past November the ILRF filed another lawsuit against Coca-Cola, based on the claims of the Turkish workers. By that point, students had had enough; all but one left the commission ..
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060501/blanding CUNY Law Bans Coca-Cola, Citing Unfair Labor Practices
By DEBORAH KOLBEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
May 5, 2006
Coca-Cola is being expelled from the CUNY School of Law.
Citing unfair labor practices at a company bottling plant in Colombia, the law school in Queens voted this week to ban its beverages in all campus vending machines. Student groups are prohibited from using school money to buy any Coca-Cola products for meetings or other events.
"We are a public interest law school and this was just such a glaring inconsistency with the reason that most people are at CUNY Law School," a first year student who worked on the anti-Coke campaign, Ashley Grant, said.
The director of a group called the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, Ray Rogers, said the CUNY Law School decision was significant because it is part of one of the largest urban campuses in the country ...
http://www.nysun.com/article/32262May 29, 2006
Coca-Cola Haiti Violates Labor Rights
Brewery Workers in Northern Haiti Call for Letters
Workers at the Brasserie de La Couronne, S.A./Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Haiti brewery in Cap-Haïtien in northern Haiti report that management is continuing a pattern of abuses that includes wages below the legal minimum, violations of the overtime law and the irregular firing of Philomé Cémérant, the secretary of the newly formed Batay Ouvriye May First Union Federation/Union of La Couronne Brewery Northern Branch Workers ..
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/05/29/18258881.phphttp://www.grassrootshaiti.org 
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