Coca Cola Company’s workers’ rights abuses get spotlight
By Staff Reporter
The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant,Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations says The Coca-Cola Company is becoming a serial human rights abuser of its workers’ rights globally.
In an online campaign meant to rally individuals to take action against the world’s best known carbonated drinks brand, IUF’s Eric Lee, charged that human rights abuses were accumulating at The Coca-Cola Company.
“That makes Coke a serial offender when it comes to failing to respect the human rights of workers and acting to remedy abuses. The right of all workers to form, join and be represented by a union for collective bargaining is an internationally recognised fundamental human right,” Lee stated in his clarion call. “The International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) has launched a major online campaign in response to these recent developments: In Indonesia, Coca-Cola bottler, Amatil, pursues its long-running attack on the rights of independent, democratic trade unions.”
In Haiti, IUF alleged further, its bottler La Brasserie de la Couronne continues to systematically deny workers their right to form and be represented by a union.
“In the Philippines, major Coca-Cola bottler, FEMSA, is violating fundamental rights while it brutally destroys employment. Mass layoffs with little explanation or justification have been accompanied by a refusal to engage in meaningful collective bargaining with the Federation of Coca-Cola Unions (FCCU) that represents a majority of Coca-Cola workers in that country,” the call to action reads. “In the USA, the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Northern New England hired an expensive union-busting consultancy firm.While it has been repeatedly informed of these ongoing rights violations by the IUF, The Coca-Cola Company has failed to take any meaningful action to remedy the abuses.
Lee argued that Coke’s systematic human rights due diligence failure makes it complicit in these abuses, and a rights abuser in its own right.
“Abuses are not limited to the bottling system. In Ireland, The Coca-Cola Company had earlier closed its directly owned, strongly unionised concentrate plant (where the ‘secret formula’ syrup is manufactured) and has recently announced the closure of a second union plant while refusing to engage with the union at the remaining concentrate plant, where a large number of production workers want to be represented by the IUF-affiliated SIPTU,” Lee outlined. “Please send a message to The Coca-Cola Company, insisting the company act to remedy the growing number of human rights violations with the Coca Cola system.”
