The Coca-Cola murders
Date: 17 December 2001
After their union leader was gunned down at the gates of the
factory where they worked, Edgar Paez and his coworkers at the Coca-Cola
bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia, tried for four years to get justice in
the country's courts. Instead, some of the workers themselves wound up
behind bars, while they watched the murderers go free.
Believing Colombian courts incapable of ensuring justice, they decided to
haul Coca-Cola Inc. into U.S. courts, with the help of two powerful U.S.
unions. The unions hope the new cross-border strategy will help stop a wave
of murders of union militants at Coca-Cola and other companies in Colombia
that has lasted over a decade.
The Colombian union, SINALTRAINAL, together with the United Steel Workers
of America and the International Labor Rights Fund, has filed in Florida
against Coca-Cola Inc., soft-drink bottler Panamerican Beverages, and
Bebidas y Alimentos, owned by Richard Kirby of Key Biscayne, which operates
the Carepa plant. The three companies are charged with complicity in the
assassination of Colombian union leaders.
Colombian unionists traveled to the United States, gathering support for
the case and future legal actions. On Nov. 19, Paez was joined by James
Hoffa, president of the 1.4 million-member Teamsters Union, and the Rev.
James Orange, an African American civil rights leader, in front of the
World of Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta, Ga., where the multinational company
is based. Hoffa told Coke that "as the union that represents the most
Coca-Cola workers in the world ... we join in demanding that Coke stop the
violence against workers."
The Florida case charges that on the morning of Dec. 5, 1996, a right-wing
paramilitary squad of the United Self Defense Forces (AUC) showed up at the
gate into the Carepa bottling plant. Isidro Segundo Gil, a member of the
union's executive board, went out to see what they wanted. The squad opened
fire, killing him. An hour later, paramilitaries kidnapped another union
leader at his home; he later escaped and fled to Bogota. That evening,
according to the suit, squads broke into the union's office and burned it
down.
The next day, a heavily armed group went inside the bottling plant and
called the workers together. "They said that if they didn't resign by 4
p.m., the same thing would happen to them that happened to Gil -- they
would be killed," recalls Paez.
Rafael Fernandez, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola, says the company's code of
conduct requires respect for human rights. Coke's Colombia spokesperson,
Pedro Largacha, states that "bottlers in Colombia are completely
independent of the Coca-Cola Company."
Bebidas y Alimentos owner Richard Kirby says he has no way to stop the
paramilitaries. "You don't use them, they use you," he says. "Nobody tells
the paramilitaries what to do."
Still, the suit charges that plant manager Ariosto Milan Mosquera, who had
a history of socializing with the paramilitaries, gave them the order to
destroy the union. And, Paez says, Coke benefited from the murders.
"At the time of Gil's death we were involved in negotiations with the
company," he says. "They never negotiated with the union after that.
Twenty-seven workers in 12 departments left the plant and the area. All the
workers had to quit the union to save their own lives, and the union was
completely destroyed."
The suit claims that the company prepared the resignation forms. The
experienced workers, who had been earning $380-$400 a month, were replaced
by new employees making minimum wage, about $130 a month.
"For two months, the paramilitaries camped just outside the plant gate."
Peaz says. "Coca-Cola never complained to the authorities."
The plant's director and production manger were detained along with a local
paramilitary leader during a subsequent investigation by the Colombian
Justice Ministry. All three were later released without charges.
The assassinations were neither the first nor the last among union leaders
in Colombian Coke plants. In 1994, two other union activists, Jose David
and Luis Granado, were also murdered in Carepa, and paramilitaries demanded
that workers quit the union. In 1989, Jose Avelino Chicano was killed in
the Pasto plant. This year a union leader at the Bucaramanga plant, Oscar
Dario Soto Polo, was murdered. When the union denounced the killings, the
plant's chief of security, Jose Alejo Aponte, charged its leaders with
terrorism. Five were jailed for six months. At the Barrancabermeja plant
someone scrawled on the walls, "Get Out Galvis From Coca-Cola, Signed AUC."
Juan Carlos Galvis is the president of the plant's union.
"One of our biggest problems in Colombia is that social protest in general
is being criminalized," Paez says.
"In many ways, transnational corporations virtually govern the states in
which they operate," says Samuel Morales, of the Unified Confederation of
Workers (CUT), the country's largest union federation. "And in our country,
it's become a crime to speak out forcefully against them. They get cheap
labor by weakening unions and getting rid of long-term workers."
By October, 125 Colombian trade union leaders had been murdered this year
alone. Last year's assassinations killed 129. Out of every five trade
unionists murdered in the world, three were Colombian.
Paramilitaries are blamed for almost all trade union assassinations. Robin
Kirk, who monitors human rights abuses in Colombia for Human Rights Watch,
says that there are strong ties between the AUC and the Colombian military.
"The Colombian military and intelligence apparatus has been virulently
anti-Communist since the 1950s," Kirk says, "and they look at trade
unionists as subversives, as a very real and potential threat."
"They believe it's a crime," says Morales, "to present any alternative, any
option for social change. The paramilitaries don't act by themselves. In
Colombia, they're called the army's 'sixth division.'"
Despite the wave of death and violence, U.S. aid to the Colombian armed
forces has grown rapidly. Under Plan Colombia, the United States has
funneled over $1 billion into the country, almost entirely in military
assistance.
Paez says the U.S.-funded drug war is a pretext for protecting
transnational investors. "Plan Colombia's objective is the elimination of
movements for social change in our country. That creates a much more
favorable environment for the exploitation of our natural resources and our
labor force."
One objective of the Coke suit is to pressure the Colombian and U.S.
governments to comply with the conventions of the International Labor
Organization and the Geneva Accords on Human Rights. But Colombian unions
would also like to see those responsible for the murders brought to justice.
"We want to strip off the mask hiding the involvement of transnational
corporations in our internal conflict," Paez explains. "To do this, we need
a judicial forum outside the country, since within Colombia those guilty of
these crimes are treated with impunity. In this particular case, those
responsible include Coca-Cola. But they're not the only company pursuing
policies that violate human rights.
"We're giving our own global answer to their global operations."
For further information
| Contact: |
Phil Davey
|
| Union: |
CFMEU
|
| Phone: |
0414 867188
|
|
