Free Belching Out the Devil by Mark Thomas Page A

ruling, District Court Judge Martinez ruled that the case against the bottlers Panamco and Bebidas y Alimentos can go ahead - the first time a US judge has allowed a case against a company for alleged human rights violations committed overseas to be heard under the ATCA. 18
    But the judge dismissed the case against The Coca-Cola Company on the grounds that the ‘bottlers’ agreement’ did not give the Company explicit control of labour issues over the bottler.
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    2006 District Court Judge Martinez reversed his previous decision and dismissed the case against the bottlers, now arguing that the case can’t be brought in the US because of ‘lack of...jurisdiction’. 19
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    2008 Sinaltrainal lawyers submitted an appeal on both rulings on 31 March 2008 20 and a result is expected by the lawyers in 2009. If successful it means the case can be heard and Sinaltrainal will have their day in court in the USA with The Coca-Cola Company and their bottlers.

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    THE HUSH MONEY THAT DIDN’T STAY QUIET

    â€˜We envisage a world in which …we improve lives in every community [we] touch.’
    TCCC Strategic Vision 1
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    N eville Isdell, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Coca-Cola Company from 2004-2008 and current chairman of the Board of Directors, is a tall balding man whose hair leans to ginger and is cropped short in the way soldiers and men of a certain age prefer. His body is trim but his face is baggy and craggy; its shape is that of Charlie Brown, the Peanuts cartoon character, but with the muscle tone of Keith Richards. In short, he looks like a typical upper management man - and I mean that in a pejorative sense. At the 2005 Annual Meeting of shareholders, Isdell stated, ‘there are no threats or attempts by management to attack or intimidate workers for being affiliated with a union or for being a union organiser or for being a union official.’ He went on to say that, ‘the people employed by our Colombian bottling partners work in facilities where their labor and human rights
are respected and protected.’ It was a noteworthy event, as the CEO of the world’s most popular brand felt compelled to defend the company but the true significance of his robust public pronouncements can only be measured by what the company was doing in private.
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    In Colombia the pressure on Sinaltrainal was immense: the intimidation of workers by the paras was relentless, and the company’s drive to casualise the workforce was driving down union membership. ‘Every time we recruit new workers and members they get sacked,’ said Carlos Olaya, the union’s researcher. Indeed Councilman Monserrate’s delegation claimed that Coca-Cola FEMSA, ‘continually pressured workers to resign their union membership and their contractual guarantees. Since September 2003, they have pressured over 500 workers to give up their union contracts in exchange for a lump-sum payment.’ 2
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    Across the world the boycott met with mixed results. In Ireland Trinity College and the University of Dublin voted to ‘Kick Coke off Campus’ and refused to stock their products in student-run facilities. They were joined in the UK by Sussex, Manchester, Middlesex and the School of Oriental and African Studies, and in the USA by New York University and Michigan University. Even though the contracts with US universities are usually worth millions, kicking Coca-Cola off campuses is unlikely to dent the balance sheet of a company that made $5.98 billion profit last year. 3 But the accompanying media attention and headlines like ‘Is Coke the new McDonald’s’ 4 in the Guardian , and The Nation calling Coke ‘the new Nike’ 5 must surely be part of the reason Coca-Cola has lost billions from their ‘brand value’. Something had to be done.
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    Publicly the company’s attitude to the Colombian issue was not hostile nor was it