Coca Cola

Coca-Cola Workers Fighting For Their Rights In Haiti, Indonesia, Ireland, And The USA Still Need Your Support

November 7, 2019 Staff, Iuf.org Resist! Class Struggle, Coca Cola, Haiti, Indonesia, Ireland, United States, Workers Rights and Jobs

Coca-Cola continues to violate the fundamental rights of workers in Haiti, Indonesia, Ireland and the USA. CLICK HERE to learn more and to send a message to Coca-Cola's CEO and Chairman James Quincey. In Haiti Coke's bottler La Brasserie de la Couronne continues to systematically deny workers their right to form and be represented by a union, SYTBRACOUR (read more here). Haiti is a dangerous place to live and to work. Companies should, at a minimum, be alert to this situation and exercise maximum due diligence. In July 2019, a Coca-Cola truck driver was shot in his vehicle while at work.

Right To Life And Water: Drought And Turmoil For Coke And Pepsi In Tamil Nadu

May 27, 2017 Keith Schneider, www.circleofblue.org Resist! Coca Cola, Drought, Pepsi, Water

By Keith Schneider for Circle of Blue - TIRUNELVELI, India – Just after dusk on a warm mid-January evening, attorney DA Prabakar greeted several visitors on the dimly lit street in front of his home here in southern India. The air was desert-dry and dusty in this rain-scarce river city. All of Tamil Nadu, from Chennai in the north to this city of 500,000 residents near India’s southern tip, has wilted in the state’s worst drought in 140 years. The Thamirabarani River, which runs through the city and is famed for its steady flow even in dry years, meandered through a sickly progression of shallow ponds and mudflats. All of Tamil Nadu, from Chennai in the north to this city of 500,000 residents near India’s southern tip, has wilted in the state’s worst drought in 140 years. A lawyer with decades of courtroom experience, Prabakar was in high spirits despite the wearying dry spell. The law office on his home’s ground floor is a hive of legal activism. He explained that the next morning the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court would consider motions in his high-profile “public interest litigation,” a judicial complaint filed last summer that temporarily halted the city’s Coca-Cola and PepsiCo bottling plants from drawing water from the Thamirabarani.

Russell Mokhiber: Why Should W.Va. Help Coca-Cola Peddle Obesity?

September 7, 2015 Russell Mohkiber, www.wvgazettemail.com Organize! Coca Cola, Public Health, West Virginia

By Russell Mohkiber in West Virginia Gazette Mail - The West Virginia School of Public Health Should be taking the lead. Instead, according to a report in the New York Times last month, “Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets,” Coca-Cola has given money to Dr. Gregory Hand, now the dean of the West Virginia School of Public Health, to fund a non-profit group — the Global Energy Balance Network — to promote the view that “weight-conscious Americans are overly fixated on how much they eat and drink while not paying enough attention to exercise.” Health experts contend that Coke is “using the new group to convince the public that physical activity can offset a bad diet despite evidence that exercise has only minimal impact on weight compared with what people consume,” the Times reported.

Georgia Activists Challenge Coke’s Support For ‘Heritage Of Hate’

August 28, 2015 Kate Aronoff, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Coca Cola, Corporatism, Georgia, History, Racial Justice

By Kate Aronoff in Waging Non-Violence - At a towering 1,600 feet, Stone Mountain is a majestic outgrowth from the suburbs of Atlanta. Less majestic, for many, is the three acre bas-relief monument to the Confederacy on its north side. Originally forged by Mount Rushmore creator Gutzon Borglum, the project was abandoned over creative differences in the 1920s, only to be completed once Stone Mountain’s grounds were purchased by the state of Georgia in 1958. The carving memorializes Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and the famed secessionist generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee, who led the charge to maintain slavery in the South. Fittingly, Stone Mountain has long been a home to the South’s nostalgic white supremacists, and in 1915 became the birthplace of the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan.

How The Soda Industry Is Influencing Medical Organizations

October 22, 2014 Richard Bruno and Kevin Burns, www.ucsusa.org Organize! Coca Cola, Corporatism, Medicine

With increasing scrutiny over the dire health consequences of sugar-sweetened beverages, soda manufacturers have turned to obscuring the science, confusing the consumer, and sponsoring medical organizations whose recommendations influence both providers and patients. Unfortunately these corporate partnerships are conflicts of interest that undermine the credibility of the organizations and stymie reform. Most notably, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) has had acorporate partnership with The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) since 2009, which has resulted in educational materials and underwriting of their patient information website FamilyDoctor.org.

This Is What It’s Like To Sit Through An Anti-Union Meeting At Work

September 4, 2014 Dave Jamieson, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Coca Cola, Fedex, Labor, Staples, Unions

One day last fall, employees of Iron Mountain, a Boston-based records management company, were subjected to what union organizers like to call a captive audience meeting. Employers hold these anti-union meetings once they've gotten wind of an organizing campaign in their midst. Whether the meeting is led by in-house managers or outside consultants, the gist is usually the same: Joining a union is totally your call. But it's a really bad idea, and we're disappointed it's come to this. The spiel at an Iron Mountain facility near Atlanta, where the Teamsters were trying to organize truck drivers, wasn't unlike the anti-union speeches commonly delivered at other companies. What made this meeting different was that a pro-union worker in attendance was surreptitiously recording it. "We have the right to educate you," the Iron Mountain manager lectured his employees. "And we're going to exercise that right." Ben Speight, a Teamsters organizer in Atlanta, later posted the audio to SoundCloud, and it was picked up by Gawker, Salon, Al Jazeera and The Huffington Post, among other outlets. Since then, Speight has obtained a litany of similar recordings from meetings purportedly held at more recognizable companies, including Coca-Cola, Staples and FedEx.

Coca-Cola Forced To Abandon $25 Million Project In India

September 3, 2014 India Resource Center, www.indiaresource.org Resist! Coca Cola, Corporatism, India, Water

The Coca-Cola company has been forced to abandon a $25 million newly built bottling plant in Mehdiganj, Varanasi, India as the result of a sustained campaign against the company's plans. The $25 million plant - which was a significant expansion to its existing plant in Mehdiganj - had already been fully built and the company had also conducted trial runs, but could not operate commercially as it did not have the required permits to operate. Coca-Cola required permissions, or "No Objection Certificate (NOC)", from the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) - the national groundwater regulatory agency, and the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) - the statewide pollution regulatory agency. The Central Ground Water Authority rejected Coca-Cola's application to operate for its new facility on July 21, 2014, and had sought time till today, August 25, 2014, to announce its decision before the National Green Tribunal (NGT), India's green court. Somehow having learnt that its application had been rejected, in order to save itself major embarrassment, Coca-Cola sent a letter to the CGWA on Friday, August 22, 2014 - two days before the rejection was to be made public on Monday, August 25, 2014 - stating that it was "withdrawing" its application.

Coca Cola’s Evil Empire: Campaign To Stop Coke

June 16, 2014 Bernard Alvarez, www.thegic.org Resist! Coca Cola, Corporatism, Labor, police brutality, Strike, Unions, Violence

Dear Sisters & Brothers: Strong labor unions are critical to improve wages, working conditions and human rights for all workers and for democracies to flourish. For workers in Colombia and Guatemala, a strong union can also mean the difference between life and death. The Campaign to Stop Killer Coke originated to stop the gruesome cycle of violence against union leaders and organizers in Colombia in efforts to crush their union, SINALTRAINAL. Since then, violence, abuse and exploitation leveled against Coke workers and communities have been uncovered in other countries as well, notably China, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, Mexico and Turkey. Colombia In Colombia, the importance of winning the struggle against Coke was best summed up by SINALTRAINAL Vice President Juan Carlos Galvis when he said: "If we lose this fight against Coke, First we will lose our union, Next we will lose our jobs, And then we will all lose our lives!"

Russian Food Patriots Blow Up Bottles Of Coke

June 9, 2014 Michael Pizzi, www.america.aljazeera.com Resist! Coca Cola, Protest, Russia

All across Moscow, “food patriots” are blowing up bottles of Coke in a carbonated, high-fructose protest against the United States. Pictures and videos uploaded on VK, Russia’s version of Facebook, show dozens of young protesters — sporting shirts with slogans like “Defend our children from overseas poison” and “I refuse Cola for Russia, I’ll drink to your health in kvass instead” — lining up plastic bottles of coke and, in unison, dropping in pieces of Mentos candy to chemically erupt a three-foot-high caramel-colored fountain. The tried-and-true juvenile party trick, according to activist group Food Patriotism, underlines the corrosive nature of the beverage that has long been synonymous with U.S. capitalism. “This is an educational program for parents,” one activist told DNI news. “Imagine that happening in your kid’s stomach.” Though they purport to be advocates for children’s health (a recent demonstration took place on Russia’s Children’s Day) and only target unhealthy, processed foods, Food Patriotism apparently gets its name from the “culinary diplomacy” movement, pioneered by the controversial ex-head of Russia’s Federal Consumer Protection Service, Gennady Onishchenko.

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