quote:
Coca-Cola workers accused of terrorismCoca-Cola accuse us falsely of being guerrillas or terrorists, says the
leader of Colombia’s Coke workers. According to trade union leader
Javier Correa, employees of the US soft drink giant have been victims of
sexual harassment, 9 assassinations, 67 death threats and kidnappings,
all executed by paramilitaries and obliging many workers to quit the
union. The International Foodworkers Union is playing a disappointing
role.
30.11.2003 (By SINALTRAINAL)
Read the chilling account, sent to ANNCOL by SINALTRAINAL Union leader
Javier Correa:
PUBLIC COMMUNIQUÉ FROM SINALTRAINAL
This communiqué aims to make a number of clarifications in response to
the letter from Martin Norris, Director of Communications of Coca Cola
Great Britain.
In spite of all our denouncements, demands and petitions to the
government o safeguard our lives and trade union activity, the same
modus operandi continues. The aggression is accentuated each time we
enter the annual negotiation round within the collective agreement, or
each time the Coca Cola corporation implements restructuring that
affects the workers and SINALTRAINAL.
"We are going to crush you!"
This is shown by recent events:
* On 22nd August 2003 there was an assassination attempt on JUAN CARLOS
GALVIS Vice-president of SINALTRAINAL in Barrancabermeja.
* Then on 10th September 2003, when at 1pm at a place known as Simón
Bolívar Boulevard (the emerald shop) in the city of Barranquilla, four
unknown subjects who had covered their faces with hoods took 15 year old
DAVID JOSE CARRANZA CALLE from the bicycle he was riding. David is the
son of LIMBERTO CARRANZA, a worker in Coca Cola in Barranquilla a
National Leader of SINALTRAINAL.
They forced David Jose into a white van, in which he was driven around,
while he was tortured and interrogated on the whereabouts of his father.
At about 4.30pm they threw David Jose out at a place known as Ahuyama
Canyon, where the youth was picked up by a passer-by and taken to the
police. Meanwhile a telephone call was received at Limberto Carranza's
residence.
The caller said "Son of a bitch trade unionist, we are going to crush
you, and not just you, we are going to attack your home".
* At about 9pm on 11th September in Bucaramanga Coca Cola workers and
local union leaders LUIS EDUARDO GARCIA an JOSÉ DOMINGO FLORES were
together at the entrance to Almendros residences when two subjects set
about them with blows.
* And on 30th October Everth Suárez president of the Cali branch of
SINALTRAINAL who works at the Coca Cola bottling plant in that city
received a death threat.
Armed guards pressurize workers to renounce their contracts
Meantime on 9th September 2003 COCA COLA FEMSA S.A. corporation launched
an offensive in all the Colombia bottling plants, following similar
offensives in 200 and 2001: The corporation enclosed the workers by
force in the factories or in hotels, pressurising them to renounce their
employment contracts in exchange for a one-off payment. They used the
[consultancy] firm called HTM for this, and they posted armed guards at
the doors of the hotel meeting rooms.
Even more sensitive is that the authorities did not act to prevent this
but, on the contrary, they lent themselves to acting in co-ordination
with the employer, pressurising the workers to sign the papers as
happened in Barrancabermeja with SANDRA MARIA PAJARO, an official of the
Ministry of Work and Social Protection.
Using this blackmail, psychological terrorism and illegal procedure,
Coca Cola has converted bottling plants into mere distribution centres,
closing down bottling production in Montería, Cartagena, Valledupar,
Cúcuta, Barrancabermeja, Pereira, Neiva, Villavicencio and Duitama.
After holding the workers on 9th September, from 12th September they
started handing out redundancy notices according to the Ministry of Work
and Social Protection formula. And on 10th September the employer
unjustly sacked two workers, PEDRO ANDRADE and SERGIO SILVA, in the city
of Cúcuta to create fear amongst the workers so that they renounce their
contracts.
"We have seen this coming for years"
This decision of COCA COLA FEMSA S.A. forms part of its cost reduction
strategy, of subcontracting the workforce, eliminating trade union
organisation and the collective work agreement, to concentrate
production in a small number of bottling 'megaplants' with fewer
workers, from which they supply the market through distribution centres.
We have seen this scenario coming for many years. The corporation has
been preparing the way to strike this blow against the workers, and is
now taking advantage of the situation of sharpening unemployment,
poverty and misery in the country handed to it by the government of
Álvaro Uribe Vélez.
This action by Coca Cola as an employer violates Colombian law, since it
closed the bottling plants without following legal process concerning
employer's strike, illegal closures and sackings. For this reason we
have placed motions at the regional offices on the Ministry of Work and
Social Protection for it to intervene against the illegal closures, the
lockout and the boss's strike being executed by COCA COLA FEMSA S.A.,
PANAMCO COLOMBIA S.A., EMBOTELLADORA ROMAN S.A. and/or EMBOTELLADORA DE
SANTANDER S.A.
The corporation is violating the procedures established in the current
Collective Agreements. It cannot sack workers, but must retrain them and
relocate them in a new function.
300 workers continue resisting
Because of the above, and as a demonstration of our good will, we held a
meeting with the vice-president of Coca Cola Femsa S.A. at 3.00pm on
16th September 2003 in Bogotá. We demanded the application of this norm
[in the agreement], but up to now it has not been implemented. In spite
of all the pressure today more than 300 workers continue resisting and
struggling in the factories, but the responses of the management has
been to try and illegally dismantle the machines, as happened on 12th
November 2003 in the Cúcuta and Cartagena factories, where the response
of the workers stopped from carrying out this act.
It is an unethical and immoral abuse to try and justify [these actions
by saying that] it is a problem of generalised violence that persists in
Colombia. This renders invisible the persecution that we the trade
unionists are victims of, resulting in our stigmatisation and
demonisation by employers sectors and the state - as is established in
the security manuals on national security imposed by the USA.
Even less do we accept that the corporation is trying to compete [in
matter of human rights violations] by claiming how many on one side or
the other have been victims, when at root we are people who lend a
service to the corporation through the means of a work contract.
Coca-Cola benefits from murders
What is certain is that Coca Cola corporation has directly or indirectly
benefited, and that we have been the victims of sexual harassment, 9
assassinations, more than 15 imprisonments, 67 death threats,
kidnappings, forced displacements, the setting fire of a trade union
office, all executed by paramilitaries and obliging many workers to
renounce the union.
[We have also suffered] the unjust termination of work contracts, the
subcontracting of more than 88% of the workers and the impact that this
has had on their conditions of life, besides the stigmatisation and
false accusations against the trade unionists, trying to link them with
terrorism and delinquency. It is no lie to say justice is inoperative in
Colombia.
Government officers do not act to prevent these crimes and their authors
have impunity.
We continue in the search for truth, justice and reparations, initiating
a claim in the Florida District Court in the USA against Coca Cola's
bottlers. On 31st March 2003, judge José E. Martínez concluded that the
cases taken out under the Alien Tort Claims Act ("ATCA" concerning
violations of human rights can go forward because, amongst other
reasons, there exists a symbiotic relationship between the
paramilitaries and the [Colombian] state.
Now, they try to criminalize us
But now, as a mechanism of impunity where the victimisers cast
themselves as victims, in an attempt to criminalise our right to claim
justice by taking a case to a US court, Coca Cola's Colombian bottling
companies PANAMCO Colombia S. A. and Embotelladora de Santander S. A.,
(now Coca Cola Femsa S.A.) have through Mr. JAIME BERNAL CUELLAR who
acts as lawyer for the Coca Cola multinational, demanded a warrant
against us who have entered the case in the US, accusing us with the
crimes [under Colombian law] of slander and calumny.
And so Public Attorney 61, Juan Carlos Losada Perdomo proffered a charge
of accusation against LUIS JAVIER CORREA SUAREZ, JORGE HUMBERTO LEAL,
JUAN CARLOS GALVIS, LUIS EDUARDO GARCÍA, ÁLVARO GONZÁLEZ, JOSÉ DOMINGO
FLÓREZ and EDGAR ALBERTO PÁEZ MELO, all members of the leadership of
Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de Alimentos
"SINALTRAINAL".
JAIME BERNAL CUELLAR was, paradoxically, Prosecutor General of the
Nation at the time when several crimes were committed against the
workers and SINALTRAINAL. We protested and sought his intervention but
he never acted.
The efforts that have been made to protect trade unionists have,
firstly, been insufficient.
Secondly, they are a duty of the employer and the state. Thirdly, the
few measures are a result of our struggle and protests, as are the gains
we have achieved in collective agreements to try and minimise risks.
But since the corporation has wanted to portray these gains as the fruit
of its benevolence and not its duty, it is necessary to explain that the
majority of the measures have been put in place by the Colombian state
as a result of all the national and international pressure, and because
the Political Constitution of our country establishes [this duty].
But the attacks have not stopped, so what does it serve to try and show
that trade unionists are being protected when we continue to be
criminalised, persecuted and assassinated for our trade union activity.
"Coke calls us terrorists"
Coca Cola's bottling companies say that they deplore any act of violence
against any trade union leader, but it as been they themselves who
falsely accused us of being guerrillas or terrorists, it is they who are
carrying out anti-union campaigns to avoid workers joining the union, or
pressurising union members to resign.
It is not sufficient that they condemn violence theoretically, they have
to adopt a respectful conduct towards our human rights and repare the
damages suffered by the victims. For some years SINALTRAINAL did not
dare make public denouncements because it waited trustingly for justice
to work, but this did not happen. And so we are now seeking justice,
truth and reparations and above all we count on international
solidarity.
The facts are there. But on each and every occasion we give our evidence
Coca Cola says that it did not happen, but we have lived through with
our flesh and blood these experiences. We have realised that this is a
way of maintaining impunity, to try and make people believe the opposite
of things that really happened by repeating lies indefinitely.
Back-stapped by new-formed yellow unions
Other trade union organisations exist inside Coca Cola's bottling
plants, and they are trying to say that the events that we are
denouncing did not take place. All of these organisations were created
recently and the majority of them did not have any presence where the
crimes were committed.
The International Foodworkers Union does not have the right to interpret
for us and less to lie about what has occurred. They have not been
present in the places where the barbarities took place. It is very easy
to speak from long distance without really knowing what happened.
We do not want to enter into a debate with them because this would
divert attention away from the pressure we are buildning up on Coca Cola
to modify its behaviour in Colombia.
It is true that the US judge removed Coca Cola [the parent company], but
this decision was appealed [and is still pending]. In any case Coca Cola
is directly involved as a shareholder of Panamco and through its control
of the whole process through the franchises. This is not only a legal
matter, but an ethical and moral point as well.
It is not true to say that Colombian justice has not been involved with
the bottling companies. Rather it is precisely the failure of the
justice system in Colombia to act which is responsible for the grave
problem of impunity which allows the intellectual and material authors
of crimes to remain free while committing all forms of abuse.
Yours faithfully,
LUIS JAVIER CORREA SUAREZ President SINALTRAINAL
Bogotá D. C. – Colombia, 18th November 2003
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posted 01 December 2003 01:14 PM
