by Mark Thomas
The meeting was to be held at the paras’ local hang out, an ice-cream shop in Carepa, called La Cieba. Two other union men arrived with Manco to find Cepillo at a table with a group of paras. The killers’ commander was a chubby man, aged about 25, wearing jeans and a short-sleeve shirt. The shutters were rolled down, the shop was closed. Manco sat opposite the chubby leader. There were no pleasantries, no one drank, no one smoked, there was none of the usual Hollywood paraphernalia you might expect with such a scene, just an ice-cream shop with armed killers at a table.
‘Cepillo said that they had killed Isidro, and they said it was them who burned down the headquarters. And they said that the union was over, that the union was the guerrillas,’ said Manco. As they sat in the shuttered shop the paras calmly issued their orders for what was to follow. ‘We could have killed you all today,’ said Cepillo, ‘but we can be reasonable.’
The following morning the killers’ version of being reasonable was unveiled for all to see, at 9am they assembled all the Sinaltrainal members at the Coca-Cola bottling plant. There the paras made them to sign letters resigning from the union. The letters were prepared by ‘Rigoberto Marín, who worked for the company…He gave them out one after the other, like “here’s yours, here’s yours”,’ said Manco.
The union in Carepa was smashed. The leadership was in hiding and exiled - they had fled or were dead. The members, cowed by guns, threats and intimidation, had signed away their rights. Meanwhile the managers of the Coca-Cola bottling plant surveyed the wreckage of the union and promptly introduced a pay cut to the workers. According to Sinaltrainal the wages dropped from between $380 - $450 a month for experienced workers, to $130 a month: Colombia’s minimum wage. When asked about this drop, Coke failed to respond. Given that they would have met resistance to this if Sinaltrainal was still there, it is fair to say that, from the point of view of company profits, murder and arson did have an upside.
Back in the union office sitting at a table littered with empty coffee cups and grains of sugar, Manco and Giraldo finish their tales as all exiles do, by talking of the life they fled to. They lived for six months in the building they now tell their stories from - the union office - there was nowhere else for them to go. Both men were in the office when the paramilitaries’ package arrived containing the letters of resignation they had made the union members in Carepa sign. The paras even included blank copies for Manco and Giraldo to sign. Eventually Giraldo’s family left Carepa to come and join him in Bogota and he moved out of the union office. He has not had a full-time job since. ‘I haven’t been able to earn much. I have just been doing odd jobs with three- or four-month contracts…sometimes days go by here where we have no food, because sometimes there’s work and sometimes there’s not, it’s not like it was.’
I asked Manco if he has stayed in Bogota since leaving Carepa.
‘Yes, of course, but it’s horrible. I don’t always get food here, I lost my house, my family, and everything.’
‘Your family?’
‘They didn’t want to come so they stayed there, the mother took the children there. And of course I can’t go there, I haven’t been there.’
I watch Giraldo leave. Instinctively and without display he stands by the front door of the building with his coat zipper pulled up tight, tugs his collar around his neck, opens the door, looks across the street and then along it. He steps out through it glancing both ways and then slips away, a hunched silhouette heading to a home in exile, to wake to a dawn of few certainties. Where work may or not be found, where bellies may or may not be empty; where dead friends’ faces haunt posters and memories of home are full of longing. And if you ask ‘Why did he fight so hard and take so many risks to be in a trade union?’ The answer is this: so he would not have to live the life he does now.
COCA-COLA TRADE UNIONISTS KILLED IN COLOMBIA
AVELINO ACHICANOY ERAZO Worked at Embotelladora Nariñense SA - COCA-COLA (Nariño Bottlers Ltd) in Pasto. Killed on 30 July 1990. Sintradingascol leader (Colombian National Union of Fizzy Drinks Workers).
JOSÉ ELEASAR MANCO DAVID Worked at Bebidas y Alimentos de Urabá SA - COCA-COLA (Drinks and Foods of Urabá) Carepa. Killed 8 April 1994. Sinaltrainal member.
LUIS ENRIQUE GIRALDO ARANGO Worked at Bebidas y Alimentos de Urabá SA - COCA-COLA, Carepa. Killed 20 April 1994. Sinaltrainal organiser.
LUIS ENRIQUE GÓMEZ GRANADO Worked at Bebidas y Alimentos de Urabá SA - COCA-COLA, Carepa. Killed 23 April 1995. Sinaltrainal regional union leader.
ISIDRO SEGUNDO GIL Worked at Bebidas y Alimentos de Urabá SA - COCA-COLA in Carepa. Killed on 6 December 1996. Sinaltrainal leader and negotiator. ALCIRA DEL CARMEN HERRERA PEREZ, Isidro’s wife, was murdered on 18 November 2000 in Apartado.
JOSÉ LIBARDO HERRERA OSORIO Head of Technical Maintenance at Bebidas y Alimentos de Urabá SA - COCA-COLA in Carepa. Killed 26 December 1996. As a manager he had been very supportive of Sinaltrainal.
ADOLFO DE JESÚS MÚNERA LÓPEZ Worked at Coca-Cola plant in Barranquilla, Atlántico department. Killed 31 August 2002. At the time of the killing he had been sacked but had been reinstated after legal process. Sinaltrainal union leader.
ÓSCAR DARÍO SOTO POLO Worked at Embotelladoras Román SA - COCA-COLA (Román Bottlers) Montería plant killed on 21 June 2001. Union leader of Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de las Bebidas en Colombia (Colombian National Union of Drinks Industry Workers) ‘Sinaltrainbec’.
Source: Andy Higginbottom at the Colombia Solidarity Campaign
3
SERIOUS CHARGES
New York, USA
‘Serious charges demand a serious response…we take accusations regarding labour rights violations seriously…’
Neville Isdell, CEO The Coca-Cola Company1
‘Serious charges demand a serious response,’ said the company CEO Neville Isdell, referring to allegations of abuse by Coke’s Colombian bottlers, in what seems a reasonably appropriate statement; though in all honesty he was hardly likely to say, ‘We lost a couple of Latinos, who gives a fuck.’ However, serious statements deserve serious evaluation. According to Sinaltrainal, the murders at the Carepa plant were part of a countrywide campaign against the union. These are the serious charges they make:• A worker is killed inside the bottling plant, six other union leaders are killed by paramilitaries, many are killed during, or approaching, negotiations with the bottlers and during industrial action. The bottlers are alleged to have contracted with or directed the paramilitaries.
• Bottlers are accused of union busting, intimidation and harassment of workers.
• The security manager at the bottler company’s Bucaramanga plant falsely accused union leaders of terrorism, resulting in the workers being imprisoned for six months for a crime they did not commit; one was tortured.
• Paramilitaries operated from within the Barrancabermeja plant at a time when attempts were made on the life of the union leader. It is alleged that this was with the knowledge of a plant manager.
These would, by most people’s standards, qualify as serious charges. So what was The Coca-Cola Company’s serious response? Did the Company itself investigate the allegations of collusion between plant managers and the paramilitaries? The answers are: not much and no.
The Company website proudly displays the first and only public audit by The Coca-Cola Company into their bottlers in Colombia.2 This was conducted in spring 2005, over eight years after Isidro Gil was shot dead. Intriguingly, the audit conducted by the Cal Safety and Compliance Corporation does not examine or investigate any charges of collusion or paramilitary activity in the plants. Focusing on the plants compliance issues, the report does however note several health and safety breaches, including:• the absence of a protective guard on a syrup container at one plant
• the incorrect number of fire extinguishers at two plants
• incorrect documentation for an employee at one plant3
Fortunately there is no need to get up a petition or st
art a letter-writing campaign, as I am happy to report that the appropriate remedial action has been taken so as to comply with health and safety regulations. However, reassuring as it is to know that a protective guard now covers the syrup container in the Bogota plant, there still remains the outstanding ‘serious charges’ to be addressed by the company. To this day The Coca-Cola Company has not investigated the alleged links of Colombian bottling plant managers with the paramilitaries, despite a man being shot dead under their logo.
From the outset the first line of defence coming out of Atlanta was the denial of ‘any connection to any human-rights violation of this type’ and to distance themselves from the bottlers saying, ‘The Coca-Cola Company does not own or operate any bottling plants in Colombia’.4 This is the standard use of the ‘Coca-Cola system’ operating as an entity but claiming no legal lines of accountability to The Coca-Cola Company. TCCC does not own the bottling plants, the bottlers operate under a franchise. But the case here is similar to that of Gap and Nike in the 1990s. In these particular instances the clothes giants had outsourced their production to factories in the developing world that operated sweatshop conditions. It was not Nike or Gap who forced the workers to do long hours for poor pay, it was the contractors. However, campaigners insisted the companies should have enforceable human rights standards applied throughout the supply chain, compelling the companies to take action. The argument was then, and is now, that no matter where the human rights abuse occurred, if it’s your name on the label then you’re responsible for sorting it out. In The Coca-Cola Company’s case the argument is made more compelling by the fact that, although they franchised Coke production to Bibedas y Aliementos and Panamco, they held 24 per cent of
Panamco’s shares5 - a controlling interest. Which gives them considerable clout in how the business is run.
This view of the Company’s responsibilities is shared, in particular, by Councilman Hiram Monserrate from New York City. He represents a large Latino community and through some of his constituents became aware of the situation. Appalled, he took up the matter and has investigated Coca-Cola’s response to the events. And so I visit New York for the first time, to talk to him.
I love New York. I nearly bought the I ♡ NY T-shirt but for adhering to the only rule of fashion that I know: namely don’t buy things worn by people you don’t like. Walking around the place I keep pointing and shouting, ‘That’s where King of Comedy was filmed…see, that’s the bridge in that scene from Saturday Night Fever…if that’s Ben Stiller let’s heckle him…’. The city is a vast historic map of films and music. I get a coffee on the Bowery hoping that the Ramones once sat here before appearing at CBGBs. Lexington gets me singing the Velvet Underground and Central Park has me quoting Woody Allen.
Tall apartment blocks are dotted with white air-conditioning units sticking out of the windows, as if a swarm of flying fridges have just crashed straight into the side of the building. And the sight of them is suddenly wonderful. The plethora of pointy water towers stuck on rooftops like fat fireworks on stilts is amazing. I’m happy enough to gaze idly at hanging traffic lights suspended over the streets or fire escapes and ladders that criss-cross entire blocks. I am a fan. So much so that when I wander past a blue wooden police barrier outside a mosque, presumably ready to corral anti-Islamic demonstrators, I instinctively squeal, ‘Oh look bigotry…they have that here too.’
My visit coincides with Super Tuesday, the big day in the US Primaries when Democrats and Republicans vote to decide who will be their presidential candidate. It is the Democratic race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that focuses New York. Stickers on cars proclaim ‘I’m backing Billary!’ and Obama’s face decorates Brooklyn windows.
I’d gone into a deli to eat and the primaries were the talk of the lunch queue. Now, being English, I’m a little baffled by the number of decisions required to get a sandwich: you have to choose your bread, spread, filling, dressing, condiments, extras and opt out of getting a pickle. Essentially you have to tell them how to make the bloody thing, leaving me momentarily resentful and wanting to shout, ‘I’m not Jamie Oliver, all I want is a sandwich!’
As I ponder on rye or sourdough a man behind me strikes up a conversation. He’s on a wheelie Zimmer frame, has a face like a tomato with stubble and is dressed in a green jacket. He looks like he should smell of alcohol, though he actually doesn’t.
‘Yew voted today?’ He says as I catch his eye.
‘No, I’m not eligible to vote, I’m English.’
‘Yew want me t’vote for yew?’ he says in a kindly manner, ‘I’ll vote for yew. Who yew want me t’vote for?’
‘No, I’m all right, thank you.’
‘I voted twice already today, I did it for my friend here,’ he says, gesturing to a man beside him in a black pleated leather jacket and a bobble hat. ‘They didn’t recognise me,’ he continues.
‘They didn’t?’
‘Nah, one time I went in backwards.’
New York City Councilman Hiram Monserrate represents District 21 in Queens. Queens is across the East river from Manhattan Island, but on his side of the river the houses and salaries are much, much smaller. Queens is dirty and quirky. It is essentially a working-class area, you can tell this by the significant increase in ‘Beware of the Dog’ signs. Households tend to sit on the side streets off the main road, expressways tend to sit over the main roads and the traffic from LaGuardia airport sits on top of it all.
Just off East Elmhurst, on one of those side streets, sits Councilman Monserrate’s office, opposite a parking bay for school buses. It has a sign in the glass front window, ‘Por favor registrese para votar hoy’, a polite reminder to his Latino electorate: don’t forget to vote, folks. Inside, some plastic chairs and a sofa provide a waiting area for his constituents. The rest of the office is small and open plan by necessity.
Six staff members sit at desks, handling casework, phoning housing departments, debt agencies or whoever needs to be called off or brought in. Councilman Monserrate’s office is tucked away at the back.
The councilman does not appear to be a typical corporate critic, if indeed such a thing exists. Monserrate served in the US Marine Corps for four years, spent twelve years in the NYPD and to be honest he looks like his CV. He is stocky and strong-jawed, with a neck you could moor tugboats to; and I’d bet if you were able to snap him in half you’d find the word COP running all the way through his body, like a stick of Brighton rock. His politics is that of a Queens Democrat, a combination of liberalism on issues like immigration mixed with a strong populist streak. He appeared on breakfast TV pitching a notion that New York should be nicknamed Gotham City, as he was inspired to fight crime by his boyhood hero Batman. The idea has all the political rigour of renaming London Beanotown, but in terms of political PR it underlines his police credentials and ‘record of public service’. So in the context of American politics he is not yet part of the establishment but boy, does he want to be.
Despite this, the councilman has been a persistent critic of The Coca-Cola Company since 2004. He worked with New York City’s pension fund about how they might use their stockholding in Coke to influence the company, tabling critical resolutions at shareholders’ meetings. He has spoken out against the company on US campuses, with students subsequently boycotting Coke.
‘So you want to talk about Coca-Cola…’ he says as he drops his black overcoat across one chair, scrapes another across the floor and leans back in it.
The councilman was introduced to Sinaltrainal’s officials in New York in 2003 and found their tale compelling enough to help organise a delegation to Colombia in 2004. ‘My initial impulse: I wanted to know more. At the very least it seemed to me there had to be some truth in what the workers were telling me. That labour reps and workers were being killed.’
While planning for the delegation, Councilman Monserrate decided he ought to invite The Coca-Cola Company along too. ‘We have to have some fairness,’ he explains, ‘the
y were invited to participate. They were invited to visit the plants with us. They were invited to join the meetings and join in the discussions. They could have been a partner in this delegation: they refused.’
Whether he asked them out of a political desire to be seen to be fair or a genuine sense of fair play, I don’t know, but nevertheless the Company declined the offer. ‘I wasn’t trying to malign Coca-Cola or FEMSA6...I’m not a socialist revolutionary.
I am an elected official from New York City.’ He says this as if one might harbour a notion the breeding grounds of Trotskyism are to be found in the US Marines and New York Police Department, two bodies not noted for their adherence to dialectical materialism. In truth it is precisely because of his relative orthodoxy that I want to talk to him about what the delegation found out and why he seems to be picking a fight with the company that is so symbolic of America.