ANTI Coca-Cola Statement

Coca-Cola should not be on campus.
Student Coalition For A Coke Free Campus

The union SINALTRAINAL, representing Coca-Cola workers in Colombia, has reported over 179 human rights violations against its members, including the brutal murder of eight union workers and one union friendly manager since 1989. Workers' testimony reveals the collusion of the paramilitary with the Coca-Cola bottling plant managers. In India, tests conducted by the BBC found cadmium, carcinogens, and lead in the fertilizer Coca-Cola was selling to local farmers.

Coca-Cola has failed to adequately address their long list of global human rights violations. Coca-Cola's recent P.R. campaign claims it has been exonerated in both U.S. and Colombian courts; however, the Colombian courts are ineffective, finding convictions in only 5 of the 4,000 murder cases of Colombian union members. In the U.S., the judge ruling the case removed the Coca-Cola Company from being tried alongside its Colombian subsidiary Coca-Cola FEMSA -- thus the Coca-Cola Company was not proven innocent by any means. The court disregarded the fact that the CEO of the Coca-Cola Company, Douglas Daft, owned 46.6% of the Colombian bottler's voting stock. In addition, the correlation between the violence against Coca-Cola's union workers during times of contract negotiations, and Coca-Cola's benefit from a diminished union with more leverage during negotiations to lower labor costs, both cannot be ignored.

By purchasing Coke products the UCLA community is contributing to the degradation and human rights violations of workers all over the world. The Coke Free Campus Coalition in solidarity with the Coca-Cola workers in Colombia, demand that UCLA remove Coca-Cola products from campus.


For more information: www.cokefreecampus.org.