Coke Further Undermines Colombian Investigation

"Employers led by a Coca-Cola executive [Ed Potter] stopped the International Labour Organisation examining violations of workplace rights in Colombia..."

The Sydney Morning Herald [1] , June 6, 2007

From Killercoke.com, June 14 - It has once again become painfully clear that The Coca-Cola Co. and Ed Potter, Coke's Director of Global Labor Relations, continue to use the International Labor Organization of the United Nations (ILO) to undermine any efforts to hold Coke bottlers in Colombia accountable for widespread labor and human rights abuses, including the systematic intimidation, kidnapping, torture and murder of union leaders. These abuses are highlighted in lawsuits filed against Coca-Cola and its Colombian bottlers in 2001 and 2006.

Through the machinations of Potter, the ILO is being used to serve the interests of Coca-Cola. Rather than working to get an investigation, Ed Potter appears to be working to shield Colombia and Coca-Cola from any real scrutiny at a time when Colombia, President Uribe, and multinational corporations have been under fire for links to paramilitary death squads.

Most recently, The Sydney Morning Herald [June 6, 2007] reported: "Employers led by a Coca-Cola executive [Ed Potter] stopped the International Labour Organisation examining violations of workplace rights in Colombia..."

The non-profit, non-partisan Center for Media and Democracy wrote on the same day: "After the International Labour Organisation included Australia on a list of 25 countries of concern for their labour standards, the Australian government lashed out. The Minister for Workplace Relations, Joe Hockey, claimed that the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) had lobbied to have Australia included at the expense of listing Colombia, where many labor officials have been assassinated.

"However, the ACTU's international officer, Alison Tate, said that while the international unions had Colombia at the top of their list, it was effectively vetoed by the representatives from the International Organisation of Employers (IOE). Tate told The Sydney Morning Herald that the IOE representative in the negotiations was The Coca-Cola Company's Director of Global Labour relations, Ed Potter..."

Since March 2006, The Coca-Cola Co., its CEO, Neville Isdell and Ed Potter have repeatedly lied about the ILO commitment to do an investigation of Coke's past and present labor practices in Colombia in order to shed light on allegations of widespread human rights abuses by its bottlers. They have claimed that the ILO is doing an "investigation of past and present labor relations and workers' rights practices of the Coca-Cola bottling operations in Colombia." However, ILO officials have completely contradicted Coke's assertions that it is doing such an investigation - "the ILO is not conducting an investigation, but is doing an assessment of current working conditions," not of past labor relations practices, according to an official at the ILO.

At the Coca-Cola shareholders meeting in April 2006, Isdell responded to a question asked by Campaign to Stop Killer Coke Director Ray Rogers regarding ILO's officials' contradictions of Coke's claims: "We have a document from the ILO, signed by the ILO," Isdell replied, "committing themselves to do exactly what you said...We have a document. We have an agreement, and they are going to investigate past and prior practices."

On April 10, 2006, then-President of Coca-Cola North America Donald Knauss wrote a letter to University of Michigan Executive Vice President a & CFO Tim Slottow, in which he said: "...the IUF announced that it requested the International Labor Organization to investigate and evaluate past and present labor relations and workers' rights practices of the Coca-Cola bottling operations in Colombia...Our Company supports the IUF in this effort and, in fact, sent our own request for an investigation to the ILO...On March 24 [2006], the ILO agreed to conduct the investigation and evaluation and is beginning the process of finalizing its scope, protocol and timing."

Within one day of receiving this letter from Coke, Slottow decided to bring Coke products back to the campus in spite of a strong campaign by a coalition of student groups that was successful in getting the University of Michigan to dump Coke.

On April 10, 2007, the Michigan Daily [2] reported that all the deadlines set by the University of Michigan for March 2007 were missed by The Coca-Cola Co. Those deadlines were for assessments of the conditions for Coke workers in Colombia and environmental issues in India.

On April 30, 2007, investigation results were to be reported to the university. This could not be done, since no investigation has occurred.

Even if the ILO were doing an investigation into Coke's past and present labor practices in Colombia, it could not be considered unbiased. Ed Potter is himself a member of the ILO's Applications of Conventions and Recommendations Committee. For many years, he has been and currently acts as the head spokesperson for the entire Employers' Group, a powerful role within the ILO structure that allows him to promote the interests of big business and Coca-Cola, in particular.

It should be noted that Potter was involved earlier, in 2005, in the creation of a "Commission" consisting of representatives of major universities and prominent worker rights advocacy organizations that were trying to develop a methodology for evaluating how or whether Coca-Cola's Colombian bottlers worked with paramilitary death squads. When the commission asserted its independence by kicking Mr. Potter out, so it could then be truly independent, Coca-Cola began backing away from and creating reasons to delay and obstruct any meaningful investigation.

Finally, Mr. Potter insisted that Coke couldn't participate at all in an investigation process unless the attorneys who sued the company agreed that any evidence of Coke's abuses could not be used in their lawsuits. The lawyers refused this demand since compliance would require them to violate the rules of legal ethics, something Mr. Potter knew. Whether such a demand by Coke indicates its guilt is a legitimate question.

The so-called ILO investigation still hasn't occurred. If the ILO ever does anything, it will be exactly what Coca-Cola and Potter wanted all along: a blatantly biased evaluation that will ignore past abuses and will not hold the company accountable in any meaningful way.

Any comments or questions, email: StopKillerCoke@aol.com [3] or call: (718) 852-2808.