Coca-Cola accused of ruthless and ethically suspect tactics

The soft-drinks giant is struggling to gloss over some startling accusations, by Chris Connolly.

The Coca-Cola Company is accused of causing droughts and poisoning water supplies in India, being linked to Colombian paramilitary groups and encouraging attacks on trade unionists in Asia, Russia and Latin America.

Coca-Cola, one of the most powerful brands in the world, employing over 50,000 people around the globe, sells one billion units every day. Its red and white logo is probably the most recognisable on earth and can be seen in nearly every country in the world.

The company calls itself "an outstanding corporate citizen", but a report published by a Third World charity group, War On Want (WOW), says that Coca-Cola uses ruthless and ethically suspect tactics to remain the world's number-one brand. Its sales are being affected by an increasingly health-orientated consumer society and by the threat from its main rival, Pepsi-Cola.

In India, where it has invested $1 billion and controls 50 per cent of the soft-drinks market, Coca-Cola has been blamed for exhausting vast underground water supplies and causing crop failures for local farmers. Campaigners say that Coca-Cola's huge need for water (it takes three litres of water to make one litre of Coke) has pushed some areas close to becoming "dark zones", places that have to be abandoned due to depleted water resources.

Coca-Cola says its environmental practices are "among the best on the planet", and highlights rainwater harvesting projects it has established in some of the affected regions, but locals say that these projects do not function and, even if they did, the huge amounts of water that have already been extracted can not be replenished.

What is even more worrying, according to WOW's "alternative report", is Coca-Cola's increased association with anti-union activities, most notably in Colombia. Eight employees of Coca-Cola bottlers have been killed by paramilitaries there since 1990. In addition, 48 workers have been forced into hiding and 65 have received death threats, according to SINALTRAINAL, the main Coca-Cola trade union. Union leaders claim the murders and intimidation are part of a campaign to suppress union activity in Colombia and are suing Coca-Cola in the US courts.

Coca-Cola has refused to negotiate with SINALTRAINAL and other Coca-Cola unions in front of international witnesses on measures for compensation, justice and protection.

In a statement on labour relations in Colombia, Coca-Cola denied these allegations, saying it is "one of the most highly unionised multinational corporations in the world. Two judicial inquiries in Colombia found no evidence to support the allegations that bottler management conspired to intimidate or threaten trade unionists."

However, similar accusations have been made throughout the world, according to WOW. In Turkey, the company is being sued for the alleged torture of trade unionists and their families by special branch police. In Nicaragua, the Sole Union of Coca-Cola Company Workers (SUTEC) has complained that its workers are being threatened and have been denied the right to organise. In Guatemala, Coca-Cola workers and their families have been subjected to death threats because of their union ties. In Peru, Coca-Cola has refused to comply with a judicial order to reinstate 50 illegally dismissed workers.

According to the WOW report, Coca-Cola's huge advertising budget ($2 billion a year – more than four times the budget of the UN's children's programme, UNICEF) is no longer able to cover up the murkier side of its business, and people are beginning to see through the brand.

The company's reputation suffered a blow in 2002 during the football World Cup, when the Clean Clothes Campaign exposed the use of child labour to stitch Coca-Cola footballs in Pakistan.

In 2005, Coca-Cola was fined $68 million for breaking anti-competition laws by Mexico's Free Competition Commission, after a small shop owner claimed that she had been bullied into stocking only Coke in her shop.

Universities throughout the US and Europe have voted to cancel contracts with Coca-Cola in protest at its operations. In 2003 UCD students voted to ban all Coca-Cola products from the campus after students' groups learned of the alleged human rights abuses in Colombia.

More: www.waronwant.org