The Coca-Cola Case
Just exactly how Corporations treat people, especially those in the third world. In this feature length documentary, directors German Gutierrez and Carmen Garcia present a searing indictment of the Coca-Cola empire and its alleged kidnapping, torture and murder of union leaders trying to improve working conditions in Colombia, Guatemala and Turkey.
The filmmakers follow labor rights lawyers Daniel Kovalik and Terry Collingsworth and an activist for the Stop Killer-Coke! campaign, Ray Rogers, as they attempt to hold the giant U.S. multinational beverage company accountable in this legal and human rights battle.
Many union leaders at Coca-Cola's Colombian bottling plants have been murdered. Hundreds of other Coke workers have been tortured, kidnapped and/or illegally detained by violent paramilitaries, often working closely with plant managements.
Directed by: German Gutierrez, Carmen Garcia
This isn't a Coca Cola issue but more importantly its about the business culture in countries these Corporations do business in. If local Managers and politicians get involved in the local ventures and the countries themselves have a history of corruption and violence very often the local stewardship of the business will go that way. I grew up in Africa and this happens all the time - and to very large Organizations.
You can't just say its Coke's fauly that workers get treated this way. On the other side of the coin Walmart did not survive in Germany and Japan simply because the local culture cared too much for its own people. If we look at the history of the other Coke business in Columbia it was a case of killing anyone who got in the way. Sorry to sound pessimist or Xenophobic but I look at local cultures and how they handle Management and competition and judge on that before I judge a global corporation.
i think i'll have a Pepsi...
I am a marketing & advertising guy. I can tell you that everything in this documentary, every word, every image, is designed with the only aim of raising public pressure against Coca-Cola. And not very well done job: it is too obvious!
The only real intention of the lawyer is to force an agreement and receive his huge chunky cut! He doesn't care about the Colombian workers. He just wants fame and money.
Believing the The Coca-Cola Company would risk all they got involving themselves in murderer, does not make any sense at all.
Not a single piece of evidence! And many other possible scenarios not even considered: other suspects can be the bottlers, the large intermediaries, and even other companies that don't want any union to succeed and set an example for their own workers. Even the paramilitary and/or the guerrilla could have been blackmailing the union leaders to get their cuts.
Union business has always been a risky and violent business, and both ways, I must say.
Quoting Leonardo: Welcome to South America. Welcome to the World.
Rob,
To be blunt, for you to come right out and say "I am a marketing & advertising guy" is to say "I find ways to get people to believe things that aren't true - that things about (product X or situation Y) are better than they really are. You cannot disagree with this. Given that any corporation makes money, and are the sole financiers of the marketing industry (multi-billion dollar industry in the US alone) is tantamount to admitting that the Corporate game is to lie and cheat to the legal extent possible, and beyond. Do _actually_ think any corporation would hesitate to have anything "anti"-them eliminated, especially in a country without effective law? The biggest company in the world (the US) literally cultivates mass murder in Mexico (and Colombia) over drugs. Why would they do that? You're the best person to ask this question and you undoubtedly know the answer. Most of us have known the answer for a very long time. So you can give up this act that "a company" would never risk anything in any way to make money because that is the premise of any free-as-possible market - to make money regardless of the consequences to everyone else. If you do yet understand this, a lousy Marketing guy you must make.
The documentary only told half of the story and even then they actually lied about some events.
As far as the unions are concerned they are even far more corrupt than Coca-Cola ever could be.
Go live in some of these third world nations and then you will know what the real problem is.
Coca-Cola Company knows better than say anything about this farce.
Wow, I'm really glad I watched this. Once again, thankyou Vlatko for having such great docs on this site. I worked as an engineering contractor at Coke's Adelaide bottling plant and had no idea what an evil corporation I was involved with. It makes me wonder how many other evil companies I've unknowingly been making my living from!
If Coke is able to compensate its recent CEOs $660 million (divided among three of them), it is able to investigate this issue and demonstrate that laws and ethical business practices are being practiced in order to defend the good standing of its name and validate its brand value.
Eugene, of course they are "able", they are simply not willing. Why would this be the case? Well, with the right marketing, they can claim Union Representatives are getting murdered at what, 50x the average national rate, as the result of... maybe random statistical error or, well, anything unrelated to them. As long as The Company can claim to be a fine, upstanding member of the community, the truth is irrelevant.
To above poster; you cannot be 15% responsible for anything, either your are a part of the problem or a part of the solution. If companies had ethics they would not hire these plants abroad, simply because by doing so they are feeding the "killers" directly or indirectly.
That being said, if you can pay one guy $600 000 000 (+ all other bonuses/salaries for top execs.), you can pay workers a fair wage and reduce the salary of the CEO. And no, CEOs wont stop working if you "only" pay them say 5% of that, why? Because CEOs are dependant on the market too, its just a fu*ked up market thats all. How do you fix it? Start by treating people like people, shocker right!?
Leonardo - you are 100% right.Although I would also blame Coca Cola a bit but frankly they are just 15% responsible for whatever happens. After spending years traveling and assisting people in need for about 12 years, I went to places such as Ghana, Columbia, Paraguay & Uruguay, Peru, and I won't name them all here since the point is not where I traveled but what I have seen and understood after I put my foot on their grounds. The blame should first be turned against those who let the big corporations operate in those countries and basically the initiators are big companies or government bodies of their own countries. Coca Cola just like many others just profit of the low cost workers just like hundreds of other companies are doing across the world.
So this class action should involve not just Coca Cola, but many others that we all know (Nike, Pepsi etc.) but mostly the locals, those rich locals companies that enslave their own people for few bucks... those are the real culprits. But locals will never think a second of going against their local companies because they surely know that they'd never win and will end up in the canister behind the shop... those 10 men who loss their life fighting for their rights against the foreign company "namely" Coca Cola would be numbered to 1000 men if they were going against their own companies.
I hire a contractor to do work on my house for what appears to to be for a low bid. I later find out that he requires his employees to work long hours for an illegal pay rate. This would explain how he could charge me so little. Do I let him continue or do I confront him about it. Coke was in the some position. They knew what was going on but turned a blind eye because of the profits involved. I can turn a blind eye also concerning those workers who are working on my home but I will have to admit, at least to myself, that I'm as guilty as the contractor. If I had any integrity I would order him off the property and report the crook. Coke, obviously does not possess that type of integrity.
who would drink that c@#$ anyway?
the only pure about coke is that it is pure garbage.
I agree. I dislike Coke but that is not the point. There are people who do and those who supply the product that the Coke lovers want should all be treated fairly....no matter where they stand in the company hierarchy.
OK, after viewing this documentary I realized that I had to stop it a few time and really think to my self over and over again... “but its f-ING coke. When in the hell did a soda corporation get so dam evil, sinister and so got dame gangsta'. With that in mind I have decided to be-leave that its not true, why because if it is then game over folks theirs nothing we can do to escape or end, or defeat evil corporate America, global dominance, new world order... it just a matter of time.
I mean if coke does or has all ready went to court and found guilty for death of human f-ING life , then what is Pepsi up to.
What a wimp. To cry "its all over folks, boo hoo." You sound like a Jew waiting in line for the concentration camps.
No guts no glory, no brains no longevity. It is due to sheeple that such problems become so large in the first place. They are so clueless they even vote for their own marxist enslavement. Gather together with large numbers. What happens if no one shows up to fight a war that has been pushed upon a people?
Sean, Oh no! In fact, with this knowledge, we can stop buying Coke products, and call our elected representatives, and write the local news outlets that "we no longer require the "cocaine-o-cola's" services. Then this issue is over.
That man has officially murdered the Spanish language.
The Coca Cola Case:
Daniel Kovalik and Terry Collingsworth and activists for the many union workers in South America, India and Turkey, I hope your appeal goes forward sucessfully. My late husband Henry P. Kosling Esq. informed me over twenty years ago that the Chic. Banana Company back in the fifties complained to our president about the natives causing labor problems in South America and asked for aid to crush them. The natives were being kidnapped by the banana company for slave labor and they revolted. Our governments answer was to send in the CIA paramilitaries to kill the natives that resisted and show the local paramilitaries how to do it. Our CIA was in South America for over 15 years and when new resistance came up they would go back again. Coca and Chic. are run by the same people and attend each others same boards. Because my husband is late, my story is now hear-say in legal terms.
On a different issue with Coca Cola was the earth quake in Haiti. Coca gave the Red Cross $1 million dollars for earth quake assistance for Haiti. I emailed them a thank you for their donation to the Red Cross but suggested that victims would be better served if their undamaged bottling plant in Port a Prince that employees over 700 workers would bottle $1 million of bottled water and distribute it by their employees as a public good will effort with TV coverage showing their workers delivering aid and I would give them my entire art collection of Haiti artists from the 60s. They didn't think that was a good idea. No international aid could bring in water before people would die, or drink from broken water mains under the streets. They would not give the order to aid the vivtims in a concret way. I leave it to you to think what that means.
It may mean that Coke was hoping that you would take the money and use it to buy products to help the Haitians....products which may be produced by Coke or one of their subsidiaries (bottled water, perhaps). A gift of water would have been a total lose while a gift of money may be recovered through the sale of products. Free good will advertising is another benefit, of course.
thanks Leonardo Silveira, you summed it all up in one paragraph. Now I don't have to watch one hour of padded out documentary
Dont ever kid yourself on the immorality and power of a large company. Watch "The Corporation" on this site where a comaparison of a corporation is made to a psychopath. A corporation has no conscience!
it is not coke corporation that makes this happen, it is the baron families that typically own the bottling plants...old school mob mentality folks....... it happens everywhere, since they buy out cops, politicians.... welcome to south america!