COCA-COLA FACES ANOTHER UNIVERSITY BAN

The University of Michigan became the tenth US University to have put on hold the sale of Coca-Cola’s products in its campus, with effect from January 01, 2006. Other prominent US universities that have banned Coca-Cola are New York University, the largest private university in the US, Rutgers University in New Jersey, and the Santa Clara University in California. Both the University of Michigan and New York University were Coca-Cola’s largest campus markets in the US.

Coca-Cola’s annual contracts with the University of Michigan alone were worth around US$ 1.4 million in sales. However, Michigan University officials mentioned that this was a temporary suspension and sales of Coca-Cola’s products could resume if the company made satisfactory progress on addressing these problems. Both Coca-Cola and the university have agreed to keep the negotiations on. Kari Bjorhus, a spokesperson for The Coca-Cola Company said, “The University of Michigan is an important school, and I respect the way they worked with us on this issue.

We are continuing to try hard to work with the university to address concerns and assure them about our business practices.”^[1] This ban was the outcome of a relentless campaign by student activists and human rights groups, who have pressurized universities to boycott Coca-Cola for not having done enough to address concerns regarding its labor practices in Columbia and environmental problems in India.

The University of Michigan decided to take this step when Coca-Cola informed the university officials that it could not meet a December 31st deadline that needed Coca-Cola to agree on a protocol to review its labor practices in Columbia. Coca-Cola also had yet to develop a protocol to review environmental concerns in India. Columbia is widely considered as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for trade activists and union leaders.

It was reported that in the year 2000, three out of every five trade unionists killed in the world were from Colombia. In 2001, the International Labor Rights Fund, a non-profit human rights organization, the United Steelworkers of America, and SINALTRAINAL, a Columbian labor union, filed a lawsuit in a Florida court against Coca-Cola and two of its bottlers, as they were believed to be linked to violence against unions in Columbia.

Around eight union leaders of Coca-Cola’s plants in Columbia were murdered since 1989, and many others have been abducted and tortured. Coca-Cola was accused of hiring paramilitary death squads to kidnap, torture, or kill union leaders and intimidate worker union activists at its bottling plants. Coca-Cola, in an official statement, denied that it had used death squads saying that two judicial investigations in Colombia had not found any evidence to support the allegations.

In India, Coca-Cola faced the ire of activists when its Plachimada plant in Kerala was accused by locals of being responsible for depletion of groundwater levels in the surrounding area. In 2003, a BBC report revealed that Coca-Cola was distributing improperly treated sludge containing toxic carcinogens and heavy metals like cadmium and lead, as fertilizer to farmers in the region. Coca-Cola shut down this plant in March 2004 owing to mounting pressure. The company had decided to shift its operations to a nearby industrial zone, the Kanjikode Industrial Area. There have also been protests at Coca-Cola’s Mehdiganj plant in North India.

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^[1] “University of Michigan bans Coca-Cola sales,” http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10651153/from/RL.5/, December 30, 2005.

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