violations of workers rights

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, which works to advance human rights in business and eradicate abuse, published the IUF's rejoinder to Coca-Cola's response regarding the company's attack on unions in the Philippines that invites potential violence against workers.

Management at The Coca-Cola Company's operations in the Philippines is using "red-tagging"- the public smearing of unions as subversive organizations to invite and legitimate violence and repression - in order to undermine union organization and spread fear among workers. The threat of violence is real: at least 43 trade unionists have been murdered since Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016. The violence is not 'collateral damage' spilling over from the government's 'war on drugs'; it is highly selective and precisely targeted. The international trade union mobilization on December 10 exposed the scope of the practice and brought to light new cases.

The IUF's World  Executive Committee met in Geneva, Switzerland April 3-4 and expressed strong and unconditional support for the Coca-Cola "Zero Rights" international campaign. Executive Committee members from 31 countries demanded that  The Coca-Cola Company urgently remedy all  ongoing human rights violations within the Coca-Cola System.

IUF-affiliated FSBMM members continue their demonstrations at Coca-Cola Amatil factory gates in Indonesia. On March 30, 2019, they organized another protest action at the Bawen factory gate.

Workers at Coca-Cola Indonesia fighting for independent and democratic unions have again confirmed their confidence in union leaders victimized by management. At a general membership meeting on February 5, Lutfi Arifiyanto was re-elected chairman of the independent SBMCC, the union of workers at Coca-Cola Indonesia in Bawen, Java.

Three days after the union elected him chairman at its founding assembly in February 2017, Lutfi was informed of his transfer to a distribution facility some 170 kilometers from the Bawen plant. He refused the transfer because it violated his members' fundamental right to freely elect their union leadership. As a result of his refusal to have these internationally recognized rights stripped away he was formally terminated on November 21, 2017.

The Coca-Cola Sales Force Union (CCSU) affiliated to FCCU- SENTRO and the IUF in the Philippines saluted the fights of IUF affiliates in Indonesia, Ireland, Haiti and the US for their rights in the Coca-Cola system.