Asia/Pacific

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.

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.

Members of the independent union at Coca-Cola in Bandung took their fight for rights to the company's national office in Jakarta on November 19 following a week-long collective refusal by victimized workers to leave the factory.

The board of the IUF-affiliated NGG sends solidarity greetings to Coca-Cola Amatil Indonesia workers whom have organized to form independent and democratic trade unions. Since the formation of these independent unions, the company has systematically attacked their union leaders and members.

Atra Narwanto, chairman of the independent union SBCCD at the company's Cibitung distribution center, has been unanimously re-elected to serve again as chairman. Workers at the Cibitung facility began organizing an independent union alternative to the pro-management structures inherited from the Suharto dictatorship in March 2015, prompting management retaliation against the workers and their elected leaders.