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Defend Union Rights at Colombian Coca-Cola Franchise

Posted to the IUF website 29-Mar-2004

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THIS SITUATION HAS BEEN RESOLVED WITH THE SUCCESS OF THE UNION'S EFFORTS IN CAREPA. FOR MORE INFORMATION CLICK HERE.


The Coca-Cola bottling franchise in Carepa (Urab�, Colombia) is owned by an American entrepreneur living in Florida. In the mid 1990's four Coca-Cola workers at the plant were killed by paramilitary forces, and the remaining workers were forced to renounce the union.

Following a change in management in 1997, the Carepa plant was eventually reorganised in January 2000 by the IUF-affiliated union SICO. In 2002, following intervention by the IUF regional and general secretariats, SICO was able to successfully negotiate a second collective bargaining agreement that established basic trade union rights and the conversion of many temporary work contracts into permanent jobs (for details click here).

In 2003 the Carepa management gave discriminatory job assignments to union officers and took other anti-union measures. Thanks to the solidarity of IUF Coke affiliates demonstrated at the IUF Global Meeting in March 2003, the union gains were successfully defended (for details click here).

Now the union at the Carepa franchise bottler faces a new threat. In negotiations to renew the collective bargaining agreement that began in February of this year, the company's negotiators have insisted on removing several essential contract clauses protecting basic trade union rights. These include the right of the union to represent employees in grievance hearings, and the role of the union in discipline and discharge cases against individual employees. The company has refused to make serious economic proposals as a means of pressure to force the union to renounce its hard-won basic trade union rights.

The situation is now urgent. The union fears that the bottler is trying to provoke a strike in order to provide a pretext for firing the employees and destroying the union. This would bring with it a return to the violent conditions which characterised relations in the Carepa plant in the 1990s.

On April 2 a general assembly of the union members voted unanimously to authorize the union negotiating committee to form a strike committee and to call a strike. Under Colombian law the union has 10 days from that date to actually begin the strike. The union is asking the company to negotiate in good faith to reach a fair agreement during that period.

Act Now!


Click here to send a protest to the management of the Carepa franchise.

Copies of your protest will automatically be sent to the IUF general and regional secretariat and to our affiliate in Colombia.