Coca-Cola Faces New
Violence Claims In Guatemala
By Jeremiah McWilliams
Guatemalan union leaders and their families
are pursuing a lawsuit in a New York court
against Coca-Cola Co., accusing the world's
biggest beverage company of negligence and
complicity in violence aimed at union
activists, as well as deception.
The case draws together a coalition of
lawyers and activists who participated in
previous legal battles against Coca-Cola
centering on its labor practices in
Colombia. The lead attorney is Terry
Collingsworth, who has pushed lawsuits
against Coca-Cola for a decade. The
unofficial public relations wing is the
Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, one of the
company's most aggressive and vociferous
foes.
Latin America has been the site of some of
the most controversial claims surrounding
Coca-Cola, which denies involvement in any
wrongdoing -- including squashing labor
unions in Colombia -- and has generally
defended itself successfully in court cases.
The company says, for example, that two
different judicial inquiries in Colombia
found no evidence that management at Coke's
bottlers conspired to intimidate or threaten
trade unionists.
The case filed Thursday in New York State
Supreme Court in Manhattan accuses Coca-Cola
of using an offer of protection for the
family of plaintiff Jose Armando Palacios to
try to get him to waive his employment
rights at a Guatemala City instant coffee-
and Coca-Cola processing facility owned by
Industria de Cafe, or Incasa.
Palacios was a union leader until 1991, but
he was forced to resign from the union when
he took a job as an in-house security guard,
according to the lawsuit. In 2004, he
re-joined the plant's union.
According to the lawsuit, Palacios was shot
at and threatened at work. Armed men broke
into his home and pointed guns at his
family. A man who looked like him and drove
a similar-color car was shot in front of his
house, according to the lawsuit. Palacios
fled to the United States in 2006; his
family followed later.
The suit accuses Coca-Cola of not acting to
stop violence against union leaders at
Incasa, its Guatemalan bottler. In 2008,
according to the suit, four armed men
murdered the son and nephew of Jose Alberto
Vicente Chavez and raped his 16-year-old
daughter. One assailant was killed by
Guatemalan security forces; the others were
tried and convicted, according to the suit,
though it was not clear if that conviction
established that the crime was
union-related.
One of the current case's central
contentions is that Coca-Cola had notice of
the dangerous conditions for union activists
at the Guatemalan facilities both before and
after the Palacios violence.
"We maintain there is no truth in these
allegations," said Coca-Cola spokeswoman
Angela Harrell. "The fact of the matter is,
we haven’t been involved. No knowledge of
the violence, no involvement in the
violence."
The plaintiffs say they brought the case in
New York because the Guatemalan court system
is corrupt. Coca-Cola called the tactic
"forum-shopping" and a "misuse of the U.S.
judicial system." The company may answer the
complaint or file a motion to have it thrown
out or moved to Guatemala. The plaintiffs
seek compensatory and punitive damages. |
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