Student and labor-rights groups across the country are using a decades-old phrase to denounce what they say are the Coca-Cola Company's egregious human rights abuses abroad.
The once-popular phrase "Killer Coke" is being invoked at more than a dozen universities, including NYU, the University of Michigan, and Rutgers by activists who say that union leaders at Coca-Cola's foreign bottling facilities are violently silenced or even murdered. The groups say the situation in the South American country of Colombia is particularly bad.
Over the past academic year, they have also seen that Coca-Cola products are banned from their campuses, claiming that a business relationship with the company violates the schools' ethical codes.
"It's not that students are finding out about something in another country and we decide that we want to do something about it. Union workers [in Colombia]...have asked students to get involved and we make the decisions for strategic actions together," says Clara Hardie, a student leader on the issue and a member of the University of Michigan's Amnesty International group.
Hardie says that at her university alone, 22 student groups—totaling approximately 5,000 students—got together to ban Coca-Cola products from their campus.
The aim of boycotting Coca-Cola and subsidiary brands like Sprite at universities is to put pressure on the company by taking away one of their most important consumer groups, students, who often become valuable lifetime customers.
Ms. Hardie says that the student groups asked that the University of Michigan's Dispute Review Board, a body created to uphold the school's ethical code of conduct, ban Coca-Cola products on campus until there is an independent investigation of certain accusations, including the murders of eight union leaders by paramilitary groups in Colombia, allegedly hired or directed by bottling companies contracted by the Coca-Cola Corporation.
Coca-Cola spokespersons could not be reached for comment, although they have issued several official company statements responding to student allegations. In a January 25, 2006 statement they mention that "two different judicial inquiries in Colombia—one in a Colombian Court and one by the Colombian Attorney General—found no evidence to support the allegations that bottler management conspired to intimidate or threaten trade unionists."
Coca-Cola has also established a 24-hour hotline to give employees a confidential means to report "any workplace concerns and/or complaints."
Student groups are also protesting the company's alleged abuses in India, saying that they are giving farmers fertilizer polluted with toxic metals, selling soft drinks that contain dangerous levels of pesticides "sometimes 30 times higher than EU standards," and polluting soil and groundwater.
According to Hardie, Coca-Cola representatives have spent considerable money and effort to lobby students and administrators, running full-page ads in the student newspaper, the Michigan Daily. She says that they have also sent representatives to give public presentations to students and administrators.
The school banned sales of Coca-Cola products on campus beginning January 1, 2006.
Yet a short time later, Coca-Cola announced in a letter to the University of Michigan administrators that they had joined with the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva and were ready to conduct an investigation.
Following the letter, although Coca-Cola products are not officially banned on campus any longer, actual sales of their products have not yet resumed.
No policy reversal has happened at the other dozen or more schools in the U.S. who have banned Coca-Cola.
Overseas Campaigns Part of Effort
In the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada, 14 other universities have also banned Coca-Cola products for similar reasons, says Ray Rogers, Director of Corporate Campaign, Inc., an NGO that fights for labor rights around the world.
Rogers's organization has put considerable resources into exposing Coca-Cola's alleged crimes, and uses the slogan "Killer Coke" in a branding campaign to make people think of the human rights violations whenever they think of Coke.
"It's a threat to their image, their band name," says Mr. Rogers.
He doesn't know the precise financial effects of the boycotts and the negative publicity they generate, but, he believes it is having a financial impact on their sales.
In a January 19 statement to the University of Michigan Board of Regents, Coca-Cola wrote: "Moving beyond accusations to constructive collaboration will result in tangible results and more progress for the people of Colombia and India. A partnership between the University of Michigan and The Coca-Cola Company could do much more to protect human rights and raise environmental standards than a continued focus on the past."
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