The Coca-Cola Case
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The Coca-Cola Case

2010, Society  -   22 Comments
8.08
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Ratings: 8.08/10 from 24 users.

Just exactly how Corporations treat people, especially those in the third world. In this feature length documentary, directors German Gutierrez and Carmen Garcia present a searing indictment of the Coca-Cola empire and its alleged kidnapping, torture and murder of union leaders trying to improve working conditions in Colombia, Guatemala and Turkey.

The filmmakers follow labor rights lawyers Daniel Kovalik and Terry Collingsworth and an activist for the Stop Killer-Coke! campaign, Ray Rogers, as they attempt to hold the giant U.S. multinational beverage company accountable in this legal and human rights battle.

Many union leaders at Coca-Cola's Colombian bottling plants have been murdered. Hundreds of other Coke workers have been tortured, kidnapped and/or illegally detained by violent paramilitaries, often working closely with plant managements.

Directed by: German Gutierrez, Carmen Garcia

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BJ
BJ
3 years ago

This isn't a Coca Cola issue but more importantly its about the business culture in countries these Corporations do business in. If local Managers and politicians get involved in the local ventures and the countries themselves have a history of corruption and violence very often the local stewardship of the business will go that way. I grew up in Africa and this happens all the time - and to very large Organizations.
You can't just say its Coke's fauly that workers get treated this way. On the other side of the coin Walmart did not survive in Germany and Japan simply because the local culture cared too much for its own people. If we look at the history of the other Coke business in Columbia it was a case of killing anyone who got in the way. Sorry to sound pessimist or Xenophobic but I look at local cultures and how they handle Management and competition and judge on that before I judge a global corporation.

Royal_Crown
Royal_Crown
7 years ago

i think i'll have a Pepsi...

Rob
Rob
7 years ago

I am a marketing & advertising guy. I can tell you that everything in this documentary, every word, every image, is designed with the only aim of raising public pressure against Coca-Cola. And not very well done job: it is too obvious!
The only real intention of the lawyer is to force an agreement and receive his huge chunky cut! He doesn't care about the Colombian workers. He just wants fame and money.
Believing the The Coca-Cola Company would risk all they got involving themselves in murderer, does not make any sense at all.
Not a single piece of evidence! And many other possible scenarios not even considered: other suspects can be the bottlers, the large intermediaries, and even other companies that don't want any union to succeed and set an example for their own workers. Even the paramilitary and/or the guerrilla could have been blackmailing the union leaders to get their cuts.
Union business has always been a risky and violent business, and both ways, I must say.
Quoting Leonardo: Welcome to South America. Welcome to the World.

Kenneth Kelly
Kenneth Kelly
9 years ago

The documentary only told half of the story and even then they actually lied about some events.
As far as the unions are concerned they are even far more corrupt than Coca-Cola ever could be.
Go live in some of these third world nations and then you will know what the real problem is.
Coca-Cola Company knows better than say anything about this farce.

Daryl Walters
Daryl Walters
12 years ago

Wow, I'm really glad I watched this. Once again, thankyou Vlatko for having such great docs on this site. I worked as an engineering contractor at Coke's Adelaide bottling plant and had no idea what an evil corporation I was involved with. It makes me wonder how many other evil companies I've unknowingly been making my living from!

Eugene Spanier
Eugene Spanier
12 years ago

If Coke is able to compensate its recent CEOs $660 million (divided among three of them), it is able to investigate this issue and demonstrate that laws and ethical business practices are being practiced in order to defend the good standing of its name and validate its brand value.

kongo
kongo
13 years ago

To above poster; you cannot be 15% responsible for anything, either your are a part of the problem or a part of the solution. If companies had ethics they would not hire these plants abroad, simply because by doing so they are feeding the "killers" directly or indirectly.

That being said, if you can pay one guy $600 000 000 (+ all other bonuses/salaries for top execs.), you can pay workers a fair wage and reduce the salary of the CEO. And no, CEOs wont stop working if you "only" pay them say 5% of that, why? Because CEOs are dependant on the market too, its just a fu*ked up market thats all. How do you fix it? Start by treating people like people, shocker right!?

Jake
Jake
13 years ago

Leonardo - you are 100% right.Although I would also blame Coca Cola a bit but frankly they are just 15% responsible for whatever happens. After spending years traveling and assisting people in need for about 12 years, I went to places such as Ghana, Columbia, Paraguay & Uruguay, Peru, and I won't name them all here since the point is not where I traveled but what I have seen and understood after I put my foot on their grounds. The blame should first be turned against those who let the big corporations operate in those countries and basically the initiators are big companies or government bodies of their own countries. Coca Cola just like many others just profit of the low cost workers just like hundreds of other companies are doing across the world.

So this class action should involve not just Coca Cola, but many others that we all know (Nike, Pepsi etc.) but mostly the locals, those rich locals companies that enslave their own people for few bucks... those are the real culprits. But locals will never think a second of going against their local companies because they surely know that they'd never win and will end up in the canister behind the shop... those 10 men who loss their life fighting for their rights against the foreign company "namely" Coca Cola would be numbered to 1000 men if they were going against their own companies.

Dog Park
Dog Park
13 years ago

who would drink that c@#$ anyway?

the only pure about coke is that it is pure garbage.

sean
sean
13 years ago

OK, after viewing this documentary I realized that I had to stop it a few time and really think to my self over and over again... “but its f-ING coke. When in the hell did a soda corporation get so dam evil, sinister and so got dame gangsta'. With that in mind I have decided to be-leave that its not true, why because if it is then game over folks theirs nothing we can do to escape or end, or defeat evil corporate America, global dominance, new world order... it just a matter of time.
I mean if coke does or has all ready went to court and found guilty for death of human f-ING life , then what is Pepsi up to.

Immortal
Immortal
13 years ago

That man has officially murdered the Spanish language.

Nancy Kosling
Nancy Kosling
13 years ago

The Coca Cola Case:
Daniel Kovalik and Terry Collingsworth and activists for the many union workers in South America, India and Turkey, I hope your appeal goes forward sucessfully. My late husband Henry P. Kosling Esq. informed me over twenty years ago that the Chic. Banana Company back in the fifties complained to our president about the natives causing labor problems in South America and asked for aid to crush them. The natives were being kidnapped by the banana company for slave labor and they revolted. Our governments answer was to send in the CIA paramilitaries to kill the natives that resisted and show the local paramilitaries how to do it. Our CIA was in South America for over 15 years and when new resistance came up they would go back again. Coca and Chic. are run by the same people and attend each others same boards. Because my husband is late, my story is now hear-say in legal terms.

On a different issue with Coca Cola was the earth quake in Haiti. Coca gave the Red Cross $1 million dollars for earth quake assistance for Haiti. I emailed them a thank you for their donation to the Red Cross but suggested that victims would be better served if their undamaged bottling plant in Port a Prince that employees over 700 workers would bottle $1 million of bottled water and distribute it by their employees as a public good will effort with TV coverage showing their workers delivering aid and I would give them my entire art collection of Haiti artists from the 60s. They didn't think that was a good idea. No international aid could bring in water before people would die, or drink from broken water mains under the streets. They would not give the order to aid the vivtims in a concret way. I leave it to you to think what that means.

Mark MacDonald
Mark MacDonald
13 years ago

thanks Leonardo Silveira, you summed it all up in one paragraph. Now I don't have to watch one hour of padded out documentary

webster
webster
13 years ago

Dont ever kid yourself on the immorality and power of a large company. Watch "The Corporation" on this site where a comaparison of a corporation is made to a psychopath. A corporation has no conscience!

Leonardo
Leonardo
13 years ago

it is not coke corporation that makes this happen, it is the baron families that typically own the bottling plants...old school mob mentality folks....... it happens everywhere, since they buy out cops, politicians.... welcome to south america!