Constructive Engagement: With Multinationals or with Social Movements?
NUSSL, the buying consortium of the National Union of Students, has defended its exclusive contracts with Coca-Cola and its clear desire to renew these contracts in 2006, by saying that its process of constructive engagement with the fizzy drinks multinational is keeping Coke honest. The continued repression of social movements in Colombia and India that dare to confront Coke's policies and work practices, would seem to belie this.The NUS decided at it's annual conference in April 2005 to take evidence from the Colombia Solidarity Campaign and the India Resource Center . Nevertheless, NUSSL has forged ahead with its plan to renew the contracts, and has even sent a model motion to every President of every students union in the country, calling for official support for NUSSL's process of ‘constructive engagement' with Coca-Cola.
Is it time then, that students in this country started their own process of constructive engagement, not with the multinational that stands accused of such serious crimes, but with the social movements in the developing world that have appealed directly to them for support?
The specific allegations of Coca-Cola's complicity with eight assassinations and hundreds of other targeted violations of trade union members of SINALTRAINAL (Food and Drinks Industry Workers Union of Colombia) are detailed in its court case, and confirmed in important respects by an independent report by a social movement delegation from the US. [1]
The boycott call came only after several years of seeking other remedies, and is supported by many organisations. Its objectives are summarised by SINALTRAINAL as:
‘1. That Coca Cola mitigates the pain of the victims; that is why we the social organisations who have formed the campaign have, since 11th February [2003], been presenting a proposal for integrated reparations that include the minimum demands that the transnational pays compensation for the damages caused.
2. That Coca Cola publicly recognises that it benefited from the crimes committed by paramilitary groups continually carried out against the human rights of the workers and the communities.
3. That the transnational commits itself to not making any new attacks on our people, and that it hands over to justice those criminals who carried out actions to its benefit.' [2]
Union membership and representativity
The unionisation rate of the now 8,500 workers in Coke's Colombia system is down to just 6%, entirely because labour repression and neo-liberal policies have turned over 90% of the workforce into sub-contracted, ‘flexible' workers who don't have employment rights. But of this 6%, about two thirds, i.e. a clear absolute majority of unionised workers, are members of SINALTRAINAL, despite all the attempts to destroy it. The other claimed thirteen unions amount to 2% between them, with an average of about twenty members each. Most of them were deliberately created by management as a counterweight to SINALTRAINAL.
The two unions NUSSL sites as sources have at most one fifth of the membership of SINALTRAINAL in the Coca-Cola plants. One of them, SINALTRAINBEC, is consistently quoted approvingly by Coca-Cola in company statements. Information from the IUF, International Union of Foodworkers, cannot be relied on as being accurate or impartial in this respect. The IUF affiliate in Colombia is called SICO, There are well founded, independent, documented international concerns that it was formed with military collusion, after four assassinations had led to the destruction of the local SINALTRAINAL branch, which SICO replaced. [3]
Approaches and recommendations to NUSSL
The Colombia Solidarity Campaign has accompanied SINALTRAINAL in meetings with NUSSL officials in the UK on three occasions. Each time the union has invited NUSSL to visit them in Colombia to see the conditions for themselves, but NUSSL has declined to do so. At our last meeting in July 2005 a SINALTRAINAL member explained the divisive role of Coke's ‘Social Investment Fund', which is giving no money to the victims, but to buy influence and acceptance of the corporation's repression.
We agreed with NUSSL's statement that it has to consider alternative soft drinks and water sources. NUSSL asked what the Campaign suggested is the solution. We presented these recommendations:
a) “on ethical grounds NUSSL should not renew its contracts with Coke, unless and until the corporation clearly and unequivocally changes its polices in Colombia according to the satisfaction of SINALTRAINAL. We support similar representations on ethical and environmental from communities in India .
b) NUSSL should in the short term give priority to sourcing contracts from suppliers (including the option of a consortium) with the least bad ethical and environmental practices
c) NUSSL should take responsibility to educate student drinkers away from colas and other soft drinks to more healthy options.
d) NUSSL should radically change its terms of reference for this and subsequent investigations such that they are not weighted in favour of ‘constructive engagement' with corporations as this effectively pre-determines the outcome of the process, but that NUSSL takes into account far more fully and conscientiously concerns expressed by victim groups and social movements as expressed in the need for independent monitoring.”
What has happened to the third option that should not be ignored?
In their 22 November 2005 statement NUSSL chairs claim that the only alternative to Coke as a supplier is Pepsi, and then go on to list a number of serious concerns with that corporation. We have no specific knowledge of these allegations, and indeed we have no reason to doubt them. That is not the point, as we have never argued in favour of contracts with Pepsi.
As the NUSSL officer stated in our July meeting there is a clear third option, which is to look for a consortium of suppliers that is nether Coke nor Pepsi. Although we fully recognise that this option would provide challenges, we cannot see that with a will and clear policy direction they could not be overcome.
This option seems to have disappeared off the agenda without explanation, yet it is the very option that NUSSL should have been investigating and developing in the meantime.
Basis of our representation to the NUS - social movement solidarity
When UKSAC activists and the Campaign met NUS Environment and Ethics Officer Flick Cox in September 2005, we presented the argument for the boycott, explaining that it is a tactic to get Coca Cola to come out of denial, and to negotiate with SINALTRAINAL on the basis of truth, justice and reparations for the victims. The consumer boycott is a tactic within the strategy of pressurising Coke to negotiate - it is not disengagement, but it is part of a completely different approach to the Constructive Engagement strategy adopted by NUSSL. We suggested that NUSSL need to change their approach, if it is to serve students rather than the other way round.
This different approach can be called the ‘Social Movement Solidarity' model. The point of reference is humanitarian solidarity between the NUS as a social movement and the social movements from oppressed countries ( Colombia and India in this instance) reporting abuses on them by a multinational corporation.
The NUS should use social movement criteria rather than business criteria to decide its position. The key issue is building up solidarity and trust between social movements, and responding to requests for support by mobilising opposition to what the corporation is doing. The boycott (in this case non-renewing the contracts) is a specific response as a social movement.
Constructive engagement? Yes - with international civil society
NUSSL is now counter posing ‘Constructive Engagement' to the boycott. But it goes deeper than that, if the NUSSL/Justice for Colombia (JfC) position is accepted it will mean students in the UK turning their back on international social movements who have directly appealing to them for solidarity. As far as Colombia is concerned, we have no doubt that SINALTRAINAL has the moral right to call for a boycott. It is their lives that are on the line.
‘Constructive engagement'?
Constructive for who, for the corporation or for its victims? We are for constructive engagement, as per engaging constructively and in direct dialogue with the social movements resisting multinationals' robbery of their lives and resources.
As is well known multinationals have become very slick at co-opting the language of corporate social responsibility, and enmeshing potential critics in a long drawn out and divisive process to wear them down, without actually delivering any meaningful change. That is exactly what Coke is now trying to do in the face of the boycott campaign.
We believe that it is imperative that social movements keep an independent stance and develop their own connections.
We should stress that this in no way means that NUS and NUSSL should not deal with Coca-Cola, or any other corporation similarly charged with complicity in human rights violations or harming the environment. On the contrary we welcome such engagement as a means of moral pressure to get them to ‘do the right thing'. The fundamental issue is the ethical basis of that engagement. We are arguing most definitely that the basis should consciously be framed as a social movement, as part of international civil society that listens to and takes seriously social movements from the global South. They have called for action.
28 November 2005
Colombia Solidarity Campaign. PO Box 8446 , London N17 6NZ
e-mail: colombia_sc@hotmail.com
Footnotes:
[1] Daniel M Kovalik, Terry Collingsworth and Natacha Thys, ‘Complaint in the United States District Court - Southern District of Florida' (Pittsburgh/Washington: United Steelworkers of America / International Labor RightsFund, 2001) at http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/Coca-Cola-Human-Rights20jul01.htm
Hiram Monserrate, ‘NYC fact-finding delegation's report on human rights violations by Coke — Final Report' ( New York : NYC Council Member, 2004) at http://www.killercoke.org/pdf/monsfinal.pdf
[2] SINALTRAINAL ‘ World Wide Campaign Against Coca Cola – Statement 13th November 2003' ( Paris : European Social Forum, 2003)
[3] ICCHRLA, ‘Trade Unionism Under Attack in Colombia : Report of the Canadian Trade Union Delegation to Colombia ' (Toronto: Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America, 1998) at http://www.colombiasupport.net/199802/canadaunion.html