From War On Want:

“Coca-Cola: The Alternative Report” is the first full expose of the company’s activities worldwide, and forms part of War on Want’s ongoing campaign for directors to be made liable for corporate wrongdoing. The report brings together new research and testimony to show how Coca-Cola has:

– exhausted community water reserves in India by drilling deep into underground reservoirs, drying up local wells and leaving farmers unable to irrigate their crops.

– contaminated local ecosystems in El Salvador and India through waste effluents discharged from its plants. (In India, thousands of people are left without water. They walk up to seven kilometres to get drinking water, and their crops have no irrigation and fail utterly.)

– been implicated in human rights abuses in Colombia, including the death and disappearances of trade union activists at Coca-Cola bottling plants. (One of the Colombian trade unionists, Isidro Seguno Gil, was killed inside the Coca-Cola plant. The paramilitaries got into the plant, found the person they were after, killed him there on the job, left the plant, and got away scot-free. His wife campaigned for justice. She was murdered. As well as murdering trade unionists, hundreds of other Colombian Coke workers have been tortured, kidnapped and/or illegally detained by paramilitaries working closely with Coke’s plant managements.)

– adopted union-busting tactics in a wide range of other countries such as Pakistan, Turkey, Russia, Peru, Chile, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Louise Richards, Chief Executive of War on Want, said: “Coca-Cola promotes a sporty image of itself through sponsorship of events such as the World Cup, but the company is not playing fair with its workers and with local communities around the world. Coca-Cola’s exploitation of community water resources and its abuse of workers’ rights have marked it out as an irresponsible corporation. It’s time the directors of such companies were held to account for their actions.”

Click here to download Coca-Cola: The Alternative Report in PDF