Campaign to Stop Killer Coke

Part 1 - Five Principal Ethical Arguments

1. Fiduciary Principle

The authors of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke have noted that Judge Joseph E. Martinez was entangled with some very serious conflicts of interest due to his close ties to his alma mater, the University of Miami, who is subsidized significantly by Coca Cola. Judge Martinez has acted as a commentator for UM sporting events broadcasted on Spanish radio. Judge Martinez is also a member of the Governing Board of the UM Hurricane Club, which is has been referenced as the primary fundraising arm of the athletic department. The authors argue that since Coca Cola was such a large sponsor for the University, Judge Martinez, acted in a biased manner in his rulings in an effort to keep the amenable relationship between the two parties.

2. Transparency Principle

The authors assert that while Coca Cola maintains that a "respected, independent third party found no instances of anti-union violence or intimidation at bottling plants" these claims are without merit. The statement refers to a questionable report issued by Cal Safety Compliance Corporation, whose work was paid for by Coca Cola. In addition, Cal Safety's credibility has been called into question in the past due to the fact that it missed blatant violations in high-profile cases due to its unsound monitoring processes. Before the Cal Safety report was issued, Coca Cola asserted that another group had investigated allegations of human rights abuses Coca Cola and its bottlers and found that they were without fault. When asked for a copy of this report, Coca Cola indicated that the report was completed by White & Case, a large international corporate law firm that has represented Coca Cola in lawsuits dealing with human rights abuses, but that report was unavailable to the public. Further, there were subsequent investigations that were performed by Hiram Monserrate, which paint a very different story of what is taking place in bottling plants in Columbia. The delegation issued the finding that "Coca-Cola is complicit in human rights abuses of its workers in Colombia...The conclusion that Coca-Cola bears responsibility for the campaign of terror leveled at its workers is unavoidable." These events highlight the fact that Coca Cola may be providing an inaccurate and misleading representation of the facts to the public.

3. Dignity Principle

The authors cite various instances where employees safety and human rights were violated by Coca Cola. One claim deals with alleged crimes that took place in 2005 in Turkey where workers at a Coca-Cola bottling plant joined a union and were subsequently terminated. After numerous weeks of strikes and protests leaders of the workers went into the company building to speak to senior management, who by that time ordered Turkish riot police to attack the peacefully assembled workers. The attack resulted in two hundred protesters being beaten badly with many requiring hospitalization. The authors also reference human rights abuses that Coca Cola has been linked to for decades. The most recent case cites that Coca Cola bottling plants "contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders." In addition, there was a "campaign of violence that includes rape, attempted murder and murder against two Guatemalan trade unionists and their families. The two trade unionists are Jose Armando Palacios, who was forced to flee to the U.S. in early 2006, and Jose Alberto Vicente Chavez, whose son and nephew were murdered and whose daughter was gang raped on March 1, 2008."

4. Citizenship Principle

The authors assert that Coca Cola has had a negative impact on water resources in Mexico and has even gone as far as taking measures, with the help of then-Mexican President Vincente Fox, a former president of Coca-Cola in Mexico and Latin America., to privatize natural water resources for the purposes of both extracting water to use in bottling processes and also dumping industrial waste into public waters. In 2004, one Coke plant used 107,332,391 liters of water -- about as much as 200,000 homes worth. Similar environmental concerns have been raised in India, where Coca Cola is accused of draining vast amounts of public ground water and turning once plentiful farms into deserts.

5. Fairness Principle

The authors cite the Ingram vs. The Coca-Cola Company case which involved race discrimination in promotions, compensation and evaluations. The plaintiffs in the case claimed that there was a significant difference in pay between African-American and white employees; a "glass ceiling" that kept African-Americans from advancing past entry-level management positions; "glass walls" that channeled African-Americans to management in areas like human resources and away from power centers such as marketing and finance; and senior management knowledge of these problems since 1995 and a failure to remedy them. In early 2000, the Court ordered both sides into mediation. The parties reached agreement on a Settlement-In-Principle on June 14, 2000. A final Settlement Agreement, valued at $192.5 million and designed to ensure dramatic reform of Coca-Cola's employment practices, was officially approved by the Court on June 7, 2001.

Part 2 - Responses to Claims of Validity

1. Response to the Fiduciary Principle

The authors of the Killer Coke Campaign bring up some interesting arguments and facts regarding Judge Martinez' history and potential ties with Coke. Whether or not they are true and if the judge is acting in a biased way is not inherently clear. We do not know what his motives are or whether or not they can be proven. However, with that said, I find it amazing that the plaintiff's attorneys did not file a Motion for Recusal when they appealed the 2001 cases and they were tried once again in 2003. If there was a true question of whether or not there was a conflict of interest wouldn't the plaintiffs' attorneys take measures to see that they were going to have a fair trial? In my research I found nothing that noted a request for the judge to be taken off the case, and this seems to be a direct request from Ray Rogers, director of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke. Coca Cola has no connection with the selection of judges that oversee cases in which it is the defendant and if plaintiffs feel that there is an unfair bias present they have the opportunity to seek measures to have a new