Canwest News Service
A Canadian film about the assassinations of union leaders at a Coca- Cola bottling plant in Colombia – a documentary that suggests Coke should be legally responsible for what happens at its far-flung plants – has begun an around-the-world tour amid a controversy that pits the filmmakers against the beverage giant.
The movie, called The Coca-Cola Case, was made over three years by German Gutierrez and Carmen Garcia, and is being distributed by the National Film Board of Canada. It's being shown at 17 university campuses across Canada and in Norway, Sweden, New Zealand and the United States, until the end of March.
The film says eight union leaders at the Coke bottling plant in Bogota were murdered by paramilitary forces in an apparent attempt to end unionization there. The killings of organized labour is not uncommon in Colombia: Since 2002, more than 470 workers' leaders have been killed in that country, making it what the film calls "the trade-union murder capital of the world."
Gutierrez, who was born in Colombia and now lives in Montreal, said the filmmakers chose to highlight the Coca-Cola killings because Coke is a world- famous brand and an icon of American culture.
The movie says Coke was "complicit" with the paramilitaries in the deaths, although that allegation is unproven. The film follows a long-running lawsuit launched by American lawyers Daniel Kovalik, who works with the United Steelworkers of America, and Terry Collingsworth, to charge Coke in an American court (the Alien Tort Claims Act enables companies to be sued in the U.S. in cases where a fair trial is unlikely in the country where they allegedly occurred.)
The Coca-Cola Case also looks at the work of activist Ray Rogers, who's spearheading a campaign called Killer Coke ("Murder: It's The Real Thing"), which seeks to pressure the company by having its products banned from university campuses.
"We don't think the guys in Atlanta called Colombia and ordered the killing of these guys because they are troublemakers," Gutierrez said in an interview from Montreal, However, he said, Coke headquarters in Atlanta did not step in to stop them.
"One simple phone call from Atlanta to these Colombia guys would stop these killings," Gutierrez said. He pointed out that, in 1981, Coke refused to renew the contract with a franchise bottling plant in Guatemala after the murders of union leaders there, and those killings stopped.
An American court has ruled that Coca-Cola does not have legal responsibility for what happens at the separate operation in Colombia – in the film, Collingsworth says that ruling is flawed – and the courts have also dismissed the case against the bottling company.
Meanwhile, Coke has sent a letter to Cinema Politica, the Canadian group that's sponsoring the screenings of the films. The letter, from a New York City law firm, said The Coca-Cola Case is "defamatory" and reveals confidential information. "The Coca-Cola Company reserves all of its rights and remedies with regards to any future showing of the film," the letter says.
Nevertheless, the first screening, on Jan. 18 in Montreal, went ahead, and the film board – which has formed a partnership with Cinema Politica to show it – says the tour will continue.
For its part, Coke says the allegations in the film are more than 10 years old and are unfounded.
"The film itself is very much an uninformed, inaccurate portrayal of our company and our bottlers in Colombia," Coke spokeswoman Kerry Kerr said in a telephone interview.
She said courts in the U.S. and Colombia, as well as the International Labor Organization, a UN agency, and several outside law firms, have all concluded that the Coke bottler enjoys "normal relations with multiple unions and with very safe working conditions there."
Kerr pointed out that, while only four per cent of workers in Colombia as a whole are unionized, 31 per cent of Coke workers belong to unions.
The movie itself makes a circumstantial case. While it includes comments from Coke CEO Neville Isdell – filmed at an annual shareholders' meeting where he takes the occasional swig of Coke and says "the allegations are not true" – the directors do not talk to any company officials. In an interview, co- director Garcia said this is because "it was not easy to get in touch with them. After a while we decided, `Okay, we're going to do it without them.' "
****The documentary – which calls itself "a story of international solidarity" – is most interesting when it follows Rogers on his trips to college campuses, pushing the Killer Coke message. This is not always successful: At one university, students argue that Colombian workers have a choice whether to work for Coke. One carries a sign reading "F— Human Rights. "
The film also portrays some Colombian workers who reveal they're responsible for renting the trucks they use for deliveries, buying their own uniforms, and paying for broken bottles or missing crates. They work 15-hour days for $1 an hour, a fact the movie compares with the tens of millions that Isdell is paid: The movie says the truckers would have to work two years to earn what the CEO earns in an hour.
However, co-director Garcia says that's not the main issue: "Our characters in the film are not against capitalism; they say they are not against business, they are not against making money, and globalization and all that, but if you want to do business, you have to do it properly," she said. "Respect the laws. "
Killer Coke? Controversial film The Coca-Cola Case draws fire from soft- drink giant.
