Først fra NTB-meldinga nedenfor:
>.....
>....Ledere for 36 internasjonale storselskaper har
>sluttet seg til en felles erklæring om selskapenes sosiale
>ansvar. Der forplikter de seg til å ta større sosialt ansvar og
>samarbeide med alle involverte grupper.
>
>Toppsjefer i selskaper som Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Siemens, ABB og
>gruveselskapet Rio Tinto er blant underskriverne, skriver
>Financial Times.
>......
Så til meldinga fra fagforeningsforumet LABOR-L, nederst, hvor
de beskriver hendelser på et Coca-Cola-tapperi i Colombia:
>......
>The next day, the heavily armed group went inside the bottling
>plant, called the workers together, and gave them until 4:00 p.m.
>to resign from the union. "They said that if they didn't resign,
>the same thing would happen to them that happened to Gil--they
>would be killed," recalls Paéz, who visited the United States in
>November to ask union members here to support the suit. Not
>surprisingly, union members resigned en masse. A number of workers
>also quit their jobs outright, undoubtedly fearing that they would
>be killed simply for showing up.
>The companies, meanwhile, disclaim all responsibility for the
>violence and coercion. Coca-Cola spokesperson Rafael Fernández
>asserts that Coke has a code of conduct requiring respect for
>human rights. Coke's Colombia mouthpiece, Pablo Largacha, insists
>that "bottlers in Colombia are completely independent of the
>Coca-Cola Company."
>.....
"Corporate reponsibility", my ass.
Trond Andresen
**********************************************************************
>Globalisert krav om "etisk" kapitalisme
>4 Feb 2002 13:30:01 GMT
>
>Av Lars M. Hjorthol, NTB
>
> Den globale kapitalismen må bremses, krever
>grasrotaktivistene. Nå kommer verdens fremste kapitalister dem et
>lite skritt i møte - iallfall i ord. For Enron har gitt
>kapitalismen et PR-problem.
>
>Både dresskledde konserndirektører i New York og
>grasrotaktivister i den brasilianske byen Porto Alegre var mandag
>i ferd med å runde av sine årlige samlinger. Og kanskje har
>grasrotaktivistene på Verdens sosiale forum klart å få et lite
>stikk: Ved avslutningen av Verdens økonomiske toppmøte i New York
>skulle lederne for 36 av verdens største selskaper legge fram en
>felles erklæring om storselskapenes sosiale ansvar, skriver
>Financial Times mandag.
>
>"Etisk globalisering" er det nye omkvedet fra det økonomiske
>toppmøtet.
>
>Offensiv
>11. september, Argentina og Enron har vært sentrale stikkord for
>diskusjonene, både i Porto Alegre og på fasjonable Waldorf
>Astoria på Manhattan.
>
>Globaliseringsmotstanderne har strevet med å komme på offensiven
>igjen, og få markert at motstand mot den rådende verdensorden
>ikke er ensbetydende med terrorisme. 40.000 aktivister har
>diskutert alternativer som ikke lar seg plassere i president
>Bushs enkle todeling "enten er dere med oss, eller dere er med
>terroristene".
>
>Forumet i Porto Alegre er en mangfoldig og sprikende idédugnad
>uten klare alternativer og strategier. Det som forener er
>motstanden mot globalisering på de sterkestes premisser, mot
>markedsliberalisme og uhemmet kapitalisme.
>
>Argentina...
>Og de har fått drahjelp fra virkeligheten - fra nabolandet
>Argentina, og ikke minst fra kapitalismens høyborg, med
>gigantkonkursen i Enron.
>
>Det økonomiske sammenbruddet i Argentina er i stor grad et
>resultat av argentinske politikeres vanstyre. Men i store deler
>av Latin-Amerika oppfattes det i like stor grad som en fallitt
>for en økonomisk modell preget av markedsliberalisme og
>omfattende privatisering, den modellen Verdensbanken og
>Pengefondet har vært de fremste advokatene for.
>
>..og Enron
>For de dresskledde i New York har den gigantiske Enron-konkursen
>kanskje vært hovedgrunnen til at dette årets toppmøte var preget
>av mer ydmykhet og selvransakelse enn tidligere samlinger.
>
>Enron-konkursen rev fasaden av det de fleste trodde var et
>ansvarlig storkonsern, og avdekket et villnis av selskaper og
>nettverk, konstruert for å tilfredsstille grådighet på eller over
>grensen til det kriminelle, samt aksjonærenes beinharde krav om
>raskt utbytte.
>
>Erkebiskopen av Canterbury, George Carey, konstaterte at
>Enron-konkursen reiser grunnleggende spørsmål om ærlighet og
>ansvarlighet i kapitalismen.
>
>- Kapitalismen må handle innenfor rammer, formante han
>toppsjefene, og ble sikkert møtt med høflig applaus.
>
>Han ble sekundert av Mary Robinson, FNs høykommissær for
>menneskerettigheter: Vi trenger en mer etisk globalisering, og
>mer demokrati på internasjonalt plan, sa hun
>
>- Sosialt ansvar
>Kritikken gikk tilsynelatende inn, iallfall hos noen av
>topplederne. Ledere for 36 internasjonale storselskaper har
>sluttet seg til en felles erklæring om selskapenes sosiale
>ansvar. Der forplikter de seg til å ta større sosialt ansvar og
>samarbeide med alle involverte grupper.
>
>Toppsjefer i selskaper som Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Siemens, ABB og
>gruveselskapet Rio Tinto er blant underskriverne, skriver
>Financial Times.
>
>Men det kan nok ta noe tid før slike erklæringer får konkrete
>konsekvenser for de samme storselskapenes ansatte i Bangladesh
>eller Honduras.
>
>
>Copyright ©: Norsk Telegrambyrå/USIT
***************************
>The Coca-Cola Killings:
>
> http://commondreams.org/views02/0116-06.htm
>
>Is Plan Colombia Funding a Bloodbath of Union Activists?
>
>by David Bacon
>
>After the leader of their union was shot down at their plant gate
>in late 1996, Edgar Paéz and his co-workers at the Coca-Cola
>bottling factory in Carepa, Colombia, tried for more than four
>years to get their government to take action against the
>responsible parties. Instead, some of the workers themselves wound
>up behind bars, while the murderers went free.
>Convinced that Colombian officials were unable or unwilling to
>bring the perpetrators to justice, they decided to go abroad for
>help. Accordingly, last July, the Colombian union Sinaltrainal,
>together with the United Steelworkers of America and the
>International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF), filed a lawsuit in the
>Florida courts against Coca-Cola, Panamerican Beverages (the
>largest soft-drink bottler in Latin America), and Bebidas y
>Alimentos (owned by Richard Kirby of Key Biscayne, Florida), which
>operates the Carepa plant. The suit charges the three companies
>with complicity in the assassination of the union leader Isídro
>Segundo Gil.
>
>The case has become the centerpiece in a new strategy devised by
>Colombia's labor movement to stop a wave of murders of union
>activists that's lasted over a decade. International labor
>cooperation, the unions believe, is the only means left to them to
>counter the power of the corporations that they think are the
>instigators and beneficiaries of the repression.
>
>Increasingly, U.S.-based unions have been willing to help. On
>November 19, Paéz was joined by Teamsters President James P. Hoffa
>in front of the World of Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta, where Hoffa
>proclaimed: "As the union that represents the most Coca-Cola
>workers in the world, we demand that Coke stop the violence
>against workers."
>
>The level of violence against Colombian unionists is staggering:
>In 2000, assassinations took the lives of 153 of the nation's
>trade-union leaders. In 2001, the figure had reached 143 by the
>end of November. According to Héctor Fajardo, general secretary of
>the United Confederation of Workers (CUT), Colombia's largest
>union federation, 3,800 trade unionists have been assassinated in
>Colombia since 1986. In the year 2000, three out of every five
>trade unionists killed in the world were Colombian, according to a
>recent report by the United Steelworkers.
>
>Last spring, two leaders of a union at the U.S.-owned Drummond
>coal mine, Valmore Locarno Rodríguez and Victor Hugo Orcasíta,
>were killed in an incident that eventually drew worldwide
>condemnation. Media attention, however, didn't prevent the
>subsequent murder of Gustavo Soler Mora, another leader of the
>union in the same area in October.
>
>Unionists and human-rights activists hold Colombia's paramilitary
>forces responsible for almost all the trade-union
>assassinations--though those forces aren't working simply for
>themselves. Robin Kirk, who monitors abuses in Colombia for Human
>Rights Watch, says that there are strong ties between the United
>Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the nation's leading
>paramilitary grouping, and the Colombian military. "The Colombian
>military and intelligence apparatus has been virulently
>anticommunist since the 1950s," she says, "and they look at trade
>unionists as subversives--as a very real and potential threat."
>Roberto Molino of the Colombian Commission of Jurists contends
>that "in the case of the paramilitaries, you cannot underestimate
>the collaboration of government forces." Those forces, says Samuel
>Morales of the CUT, "believe it's a crime to try to present any
>option for social change."
>
>The AUC is also quietly backed by elements of the nation's
>business and economic elite. "There are powerful economic
>interests that support the paramilitaries," Kirk says, "and they
>attack union leaders again and again." Morales concurs: "The
>paramilitaries are an armed wing of the same military forces and
>government structures that have historically taken positions
>against us. In Colombia, they're called the army's 'sixth
>division.'"
>
>According to the complaint in the Florida case, here's what
>happened: At 8:30 a.m. on December 5, 1996, a right-wing
>paramilitary squad of the AUC showed up at the gate of the Coke
>bottling plant in Carepa. Gil, a member of the union's executive
>board, went to see what they wanted. The paras opened fire on Gil
>and he dropped to the ground, mortally wounded. An hour after he
>was assassinated, paramilitary forces kidnapped another leader of
>the union at his home; he managed to escape, however, and fled to
>Bogotá. At 8:00 p.m., paras broke into the union's offices,
>destroyed the equipment there, and burned down the entire house,
>destroying all the union's records.
>
>The next day, the heavily armed group went inside the bottling
>plant, called the workers together, and gave them until 4:00 p.m.
>to resign from the union. "They said that if they didn't resign,
>the same thing would happen to them that happened to Gil--they
>would be killed," recalls Paéz, who visited the United States in
>November to ask union members here to support the suit. Not
>surprisingly, union members resigned en masse. A number of workers
>also quit their jobs outright, undoubtedly fearing that they would
>be killed simply for showing up.
>
>The companies, meanwhile, disclaim all responsibility for the
>violence and coercion. Coca-Cola spokesperson Rafael Fernández
>asserts that Coke has a code of conduct requiring respect for
>human rights. Coke's Colombia mouthpiece, Pablo Largacha, insists
>that "bottlers in Colombia are completely independent of the
>Coca-Cola Company." The bottler, Bebidas y Alimentos, says it had
>no way to stop the paramilitaries from doing whatever they
>wanted--after all, they had guns. "You don't use them, they use
>you," owner Kirby told a reporter. "Nobody tells the
>paramilitaries what to do."
>
>But the suit charges that plant manager Ariosto Milán Mosquera
>claimed that "he had given an order to the paramilitaries to carry
>out the task of destroying the union." Workers believed him
>because he had a history of partying with the paramilitaries.
>
>Paéz says not only that the plant's managers were responsible for
>what happened but that Coke clearly benefited from it. "At the
>time of Gil's death, we were involved in negotiations with the
>company [Bebidas], presenting proposals to them," he says. "The
>company never negotiated with the union after that. Twenty-seven
>workers in 12 departments left the plant and the area. All the
>workers had to quit the union to save their own lives, and the
>union was completely destroyed. For two months, the paramilitaries
>camped just outside the plant gate. Coca-Cola never complained to
>the authorities." The experienced workers who left the plant,
>who'd been earning between $380 and $400 a month, were replaced by
>new employees at minimum wage--$130 a month.
>
>During a subsequent investigation by the Colombian Justice
>Ministry, the plant's director and production manager were
>detained, along with a local paramilitary leader. All three were
>later released, with no charges filed against them.
>
>The assassinations were neither the first nor the last targeted at
>union leaders in Colombian Coke plants. In 1994, two other union
>activists, José Davíd and Luís Granado, were also murdered in
>Carepa, and at that time as well, paramilitaries demanded that
>workers quit the union. In 1989, unionist José Avelino Chicano was
>killed in Coca-Cola's Pasto plant. This year, again during
>negotiations, a union leader at the Bucaramanga plant, Oscar Dario
>Soto Polo, was murdered. When the union denounced the killings,
>the plant's chief of security charged its leaders with terrorism
>and rebellion. Five were arrested and jailed for six months.
>
>The paramilitary war on unionists is escalating at a time when
>U.S. aid to Colombia's official armed forces has also grown
>rapidly. Under Plan Colombia, the U.S. effort to reduce the flow
>of illegal drugs from Colombia, the United States has funneled
>$1.3 billion into the country, almost entirely in military
>assistance. Colombia is the third-largest recipient of U.S.
>military aid in the world, and several members of Congress have
>tried to call attention to the possibility that some of our aid
>may be funding the anti-union bloodbath. "Deaths due to political
>violence [have] roughly doubled from previous years,"
>Massachusetts Democrat John F. Tierney told fellow House members
>in early July. "These are innocent people trying to make Colombia
>a safer and more prosperous place." Democratic Representative Jan
>Schakowsky of Illinois concluded that "cutting funds from the
>Colombian military makes sense. This is a military that has
>repeatedly been implicated in the brutalization and murder of the
>very people that it is supposed to protect."
>
>The Colombian government views union activity as a threat because
>it challenges its basic economic policies. The administration of
>President Andrés Pastrana is under intense pressure from the
>International Monetary Fund to cut its public-sector budget, in
>part through privatizing public services. Union leaders who oppose
>privatization have also been targeted for extinction. After
>leading a fight to maintain public service in the city of Calí,
>Carlos Elíecer Prado, a public-sector union leader, was murdered
>in May.
>
>This spring, the United Steelworkers sent a formal delegation to
>Colombia in the wake of the murders of the union leaders at the
>Drummond mine. The delegation met with leaders of the CUT, after
>which the two unions joined with the ILRF to file the complaint
>against Coca-Cola and its bottlers.
>
>One stated objective of the suit is to build pressure on the
>Colombian and U.S. governments to comply with rights guaranteed
>unions and workers under the conventions of the International
>Labor Organization and the Geneva Accords on human rights. But
>Colombian unions would also like to see those responsible for the
>murders brought to justice.
>
>"We want to strip off the mask hiding the involvement of
>transnational corporations in our internal conflict," Paéz
>explains. "To do this, we need a judicial forum outside the
>country, since within Colombia those guilty of these crimes are
>treated with impunity. In this particular case, those responsible
>include Coca-Cola. But they're not the only company pursuing
>policies that violate human rights. By strengthening our ties with
>the Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO, we're creating our own global
>answer to the globalization of the corporations."
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