Boycott Coke

All is not well with Coke.

First all, Coke seems to have abandoned C2, my favorite soft drink. WIth only 70 calories for a 12-ounce can (1/2 the calories of regular Coke), it doesn't taste "diet" and seemed to be to be a great compromise between taste and calories. However, it's sales have been disappointing and lately I haven't seen any in stores. I think it's dead. Secondly, a story in the New York times reports that the University of Michigan recently became the 10th college to boycott Coke "...because of concerns arising from accusations about the company's treatment of workers in bottling plants in Colombia and environmental problems in India."

Labor activists have said that Coca-Cola, through its Latin American bottlers, has been complicit in the deaths of eight union leaders and in continued harassment of unionized employees. In India, a different group of activists have accused Coke of polluting the soil and groundwater near several bottling plants, of severely reducing groundwater levels in drought-prone areas and of failing to install adequate filtration systems that would remove pesticides from the water used to make its products. Coke has denied all of the accusations. In April, the company announced the findings of a report by CSCC, a consulting firm in Los Angeles. The report, which was paid for by Coke, addressed current conditions, not the deaths, which occurred from 1989 to 2002. It found no violations or abuses of labor or human rights in Coke's bottling plants in Colombia. Unsatisfied, the University of Michigan and five universities that still sell Coke products have called for an independent investigation of both the Colombia and India situations. The University of Michigan had set today as a deadline for Coke to select an auditor and agree on the terms of the investigation. But talks between the company and the university broke down.