At the height of fear and intimidation through “red-tagging” in the Philippines in 2019-2021, Coca-Cola Philippines stands out in its failure to protect and respect workers’ rights. Subsequent inaction by The Coca-Cola Company’s Bottling Investments Group (BIG) not only fails to provide remedy, but its inaction perpetuates local management interference in workers’ choices in forming or joining trade unions.
The joint submission by trade unions in the Philippines to the ILO High-Level Tripartite Mission (HLTM) on January 23, 2023, observed, that the government’s National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) targeted the Federation and Cooperation of Cola, Beverage, and Allied Industry Unions (FCCU-SENTRO-IUF) with measures to convince workers employed in Coca-Cola to disaffiliate from the organization. The NTF-ELCAC repeatedly tagged the FCCU as a front organization of the country’s communist insurgency:
Among the tactics employed to deceive and intimidate workers are house visits by persons claiming to be military/police and part of the NTF-ELCAC; orientations tagging FCCU-SENTRO leaders and organizers as “reds” (some of these in town hall meetings convened by corporate management, others are orientations hosted by local government units); police harassment of union elections and meetings and; the urging of workers to support “non-radical” unions, which almost always mean company unions.
The joint submission provides several examples of “red-tagging” by the police and military forces targeting workers in Coca-Cola bottling operations and distribution centers. The fact that they could not only enter the company premises but speak at “town hall” meetings organized by management indicates the extent of local management’s complicity in this campaign of fear and intimidation:
It would be naive to assume that these acts of intimidation and deception are not encouraged and taken advantage of by the company’s management, given the fact that some were perpetrated in town hall meetings convened by corporate management. From 2019 to 2021, these incidences of red-tagging were documented in the National Capital Region, Ilagan (Isabela), San Fernando (Pampanga), Bacolod, Davao, Tagum, and General Santos.
In this “red-tagging” the security forces repeatedly accused the FCCU President Alfredo Marañon of being linked to the armed communist insurgency. This is despite the fact that FCCU is affiliated to SENTRO an independent national trade union center with no links whatsoever with armed insurgency. Yet this false accusation against the FCCU President was used by the police and military to instruct workers on which union to choose in the certification elections at Coca-Cola facilities.
The fact that Coca-Cola Philippines had unfairly terminated the FCCU President Alfredo Marañon at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020 (which The Coca-Cola Company’s Bottling Investments Group (BIG) has also failed to address), clearly reinforced the effectiveness of the fear and intimidation used to determine workers’ choice of union.
In the case of Coca-Cola logistics workers in Davao in Mindanao, they were instructed to join a specific union chosen by management as a condition of their employment. Despite this Coca-Cola logistics workers overcame their fear and interference by management and chose to join an independent, democratic union in July 2021.
From 2019-2021 “red-tagging” was widespread across several industries and sectors in the Philippines. Yet one of the reasons it was so readily adopted by local management at Coca-Cola Philippines is that there was already a well established practice in the company of politically interfering in workers’ choice of union. This was established more than a decade ago
On March 1, 2011, Coca-Cola Philippines appointed Greg Stone, a US citizen holding a Special Resident Retiree’s Visa (SSRV) in the Philippines as its new Head of Security. Stone was reportedly a former US Special Forces “adviser” in the Philippines, and was hired in the 1990s by the San Roque Multi-Purpose (SRMP) project, and later the San Roque Power Corporation, to systematically destroy community opposition to the San Roque dam.
Based on his background and the task of dismantling organizations, Stone was referred to as “demolition man” within Coca-Cola Philippines. Despite having no license to operate in the Philippines in the security profession, Stone replaced the Filipino head of security and his team.
Stone’s new team prepared a chart of unions in the Philippines showing where they allegedly stand in the political spectrum, and the dangers and risks posed to workers. By labelling certain unions, federations and labour alliances as “leftist” management used this chart to warn workers against any affiliation to these organizations. These political education classes were conducted over a period of one year. The Coca-Cola Company’s Bottling Investments Group (BIG) failed to address this as a violation of freedom of association, giving local management impunity.
Stone’s demolition program in Coca-Cola Philippines only ended shortly before the The Coca-Cola Company’s Bottling Investments Group (BIG) sold the operations to Mexico-based bottler, FEMSA in December 2012. In December 2018, Coca-Cola Philippines was again bought by The Coca-Cola Company’s Bottling Investments Group (BIG) which oversaw operations throughout “red-tagging” in 2019-2021.
The refusal of The Coca-Cola Company’s Bottling Investments Group (BIG) to address systematic trade union rights violations and to undo the damage of the political interference in unions in 2011-2012 allowed a political and organizational culture to develop in the management of Coca-Cola Philippines where managers truly believed they had a right – if not a duty – to intervene and “warn” workers against certain trade unions. This would later be applied to FCCU and eventually find a common agenda with the NTF-ELCAC’s assault on worker and trade union rights.
The Coca-Cola Company’s Bottling Investments Group (BIG) now claims that the proof that Coca-Cola Philippines respects the right to freedom of association is in the multitude of unions and collective agreements that are signed. But there is no recognition of the fact that workers are in unions they did not freely choose, and that more than a decade of political interference by management created the union landscape that exists in the company today.
Workers’ choices are shaped by what they believe management will allow or permit, and the constant warnings of the dangers posed by certain unions. Instead of working with independent, democratic trade unions to undo this damage and prevent these rights violations from recurring (the very meaning of “remedy”), The Coca-Cola Company simply relies on reassurances from Coca-Cola Philippines management that there is no problem today. This is a massive failure of human rights due diligence with far-reaching consequences.
According to the announcement on the updated OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct:
The 2023 update reflects a decade of experience since their last review in 2011 and responds to urgent social, environmental, and technological priorities facing societies and businesses.
The decade of experience of workers in the Coca-Cola system in the Philippines is precisely the interference in their right to freely choose their unions and relentless pressure to join only those unions deemed acceptable by management.
In fact the 2023 update of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct adds a critical elaboration to the obligation of companies to respect workers’ rights freedom of association: management must avoid interfering with workers’ choice to establish or join a trade union.
It is time for Coca-Cola Philippines management to stop interfering and for The Coca-Cola Company to remedy the damage done.