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News Release January 18, 2005
The University of Iowa’s Human Rights Week-- Students Against Sweatshops Asks: Is it the Real Thing, or Just Hot Air?
Iowa City, IA—Vowing a semester of action, the campus group Students Against Sweatshops is opening the spring term by amplifying its outrage over the University of Iowa's partnership with the Coca-Cola Corporation, a known human rights abuser.
When University of Iowa students trudge to the Pentacrest on the opening day of the spring semester, they will be greeted with the sight of hundreds of red and white balloons adding a dash of color to the wintery campus. Attached to each balloon will be a note from SAS questioning the UI’s commitment to human rights, and calling for the immediate drafting of an Ethical Purchasing Code of Conduct. The balloons will be removed by SAS on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, group members will hand deliver a more detailed flyer to thousands of students across campus, offering them a chance to sign a petition for the Ethical Purchasing Code, to pledge to boycott Coke, and to write UI President David Skorton with their concerns.
Julia Slocum, an undergraduate student and member of SAS, commented: “It’s supposedly Human Rights Week here. Is that in rhetoric or reality? SAS wants students to make that decision, and we’re here to provide them the sad details.”
At issue are the UI’s multi-million dollar exclusive beverage contract with Coca-Cola and the documented fact that Coke grievously violates the human and labor rights of its workers and those of the communities in which it produces its products. Most damning is the charge that Coke is complicit in the brutal murder of eight union workers from its bottling plants in Colombia. In a lawsuit filed in Florida, Coca-Cola has been accused of looking the other way when plant managers in Colombia support paramilitaries in order to destroy unions with extreme violence, including torture and murder, against trade union leaders.
Despite this dismal record, last year the UI renewed its contract with Coca-Cola to run through 2008. In addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorship money, the University also is guaranteed a minimum amount--usually $400,000 a year--from a percentage of all Coke sales. With only a couple of exceptions, at all vending locations on campus only Coke products are available, giving students no option but complicity in Coke’s human rights abuses. The contract began in 1998, and has netted the University millions of dollars thus far. In return, Coke corners an exclusive market of young students, attaches its name to Hawkeye sports, builds brand loyalty through free campus advertising, and sells itself as the official drink of the University. The UI-Coke synergy even extends to athletic season tickets and a free day of golf at Finkbine for Coke executives, plus of course the shameful erection of a Coke Herky statue.
“We receive hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from Coke so it can call itself the ‘Official Soft Drink of the Iowa Hawkeyes,’” said SAS member and undergraduate student Emily Schrepf. “Isn’t it the least we can do to ensure that this partnership reflects the principles of this University?”
Echoing a growing nationwide chorus against Coke on college campuses, UI Students Against Sweatshops has pressed the administration to act for over two years. Late in 2004, their demands were finally recognized by the Presidential Charter Committee on Human Rights, which recommended that before a contract renewal in 2008 Coke must “demonstrate that it has taken affirmative steps to remedy the situation in Colombia.” More immediate, the Committee also urged the University to appoint a task force to study a possible ethical purchasing code of conduct.
The UI acceded to this recommendation, but shut SAS out of the task force at the same time as they continued to meet with Coca-Cola officials behind closed doors. SAS has on several occasions written President Skorton to ask to be included in any such committees or meetings, but the response is always the same: a letter thanking SAS for its work, a promise to study the issue, and then secret actions which override or subvert UI rhetoric.
Alan Schultz, a graduate student and SAS member, said “A task force stuffed with suits asked to study the feasibility of possibly implementing such a code someday is simply not good enough. People’s human rights are being violated in our name every day. We need the leverage an Ethical Purchasing Code provides, and we need it now.”
It appears likely that the task force might be a show piece. At the Big Ten Purchasing Conference held in Iowa City in October, the UI polled other institutions as to how they contractually handle the human rights abuses of their vendors. UI Purchasing Director Deborah Zumbach tipped the administration’s hand when she commented (in conference minutes obtained by SAS): “We’re anxiously waiting for a response to our recommendation that we maintain status quo…” Despite such pessimism, the University of Michigan, led by former UI President Mary Sue Coleman, recently instituted a comprehensive code of conduct for its vendors. Here at Iowa, it appears that the administration publicizes the non-binding recommendations of the Human Rights Committee while at the same time delegates the final determination on human rights issues to the Purchasing Department, General Counsel, and Athletic Department.
Last summer, SAS called for an investigation of the Coca-Cola Company by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a labor-monitoring organization to which the UI belongs. The WRC agreed to investigate the issue, but Coke refused to cooperate and instead dispatched worried officials to college campuses across the US. After such a meeting here, the UI was tellingly silent in the wake of Coke’s belligerent non-cooperation with the WRC. Around the same time, SAS, President Skorton, and a Senior Vice President at Coke published contrasting editorials in the Daily Iowan arguing over the best path forward. In November, The Gazette ran a front-page piece suggesting that the UI might enact a human rights clause for vendors, but the University has not acted in any meaningful way since.
Alexis Bushnell, a member of SAS and an undergraduate at the UI, said, “The University has a chance to be a leader in the field of human rights. To turn its back on Coke’s repugnant actions makes us part of the system of abuse. Together, however, as students, consumers, and a great university, we can make a difference if we collectively stand up to Coke.”
In 2003 and again in April 2004, SAS brought to the UI campus a Colombian union leader who fled the country to save his life. Luis Adolfo Cardona spoke to over 150 SAS activists and community members and told harrowing stories of corporate-sanctioned violence against his union, including witnessing the murder of his friend and fellow union activist on the grounds of the Coke bottling plant.
In addition to the allegations from Colombia, SAS has consistently pointed out other areas in which Coke’s human rights record is deeply suspect. Late last year, a slew of newspaper reports came out revealing that Coke buys sugar from El Salvador plantations that employ child labor. Communities in India which have protested that Coke steals their clean groundwater and then pollutes it with toxic chemicals from bottling run-off have been silenced with violence and repressive arrests. African activists have noted that while Coke is the largest private employer on the continent, and recorded record profits in recent years, it provides AIDS medication to a grossly inadequate percentage of its employees suffering from the disease.
Other campuses across Iowa and the nation have also witnessed student revolts against exclusive contracts between Coca-Cola and their universities. Recently, Iowa State University dumped Coke to ink a contract with Pepsi-Cola. At Grinnell College, within two days of a campaign kick-off, one third of the student body had signed an official petition calling for a Coke boycott. Due to the long-term contract, Coke still is the sole beverage supplier at Grinnell, but next to each product dispenser the College placed a sign which reads, “The Grinnell College student body has voted to boycott Coca-Cola products. This is a Coca-Cola product.” The University of Northern Iowa, meanwhile, chose earlier to sign a contract with Pepsi over Coke.
In the coming weeks, Students Against Sweatshops will continue to build a large public campaign around these issues. Currently, they meet every Thursday evening at 7pm in the Hoover Room, 255 Iowa Memorial Union.
UI Students Against Sweatshops (UI SAS) 46 Iowa Memorial Union, University of IowaIowa City, IA 52242 Email: iowasas@yahoo.com Website: http://www.uiowa.edu/~uisas
Contacts:
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