In a routine meeting on Feb. 5, the New York University senate made a decision with international implications. In a close 28-22 vote, a three-year ban on Coca-Cola products was lifted.

The ban originally intended to push for an investigation into the assassinations of nine members of Colombia’s National Union of Food Industry Workers (or, SINALTRAINAL), which has sought to organize workers in that country’s Coca-Cola bottling plants. The senate, composed of students, faculty, deans and administrators, implemented the ban on Dec. 8, 2005.

“It seemed to me that, sadly, the way that the result panned out, it seemed to be a victory for consumer choice over human rights, and I don’t think that is a good message to send,” said NYU professor and University Senator Paul Thompson.

Fellow senator and Public Affairs Chairman Arthur Tannenbaum, whose committee has been responsible for monitoring Coke’s progress, ended the discussion with by reading an email sent by a student arguing for the students’ “right to choose” Coca-Cola over the Pepsi-Cola products currently on campus.

The ILO’s Controversial Report

The International Labor Organization (ILO) filed a report in October on its “Evaluation Mission” into Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia. The report—conducted in June and July of 2008—says nothing about the assassinations. This United Nations body focused solely on current working conditions, but did cite SINALTRAINAL representatives as having “reported harassment by the enterprise in their home neighborhoods as well as at work.” It also documents repeated attempts on the part of plant management to dissuade workers from joining unions.

The loosely worded NYU Senate resolution has sparked debate over whether this “assessment” satisfies the university’s requirements for lifting the ban. Some senators argued that the resolution does not necessarily bind Coca-Cola to an investigation of past abuses.

Tannenbaum pointed out that the resolution contains the word “assessment” and the word “investigation.” He said that the committee decided that the ILO had complied with the “assessment” reference in the resolution and that an “investigation” deemed adequate to all parties would be impossible to conduct.

For Camilo Romero, 27, an organizer and member of SINALTRAINAL since 2003, lifting the ban on the grounds of the ILO report’s adequacy is absurd.

“It’s certainly very disappointing to see that so many of the senators in fact were swayed by Coca-Cola’s materials and by the ILO report, which to even an untrained eye you can tell did not look into the issues that were alleged by our union and that were a justification for a ban in December of 2005,” Romero said after exiting the Senate meeting on Thursday.

He had been one of a few guests specifically invited by senators to observe the vote (guests cannot speak unless the senators vote for them to do so).

The assassination and harassment of union representatives in Colombia has been linked to paramilitary groups. Drawing on the testimony of former paramilitary commanders, an October 2008 Human Rights Watch report implicated a number of transnational corporations including Dole and Chiquita in human rights abuses of their Colombian workers.

Luis Cardona

Luis Cardona, 50, is familiar with this collaboration between paramilitaries and big business. He has traveled throughout the United States telling the story of his co-worker, Isidro Gil, who was shot in the head and killed by paramilitaries [and is one of the nine men named in the suit against Coca-Cola). Cardona himself was kidnapped and narrowly escaped, only to later face police indifference toward pursuing his assailants. To protect himself and his family, Cardona fled to the United States where he continues to organize on behalf of SINALTRAINAL alongside the United Steelworkers Union.

In an event at NYU the night before the Senate vote, Cardona spoke about the abuses he witnessed first hand in Colombia. He was one of the founding members of SINALTRAINAL in 1985. Shortly after the union became official, persecution of its leaders began. According to Cardona, it was commonplace to see the manager of one Coca-Cola bottling plant, Ariosto Milan Mosquera, drinking with the paramilitaries and giving them soda for their parties while also allowing them to freely enter the bottling plant.

“It was then that drunk numerous times [Mosquera] would tell us ‘I have spoken with the paramilitary groups and at the time I give the order, the union here ends,’” Cardona recalled in Spanish.

A Global Campaign

NYU was one of over 190 colleges and universities across the globe involved in varying degrees in the campaign “against Killer Coke.” It is the first university to lift the ban (besides the University of Michigan, which lifted the ban in 2006 after having it in place for only one month).

Thompson, a playwright whose work includes “The Motor Show,” (1975) about the battle to unionize Ford autoworkers, said that NYU’s actions would “[…] make it much more difficult for other universities to maintain their position, and it will, of course, give Coca-Cola and other corporate entities a great deal of confidence.”

The Killer Coke campaign has grown since NYU set its ban, and it now encompasses a number of environmental and social concerns including the damage Coca-Cola has inflicted on local farmers in India through irresponsible water use and the polluting groundwater and soil. The guidelines of the NYU senate prevented students from updating the resolution to reflect the progression of the campaign.

Despite the outcome of the vote, Romero insisted that the movement would continue to grow

“I’m certain that students here locally are going to stay very active and very militant on the issue since we may be silenced today on this vote, February fifth, but we’ve been silenced for decades now and we’re still here.”