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Who's Holding Coca-Cola Accountable?
Feb 20, 2007
Focus: Business
Action Request: Various
Location: United States
In <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060501/blanding>The Nation's May 1, 2006 cover story, <http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Boycotts/Case_Against_Coke.html>"The Case Against Coca-Cola," Michael Blanding wrote: "In the past two years the Coke campaign has grown into the largest anti-corporate movement since the campaign against Nike for sweatshop abuses...The fight to hold [Coke] accountable has, in turn, broadly connected issues across continents to become a truly globalized grassroots movement."

As of the beginning of 2007, at least 33 colleges and universities and a number of high schools had removed Coca-Cola from their campuses. Among them are large schools like New York University (the nation's largest private university), DePaul University in Illinois (the nation's largest Catholic university), and Rutgers in New Jersey (one of the nation's largest public universities), as well as smaller schools like San Jose City College, Union Theological Seminary, City University of New York Law School, Carleton College and Swarthmore College.

As The New York Sun reported (5/5/06): "The [City University of New York] Law School in Queens voted this week to ban Coca-Cola beverages in all campus vending machines. Student groups are prohibited from using school money to buy any Coca-Cola products for meetings or other events." As one student said: "We are a public interest law school and this was just such a glaring inconsistency with the reason that most people are at CUNY Law School."

The American Anthropological Association (AAA), representing 10,000 faculty members, passed a resolution in May 2006 calling for "a boycott of The Coca-Cola Company and its products, and calls on its members to do the same." The resolution added, "Investigations thus far have created a scholarly record of the operations and impact of The Coca-Cola Company through interviews with eyewitnesses; union organizers and other stakeholders; field observations; and archival research."

In July 2006, Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), the nation's largest retirement fund, <http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Boycotts/Case_Against_Coke.html>dropped The Coca-Cola Company from its CREF Social Choice Account and divested 1.25 million shares because its advisors found that Coca-Cola no longer meets the criteria for a socially responsible company. The $8 billion Social Choice Account is the world's largest socially screened fund for individual investors.

The divestment came after TIAA-CREF's advisor, <http://killercoke.org/nr060718.htm>KLD Research & Analytics, removed Coke from its list of socially responsible companies; the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported (7/19/06). "KLD based its decisions on a number of issues -- labor and human rights in Colombia, environmental issues in India and the marketing of high-calorie drinks to children in the United States."

Many of the largest labor unions, including teachers' unions in the U.S. and Europe, have called on their members to boycott Coke and have removed Coke vending machines and banned Coke products from their facilities and functions.

Coke wants to stamp its brand on every school and make young people a captive market for its products. But no educational institution that takes pride in its reputation as a place where ethics matters should lend its good name to Coke nor serve as a vehicle for its sales and advertising.

"From the beginning of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, we've said that two key ingredients of our strategy were to cut off some of Coke's most important markets, such as schools and labor unions, and to pose a threat to Coca-Cola's brand name and its corporate "image," said Campaign Director Ray Rogers. "A recent Business Week article (8/7/06) about the <http://bwnt.businessweek.com/brand/2006/>'top 100 brands' said that Coca-Cola, the most highly valued brand name in the world, had lost about one percent of its value, which translates into about a $680 million loss in U.S. dollars."
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Posted: Feb 20, 2007 1:55am

 
 
 
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