Treat Your Workers Campaign - Global

Demonstrations were held in New York, Washington, Atlanta, Boston, and Barcelona in the summer of 2002; an October 17, 2002 Global Day of Action on four continents was designed to increase pressure on Coca-Cola to commit to a comprehensive and sustainable workplace treatment programme. In general, demands include enrolling all bottlers in a cost-sharing scheme related to treatment for HIV/AIDS, reporting the number of programmes implemented thus far and the enrollment of people living with HIV/AIDS, and extending the coverage of AIDS treatment to workers in developing countries other than Africa. Activists urge centralisation of the existing programme to ensure quality, to enable the efficient procurement of drugs and diagnostics, to encourage consistent program-wide monitoring and evaluation, and to foster reliable system-wide reporting methods. They also demand that the confidentiality of all medical records is respected and that voluntary, confidential HIV testing coheres with universal policies of non-discrimination. (For more information on the campaign's demands, click here).

The Treat Your Workers campaign site provides information and advocacy tools related to campaign events like these. Tools for activists include a flyer, a student toolkit, "Protest in a Can", art and posters (featuring words like "Neglect Kills...", "Making a Killing...; "Neglect=Death..."; and "Treatment Now"), chants, links, a sample press release, and sample letters meant for Coca-Cola or its shareholders. Here is an excerpt from one such letter: "in Africa, Coca-Cola agreed to pay for full medical coverage, including treatment with antiretroviral drugs, for any of the 1,500 direct corporate employees or their immediate family members who are HIV positive. However, an estimated 100,000 people are employed by the Coca-Cola system, comprised of fully or partially owned business and other companies that can and bottle your product under exclusive licensing agreements that include quality and operation standards set by Coca-Cola. A limited program such as this that leaves most Coke employees behind, and the consistent practice of minimizing any fair obligations to those workers in order to maximize profits, is unacceptable."

The site urges various actions designed to put pressure on company executives. They include organising local events, holding a press conference, urging one's friends to "dump Coca-Cola", telling one's university or college president that you want Coke off your campus, and getting the word out by placing stickers on Coke machines and posting posters.

HIV/AIDS, Workers' Rights.

Organisers claim that "Every day 8,000 people with HIV/AIDS die because the life-sustaining antiretroviral medications that have dramatically improved the health of people with HIV in wealthy nations, are not available." They cite International Labor Organisation (ILO) statistics indicating that 20 million people living with HIV/AIDS are workers, which amounts to half the current estimated international population of HIV positive people worldwide. They note that, against a backdrop of intensified international attention to the pandemic, corporations made a flurry of announcements of new initiatives designed to combat global AIDS in 2001. Coca-Cola was one of those companies. While this and other companies were highlighted in the media for their initiatives, Health GAP claim that they were, in the meantime, "reaping tremendous profit from low-cost African labor...skirting their most fundamental obligation: providing workers, including those living with HIV/AIDS, with health care coverage."

Organisers claim that the company has committed in writing to enroll all of its African system workforce in an HIV/AIDS healthcare programme that includes antiretroviral therapy, launching The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation and Bottlers in Africa HIV/AIDS Healthcare Program. They point out, however, that Coca-Cola has failed to show proof of commitment.