DePaul Anti-Sweatshop Activists Claim Victory
DePaul University Ends Coca-Cola Contract

Chicago – DePaul University has decided not to renew its exclusive contract with Coca-Cola. The decision, by the largest Catholic university in the U.S., comes after a three-year campaign by anti-sweatshop activists on campus.

Extreme labor rights abuses, including the alleged kidnapping, torture and murder of local labor union leaders by paramilitaries associated with its bottlers in Colombia have caused other major universities including Rutgers and New York University to sever ties with the soft drink giant.

Other countries where Coca Cola operates and where serious complaints about labor rights violations have emerged include India, Turkey, Guatemala, and Indonesia.

In 2003, the Activist Student Union (ASU) at DePaul began a campaign to inform the students, staff, and administration about the murder of Coca-Cola union workers in Colombia and other company crimes, as part of an international boycott in solidarity with the food and beverage workers union of Colombia or SINALTRAINAL. SINALTRAINAL has been the target of right wing paramilitary groups that work with Coca-Cola management to crush unions.

DePaul’s administration took the position that it could not make a decision until the 6-year exclusive contract was up. That deadline passed this summer, and the administration bowed to students’ demands.

“We’ve learned from some University administrators that Coke insisted that DePaul not acknowledge the role that the boycott campaign played in not renewing the contract,” said Andrea Craft, a student and ASU member.

“In the name of all the workers in Colombia who are being exploited by Coca-Cola, I would like to say thank you for all the work that has been done to show Coca-Cola that there are people opposed to these abuses that can come together and have the power to change Coca-Cola’s practices,” said Luis Adolfo Cardona, a former Coca-Cola worker in Colombia who had been kidnapped, tortured and whose entire family had received death threats from right-wing death squads because of his union involvement. Cardona was granted political asylum by the US and resides in Chicago.