Sinaltrainal has waited years for Coca Cola to show the will to solve the labor, environmental, social and human rights problems caused by bottlers to their workers and the Colombian population. This has not happened. In good faith we developed a global framework to try to reach an agreement with this multinational, however, it was not possible. Coca Cola preferred to keep on benefiting from precarization, labor violence and harassment against unions inside the bottling plants.

We thought that Coca Cola wanted to solve the causes that gave birth to the worldwide campaign and we gave them the opportunity to do so by silencing and/or limiting ourselves to inform only about the aggressions that occurred against the workers and the community in connection with the Company, be it suppliers, distributors, owners of mom & pop stores, consumers, etc. We hoped that Coca Cola bottlers would adopt a conduct that was respectful of human and labor rights; but the contrary happened; they not only intensified their precarization policy, but interpreted Sinaltrainal's show of good faith as weakness and tried to destroy our national and international support to stop the worldwide campaign.

In addition, Sinaltrainal affiliates continue to be fired and subject to death threats, kidnapping and torture of family members, lawsuits, dirty campaigns to discredit us; obstruction to the legalization of union board of directors; violence against the right of freedom of association and unionization; precarization of labor through sub-contracting most of the workers who are thereby excluded from rights agreed to in collective bargaining agreements, the law and the international regulations. Environmental contamination and child exploitation persists.

In view of this situation, Sinaltrainal ratifies its adherence to the worldwide campaign against Coca Cola because this is a mechanism of information, social participation and global resistance that enables us to show the reality of systematic violation of human rights by this multinational, it protects our lives and allows us to prevent the extermination of Sinaltrainal and to defend workers' and the populations' rights.

For this reason, we invite men and women in every country around the world, of every nationality, ethnicity and religion, and all social organizations, artists, democrats and progressivists to continue joining efforts with us in the worldwide campaign against Coca Cola, to defend our lives, our national sovereignty, dignity and the existence of our social organizations.

To solve our problems, we demand that Coca Cola and its bottlers modify their policy and that truth, justice and integral reparation is granted for victims of their abuses.

Sincerely,

(signed)
Luis Javier Correa Suarez
President