SIPTU Sleaze and Coca Cola workers

by tomeile Fri Sep 18, 2009 15:23 tomeile at hotmail dot co dot uk

These are very serious charges against Speed and O'Connor and should be investigated thoroughly and urgently .
Marc is saying that between them Jack O'Connor and Anne Speed carried out a personalised campaign of character assassination against the most active member of a small campaign, and that Siptu attempted to intimidate the organisation the active member worked with into distancing itself from him. Speed and O’Connor did this as part of a vitriolic attack on a campaign which was set up in solidarity with the Colombian Coca Cola workers’ union SINALTRAINAL , even though some of that unions’ members had been recently murdered by coca cola’s hired thugs .

As part of their vitriolic vendetta against this most active member of the Boycott Killer Coke campaign , SIPTU even went so far as to send people to Colombia where they threatened to organise an international campaign against the small union, SINALTRAINAL, unless it agreed immediately to end its call for a boycott of Coca Cola .

But Marc offers no substantiation for this charge of " threatening" other than a copy of the report of a meeting between the Siniltrainal union and Siptu written by Luis Javier Correa Suárez who is the National President of Sinaltrainal .

What Marc is saying –or at least insinuating - is that Speed and O’ Connor have violated the most basic principles of trade union solidarity : “bizarre behaviour” for trade union leaders as Mark wrote . What could have motivated them to behave in such a bizarre way?

Marc is suggesting that the sleazy O’ Connor and Speed are totally onside with management and are prepared to see workers in Colombia murdered rather than break their allegiances to the Coca Cola company .

Marc “ happened” to meet a senior SIPTU member who, 'looked after' the SIPTU workers at a Coca Cola plant. In an "otherwise pleasant exchange" the SIPTU rep told him:

'You don't understand, Marc. It's not like that any more. It's not workers against management. It's workers and management here, against workers and management in other countries."

In other words ,it’s a dog eat dog world out there and the union in Ireland has to be on the same side as management in Ireland against workers in other countries . If Siptu reps operate in that way , then the Coca Cola workers now on strike are being led by a bunch of management stooges .

I think that Marc’s charges against Speed and O’Connor should be looked into . If they are true then Speed and O’Connor should be booted out of the trade union movement. If the charges are found to be false then the leaders of the Boycott Coca Cola campaign have serious questions to answer about their own behaviour .

by Stabillo Boss Fri Sep 18, 2009 19:06

When workers and unions refuse solidarity the day is never very far away when they'll be looking for it themselves. I see one of those most vehement against the Columbian boycott campaign in today's paper condemning a new low in industrial relations by Coca Cola. They haven't had anyone shot here.

Any word in Indymedia now from the vociferous opponents of the boycott?

by polly Sun Sep 20, 2009 00:45

Dont expect anything from trade unions!
They are now the Third party in government
and have been for many years!
They have not even raised their voices to support
their former members who have to wait 10 weeks
to claim their unemployment benefits.
They supported the replacement of Irish workers
with foreign workers who work slave hours and
yellow pack wages! They are now just a business!
Larkin and connolly are turning in their graves with
what the trade unions have become! why would the
bossman be collecting the union subscriptions for
the union when the bossman doesn't want workers
rights? Years ago if your union didn't perform you
would withdraw your subs now you dont have that
clout. Get rid of the checkoff system and see how hard
they would work for their money!

by Supporter Sun Sep 20, 2009 15:03

What is needed now is solidarity with the Coca Cola workers who are fighting to save their jobs and your comments re Colombia may have merit but they are ill timed. Support the Coca Cola strike!

by tomeile Sun Sep 20, 2009 16:13 tomeile at hotmail dot co dot uk

Yes, surely the important thing is to show solidarity with the workers now on strike , without the personalised bickering . People are fully entitled to criticise the way Anne Speed and Jack O’Connor handle the strike , but please let’s not descend into the name-calling of previous threads .

Writing as Anton , I opposed the boycott campaign after a news report by the leading activist in the boycott campaign appeared on Mayday 2005 on Indy . The article https://www.indymedia.ie/article/69627 reported Coke management’s decision to close the company’s Naas Rd plant under the headline :

"Coke Workers Repaid For Loyalty To Company"

I thought that was an insult to workers who had lost their jobs .

The Siptu Coca- Cola workers had previously opposed the boycott of Coke products at Irish universities . Their right not to support the campaign was supported by Anne Speed of Siptu . When some of the workers visited UCD to urge students not to support a boycott campaign which they considered to be misconceived security was called and the workers were escorted from the campus . In my opinion Speed's support for members of the union did not make her a company stooge. But the charges made against her are nonetheless serious and should be seriously investigated .

The Coke Boycott campaign should now fully support the strikers and use the strike as a way of getting the message across that Coke and other multinationals are only interested in profits whether in Colombia or Ireland .

by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Mon Sep 21, 2009 04:58

As someone who was very involved in the campaign against coke few points.
The behaviour of Speed and O Connor was very well known at teh time. There is no need to investigate. AT teh time they publicly said coke was a great company to work for and that the allegations about colombian were unfounded. Check their website the press releaseses are still up there.

The point is not that the workers don't deserve solidarity, they do deserve it. The point is that Siput soldout Coke workers before and will do so again. It would have been better for all for the coke workers in Ireland to stand with their colombian colleagues, they didn't they stood with and defended the company and are now paying the price.

by tomeile Mon Sep 21, 2009 15:31 tomeile at hotmail dot co dot uk

“AT teh time they publicly said coke was a great company to work for and that the allegations about colombian were unfounded. Check their website the press releaseses are still up there.” …….Gearoid

Some links would have been appropriate Gearoid .If Jack O’Connor and Anne Speed said publicly that Coke was a great company to work for, let's see the context .

I checked the Siptu site's search engine for mention of the boycott and found only two statements about it – both from 2003 . Both of these press releases included passages which clearly indicate that Siptu is concerned about trades union and human right violations in Colombia .

“Workers disappointed as students vote to boycott Coca Cola products”
"We respect the interest shown by students in human rights and injustice around the world. Trade union and human rights in Colombia have to be strengthened and protected. We know that over 4,000 trade unionists have been assassinated there in the past decade and that Colombia has the worst human rights record in the world.”
http://www.siptu.ie/PressRoom/NewsReleases/2003/Name,22....html

Workers say no to Coca Cola boycott
“Our Union, SIPTU has consistently expressed solidarity with the workers of Colombia and will continue to do so. However, we do not believe a boycott of Coca Cola products is the most effective way of expressing this concern at the present time.”
“While we fully support the demand to safeguard workers' rights in Columbia, we believe a boycott of Coca-Cola is the wrong way to make progress on this issue.”
http://www.siptu.ie/PressRoom/NewsReleases/2003/Name,22....html

by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Mon Sep 21, 2009 19:35

Don't worry about links. I will soon be putting up an article on this quoting from siptu statements. It would seem that my search engine is better. Therea are more than two statements including one that says that the alelgations were unsubstantiated. I also took part in meetings between sinaltrainal and siptu, but to be honest I am bit tired of it all. I personally put up with enough abuse back then to have go into a 1984 world where what was public a few years ago is now denied. For anyone around back then these issues were very public and debated extensively on indymedia, including an article of mine The Price of Loyalty and also a an interview with Javier Correa.

Go check

by tomeile Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:31 tomeile at hotmail dot co dot uk

Gearóid, if you were to write more clearly it would save having to repeat yourself needlessly. One of the reasons I asked you for links was so that I could work out for myself what you meant when you wrote, “the allegations about colombian were unfounded”. I didn’t want to make a big deal about your wording yesterday, because I know that people might have problems with accessing the internet if they are living in Colombia.

Also in regards to links, it’s important to see the context in which Jack O’Connor and Anne Speed said that Coke is a great company to work for, as you say they did. If they did say that, it is possible they meant that working at Coca Cola in a union job with relatively decent wages and conditions is better than working in a non-union sweat shop. I doubt very much if the two long standing union officials would have been saying that Coke is a great place to work for, as if it’s some sort of Shangri La.

Anne Speed was at the anti- Nama march in Dublin on Saturday behind one of the two Coca Cola strikers’ banners present. I was surprised to see that one of those banners had the slogan Boycott Coke on it. Surely this would be a time to mend fences .Anne Speed is not the company stooge that the Boycott campaigners have made her out to be over the past six years.

by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Tue Sep 22, 2009 15:00

Yes, Internet can be a problem, so I am going to post here excerpts from documents I kept from the time. The first is a posting on Indymedia by Anne Speed. The second is from the IUF the international body that Siptu coke affiliates are in. This document was quoted to us more than once a public meetings.

Without getting into the substance of the argument - this is not the place - the workers consider the boycott call to be divisive of the possibility and need for workers solidarity within the Coca Cola system.

"The workers in Coca Cola Ireland are aware that Right wing paramilitaries did enter and shoot and kill a Coca Cola worker and a manager in a Coca Cola bottling franchise plant in Carepa in 1996. This happened as part of an assault on a guerrilla force in the locality."

this was a lie., he was shot dead in the absence of any combat situation near the area!

"One group of franchise managers (who have since been removed) in the Carepa plant in Colombia engaged in extreme threatening behaviour later in the 1990s against SINAL Trainal members. Coca Cola workers in Ireland demanded and received information on these and other events in Colombia. Nothing new or substantially different has been added by contact with a SINAL Trainal member visiting Ireland recently."

nothing new! The met with a man who had spent six months in jail on trumped up charges!! charges laid by coke management. The prosecutor (not even the judge) eventually concluded that there was no bomb in the coke plant as management had claimed.

Now comes the IUF statement that was quoted to us. There are some lies in it about other unions etc. but you don't have to go far to see the stuff about unsubstantiated allegations. There are radio boradcasts from the time and plenty of witnesses. I have no idea who you are, as you use a pen name, so I don't know if you were around then. If you were I fail to see how you didn't notice. This is my last posting on the subject. Coke workers here are still under attack, I have more important things to do than go over who said what www.sinaltrainal.org As for Speed and O Connor's record. They both support social partnership! Though Speed likes to make noises that she doesn't. Enough said.

"International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant,
Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations
8 Rampe du Pont Rouge, Petit Lancy, CH-1213 Geneva, Switzerland
Tel : +41 22 793 22 33 ; Fax : +41 22 793 22 38 ; e-mail :[email protected]; www.iuf.org
URGENT ACTION: E-MAIL CIRCULAR
Geneva, July 14, 2003
To: affiliated organizations
(to the Executive Committee for information)
Concerns: IUF Coca-Cola Affiliates Reject Call for an "International Consumer Boycott Campaign" of Coca-Cola Beginning July 22, 2003
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
Following concerns expressed by a number of IUF affiliates representing Coca-Cola workers worldwide, the IUF has decided to respond to the current campaign calling for an "international consumer boycott" of Coca-Cola beginning July 22.
Sweeping, unsubstantiated allegations and assertions of the type found in the boycott appeal do nothing to help the cause of the unions that organize and represent Coca-Cola workers around the world, the majority of which are members of the IUF. The call for a boycott of Coca-Cola was unanimously rejected at the recent IUF global meeting that included 27 IUF-affiliated organizations from 23 countries representing more than 100 Coca-Cola workers' trade unions around the world.
New York, March 3-4, 2003
IUF COCA-COLA UNIONS REJECT CALL
FOR A GLOBAL COCA-COLA BOYCOTT
The IUF Global Coca-Cola Meeting (New York City, March 3-4, 2003) bringing together 27 representative organizations from 23 countries throughout Coca-Cola’s global operations, strongly condemns the call (dated 3 March 2003) for a global company boycott issued by the Colombian union SINALTRAINAL. The demands contained in the boycott declaration, which contain an implicit call for the boycott of all transnational companies operating in Colombia, do not reflect the concerns of Colombian Coca-Cola workers or the views of the broader Colombian and international labour movements. The boycott call is based on unsubstantiated allegations and empty political slogans. This call for a boycott will damage, rather than strengthen, the credibility of all those seeking to secure union rights for all employees in the Coca-Cola system.
Coca-Cola workers internationally and their unions, through the IUF, are committed to, and organizing for, guaranteed minimum rights for all workers throughout the global Coca-Cola system. We do not recognize the SINALTRAINAL call for a boycott as helpful in any way to our efforts in this regard. We therefore call upon those wishing to advance worker rights within the Coca-Cola system to reject this call for a global boycott and to work together with the IUF and its international membership within the Coca-Cola system.
The overwhelming majority of unions representing Coca-Cola workers, including those in Coke's largest market, the USA, do not support the boycott call.
The IUF finds statements about Coca-Cola in the boycott call like "For the benefits they obtain from the assassination, imprisonment, displacement, kidnapping, threatening, and firing of union leaders in Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, the United States, Venezuela, Palestine, Turkey, Iran, as well as in other parts of the world" misleading and inaccurate. The IUF is not aware of complaints of this kind from our affiliates who represent Coca-Cola workers in many of the countries mentioned. In the case of Iran there are no "union leaders" because there are no unions and as far as we are aware there is no Coca-Cola production.
Of the eight Colombia murders attributed to Coca-Cola, five were of workers at the Carepa plant in Urabá province in the years 1994 through 1996. The best documented case is the killing of union leader Isidro Segundo Gil by paramilitaries on 5 December 1996, which was followed by the forced resignation and flight of other union activists. No details have been provided about one of the other murders attributed to Coca-Cola, which took place in 1989. Oscar Dario Soto, a local president of the SINALTRAINBEC union, was assassinated on 22 June 2001 by unknown assailants. Adolfo de Jesus Munera, a regional CUT official and former Coca-Cola worker, was assassinated on 31 August 2002. We have seen no evidence linking either of these killings to Coca-Cola. The IUF vigorously protested both assassinations to the Colombian government and requested its affiliates to do likewise.
The IUF and its affiliates have consistently protested the Colombian government's failure to provide protection to all union leaders and activists who request it, and will continue to hold the Colombian government principally responsible. We welcome and have always called for a full investigation of these crimes and vigorous prosecution of the perpetrators and those responsible for their actions. Impunity in Colombia must end.
The bottler running the Carepa plant changed its plant management in 1997. Workers at that plant are now represented by a trade union, which has succeeded in negotiating important gains for workers there. These gains were achieved by determined organizing and tough bargaining in a very difficult environment, with the support of the IUF.
The reference in several versions of the boycott call to the Guatemala situation in the 1980's is historically inaccurate. Whilst there was some effort at launching consumer boycotts supported by the IUF's affiliates on that occasion, it was principally action within and around Coca-Cola plants throughout the world organized by IUF affiliates in support of our affiliate STECSA in Guatemala that ultimately forced Coca-Cola into meetings with the IUF and STECSA in Mexico City and Costa Rica. Through this process, an agreement was finally negotiated that led to the change in the franchise holder and a resolution of the repressive situation STECSA had faced in the Guatemala City plant.
Boycott supporters claim to be acting in support of a case launched in US courts against The Coca-Cola Company and its Colombian bottlers. They fail to mention that a recent decision by a US court in relation to this case ruled that neither The Coca-Cola Company itself nor its Colombian subsidiary carries any responsibility for the employment practices of Coca-Cola anchor bottler companies or franchise holders. If this stands, it represents a significant setback for those seeking to defend and advance human and trade union rights within the broader Coca-Cola system by pressuring Coca-Cola to accept some measure of responsibility for industrial relations in anchor bottlers and franchise holders. This was the key issue at the heart of our victory in Guatemala in the 1980's. This court decision is not helpful to our ongoing campaign, but we are determined to overcome this obstacle through serious organizing and engagement.
Our record of struggle at Coca-Cola, and our commitment to trade union rights within the Coca-Cola system, is a matter of public record. More recently IUF affiliates around the world again gave support to STECSA in Guatemala when an aggressive management sought to weaken some of the union's gains stemming from the 1980's campaigns. After a 22-month struggle, the union was able to successfully defend these gains in a new collective agreement earlier this year. In Russia, after nearly a decade of anti-union practices following Coca-Cola's implantation in the former Soviet Union, workers have recently signed a first collective agreement in Moscow, with the support of the IUF and its affiliates. The struggle continues.
It is worth noting that Coca-Cola has a significantly higher trade union membership density than its major competitor PepsiCo, a company which can more accurately be described as consistently anti-union. A serious, sustained campaign for global respect for trade union rights must take account of the global environment in which the company operates, a factor overlooked by supporters of the boycott.
The collective efforts of the IUF and our affiliates are not assisted by unsubstantiated and unverified assertions about the company which cannot be credibly defended and which The Coca-Cola Company has little difficulty in refuting. Serious accusations against the company over issues relating to trade union rights may now lose credibility because of misleading information being circulated in various versions of the boycott call.
It has always been our position that Coca-Cola bears ultimate responsibility for ensuring respect for fundamental rights throughout the Coca-Cola system. In our experience over many years, Coca-Cola is a company which, given the opportunity, is likely to seek to weaken an agreement, block an organizing drive or bust a union where it can do so. In this respect, it is no different from most other transnational companies. To change this our response must be, as always, sustained organizing and engagement backed up by a credible threat of action where necessary to defend and advance respect for trade union rights in this as in all such companies.
With very best wishes, I am

Yours in solidarity

Ron Oswald
General Secretary

ro/pr/70 - 2003"

by Topper Wed Sep 23, 2009 14:46

These are a few links that I turned up by putting "Coke" and "Colombia" into the Indymedia search engine.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/67840?search_text=colom...+coke

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/66980?search_text=colom...+coke

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/66013?search_text=colom...+coke

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/65248?search_text=colom...+coke

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/62319?search_text=colom...+coke

If you read over the stuff (a lot of comments posted under several of those stories, plenty to chew over), there's a couple of things that stand out from the stand taken by the SIPTU officials concerned.

First of all, it was never fully clear on what grounds they were opposing the call for a boycott of Coke. Did they think that the allegations being made against Coke by SINALTRAINAL (that its Colombian managers had actively collaborated with paramilitaries who murdered and threatened trade union members) were false? Obviously, if they thought the allegations were false, they wouldn't support the call for a boycott. Or did they think there was some truth to the allegations, but didn't feel they could support the call for a boycott for other reasons?

However, SIPTU was prepared to issue the following statement after UCD students voted to support the boycott in 2003:

"Workers in Coca Cola’s Dublin bottling plant are dismayed and disappointed that students in UCD have voted to boycott Coca Cola products in protest against human rights violations in Colombia ... our Union, SIPTU, has consistently supported solidarity actions with the workers of Colombia and will continue to do so. However, we do not believe a boycott of Coca Cola products is the most effective way of expressing this concern at the present time ... the International Union of Food Workers (IUF) – which has been defending workers’ rights and workers’ representatives in Colombia for nearly two decades - does not believe the Coca Cola Corporation in Atlanta or its local bottling plant in Colombia has instigated or supported recent paramilitary activities against trade unionists in Coca Cola."

(You can find the full text of this statement at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/62319?search_text=colom...+coke, in the comment posted by "Tom Shelley").

So that's a pretty direct statement from SIPTU that Coke had no case to answer, and the allegations made by SINALTRAINAL were false. In which case, it would have been helpful for the SIPTU officials to explain why they thought SINALTRAINAL's allegations were false. They never did so.

The second thing that stands out is this report from a meeting between SIPTU and SINALTRAINAL officials in Bogota, which was published by the SINALTRAINAL president:

"Report on the meeting with siptu members Jack McGinley & Anne Speed

The meeting took place on Thursday November 4, 2004 and was attended by Javier Correa, Ermelina Mosquera, and Gonzalo Quijano on behalf of Sinaltrainal. The SIPTU representatives made their and their organisations's presentation. They mentioned that they had met in Dublin with the Colombian vice-president Fransisco Santos and expressed their demands that the repression and the violation of human rights in Colombia stop. After that SIPTU demanded of Sinaltrainal that the boycott end and threatened that otherwise they along with the IUF would begin a campaign against our union not only in Europe but throughout the world. Our response to this was that is was not our initiative but a result of the conclusions of the three public hearings held in 2002 at which there were over 500 international organizations.

"We also explained that by giving up the campaign without a resolution to the proposed reparations from the multinational, Coca Cola, would allow the impunity to go unchecked in our land; that what is at issue are the lives of 9 of our fellow colleagues who were killed by dark forces and from which the company benefitted. It would also be tantamount to forgetting the kidnapping of workers and their children, the forced displacement suffered by 64 of our brothers and their families; the unjust imprisonment of our colleagues falsely accused by Coca Cola. It was further clarified that in order to stop the boycott Coca Cola would have to deal with the petitions we presented to them around these cases on the 22nd of January 2003 in which we seek truth, justice and full reparations for the victims, the families and the social organisation that we represent. In the meeting we gave them copies of some of the evidence of what Coca Cola does to prevent the right of free association and also to overturn the statutes of our union to prevent its growth amongst other things."

(you can find the full text at this link: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/67840?search_text=open+...siptu).

The SIPTU officials concerned may not have agreed with the boycott. They may not have wished to give their support to the boycott. That's one thing. But it's quite another to travel to Colombia and threaten to launch an international campaign against a union whose members have been murdered repeatedly by right-wing paramilitaries (whether or not you accept the claim that Coke management was complicit in these murders, they certainly happened). It's hard to see how you can reconcile this with basic principles of trade union solidarity. Unions don't always have to agree with each other, but threatening to campaign against another trade union, especially one operating in such a dangerous country, is surely beyond the pale.

by tomeile Fri Sep 25, 2009 16:28 tomeile at hotmail dot co dot uk

Coke workers in Ireland opposed the consumers boycott campaign that Gearóid Ó Loingsigh had helped set up in response to a call from the Colombian trade union Sinaltranil .Eight members of Sinaltranil working at a Coca Cola bottling plant had been murdered by right wing paramilitaries. The boycott campaign was supported by most of the Irish left including the Socialist Party, SWP, WSM, and Socialist Democracy. Even Dublin Sinn Fein supported the campaign as a symbolic act of solidarity with Colombian trade unionists despite the fact that its member, Siptu full- timer Anne Speed, represented workers who opposed the boycott.

And then on Mayday 2005, days after Coca-Cola announced the closure of its Naas Rd plant with the loss of over two hundred jobs, Gearóid headlined an indymedia article

“Coke workers repaid for loyalty to company”.

When ( writing as Anton on the thread) I said that the Boycott Killer Coke campaign was being insulting to workers who had just got the sack , I was told that I had misrepresented what Gearóid had written and that any criticism in his article was addressed to the SIptu union bureaucracy – particularly to Anne Speed .

Here’s a sample of the posts insisting that Gearóid’s Mayday message had been addressed to the union bureaucracy and not to workers who had just got the sack. They are accessible here: https://www.indymedia.ie/article/69627 re

“He is clearly talking about Siptu Bureaucrats Anton. You will have to try harder”

As has been pointed out god knows how many times on this thread, there is NO insult to the Irish Coke workers, anywhere in the article. The only criticism is directed at the SIPTU bureaucracy. Stop pretending otherwise, Ann.

I dare you anton to quote any slanders in quotation marks and source them.

You took that quote from G O'L completely and utterly out of context you bad little bureaucrat doing overtime on behalf of the coca-cola corporation. So much so that I say you are at base a liar trying to make a cowardly bootlicking union bureaucracy look good.

-------------------------------------------------------
Four years on ,with Coca Cola workers on strike , the posts to this thread from Stabillo Boss and Gearóid have confirmed the reactionary class nature of the boycott campaign with statements that show clearly its patronisingly hostile attitude to striking Coke workers .

Stabillo Boss wrote on Sept 18, 2009
“When workers and unions refuse solidarity the day is never very far away when they'll be looking for it themselves”

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh wrote on 21 Sept 2009

“It would have been better for all for the coke workers in Ireland to stand with their colombian colleagues, they didn't they stood with and defended the company and are now paying the price.”

The leading activist in the campaign has now said openly what he thought all along – that the Coke workers’ opposition to the boycott campaign meant that they were standing with and defending a company that supports the murder of Colombian trade unionists. The workers are now "paying the price" for their loyalty to the Coca-Cola company .

by Topper Fri Sep 25, 2009 18:21

That's not so much a re-cap as an attempt to change the subject, tomeile. You asked what it was that the SIPTU officials had done wrong. I pointed out two things that they could be criticised for: issuing a public statement which claimed that SINALTRAINAL were making false accusations against Coke, and threatening to launch an international campaign against SINALTRAINAL.

Now, it would be helpful if you could address those points instead of changing the subject and claiming that the whole boycott campaign was "reactionary", based on your interpretation of a statement made on this thread by one person who was involved in that campaign. It's a bit rich for you to accuse people of being unfair in the criticisms they made of SIPTU officials, then turn around and brand a solidarity campaign launched by a Colombian trade union whose members have been repeated targets of paramilitary violence as "reactionary", simply because you don't like the comments made by one person. I'm not even going to bother debating whether your interpretation of those comments is valid or not. It's simply ridiculous for you to claim that the entire campaign is "reactionary" because of what one person says. Labour and student activists in many different countries have supported the campaign. Are they all reactionary? Is the Colombian trade union movement, which supported the boycott campaign, reactionary?

So I'll say again. You can object to what Gearoid said on this thread if you like. I don’t agree with your interpretation of what he said, but even if it was valid, it would have very little to do with the campaign as a whole. You asked what the SIPTU officials had done wrong. I gave two examples. You haven’t addressed either example. Was it right for SIPTU officials to issue a statement which effectively said that SINALTRAINAL were lying? Was it right for SIPTU officials to threaten to launch an international campaign against SINALTRAINAL? Don’t give us more rhetoric about the “reactionary class nature of the boycott campaign”. Just address the basic issues.

by Gearoid O Loingsigh Wed Sep 30, 2009 14:54

So now the campaign to accuse a company of the murder of trade unionists is reacationary!!!! Well that says it all. You asked for statements from Siptu etc saying that the claims were false etc you got them and have nothing to say but rather try to change teh subject.

Just to clarify (which is why I am posting this again). I didn´t launch the boycott in Ireland. The boycott was launched in Bogota by Sinaltrainal. At the launch the president of the CUT spoke in favour of it (something he would come to regret). It was also approved at the Social Forum in Cartegena, Colombia. I wasn´t even behind the UCD campaign. The students came to me, not the other way around. As already said I was one person in the campaign, a very visible person and due to my knowledge of the country etc, the person who perhaps was one the radio etc, most. But I was one person.

When workers accuse other workers of lying about murder they take the side of the bosses. It is not inconceivable that workers do that. Scabbing happens all the time. Some scabs regret what they did and redeem themselves later in other strikes. It doesn´t change what they did before it just puts it in a context where their loyalty is seen for what it was.

Now Tomelle/anton etc care to tell us who you are? We have our suspicions, but would rather not vent them as we inaccurately thought at one stage that you were someone close to Anne Speed and were contacted by Indymedia about this. So who are you? And why do you hide behind a pen name. Do you not have the courage of your convictions?

by tomeile Sat Oct 03, 2009 16:08 tomeile at hotmail dot co dot uk

In 2005 the supporters of the Boycott Killer Coke campaign said that the Mayday statement “Coke workers repaid for loyalty to company” , which Gearoid O Loingsigh issued when Coca Cola announced redundancies at its Naas Rd plant ,was directed to the Siptu bureaucracy . I said that the statement was an insult and that it was in fact primarily addressed to the Coke workers because they had refused to support the consumers’ boycott tactic .Writing under the name Anton on the thread I said .

"A consumer's group has come up against a group of coke workers and told them that ,if they do not support a certain tactic ,they are scabs” https://www.indymedia.ie/article/69627

Chekov ,who was at that time a leading boycott campaigner , wrote back denying that Gearoid O Loingsigh was calling the workers scabs He accused me (Anton) of misrepresenting the statement made by Gearoid O Loingsigh.

“As far as I can see, Anton is the only person making this suggestion and I don't think that he counts as a 'consumer group'. “

Chekov later wrote “I certainly am not and don't consider them [the coke workers] to be scabs.”

Another boycott supporter, Eeeeeeeek , also accused me (Anton) of misrepresenting Gearoid O Loingsigh . Eeeek wrote on the thread :

“You took that quote from G O'L completely and utterly out of context you bad little bureaucrat doing overtime on behalf of the coca-cola corporation. So much so that I say you are at base a liar trying to make a cowardly bootlicking union bureaucracy look good………. He is clearly talking about Siptu Bureaucrats Anton. You will have to try harder”

Nearly four years later , on this thread , Gearoid O Loingsigh now acknowledges that his accusations of scabbing had been made against the Coke workers . Gearoid wrote this Wednesday:

“When workers accuse other workers of lying about murder they take the side of the bosses. It is not inconceivable that workers do that. Scabbing happens all the time. Some scabs regret what they did and redeem themselves later in other strikes. It doesn´t change what they did before it just puts it in a context where their loyalty is seen for what it was.”

In my opinion Gearoid now owes an apology to his fellow campaigners who he deceived on this issue as well as to the Siptu members who he continues to malign with his acusations of scabbing.

by Topper Sat Oct 03, 2009 18:54

Have you ever heard an old biblical saying about motes and beams? It springs to mind. You really have a fine cheek demanding an apology from Gearoid when you fully defend the behaviour of SIPTU officials in A) accusing SINALTRAINAL of lying and making false allegations against Coca Cola and B) threatening to launch an international counter-solidarity campaign against SINALTRAINAL in the trade union movement. Since there has been not so much of a hint of an apology for those two actions from those responsible, and you insist that no apology is required, I hope and expect it will be a cold day in hell before your shrill demands for an apology will be met.

by tomeile Sun Oct 04, 2009 17:35 tomeile at hotmail dot co dot uk

Sometimes people can be wrong without necessarily being liars Topper. You have said some things about me that are untrue .I’m not accusing you of lying , only saying that I haven’t done any of those things you accuse me of doing in your post . Where and when have I “fully defended” SIPTU officials for making accusations against SINALTRAINAL ? I have called for an investigation into the threats made by Siptu against SINALTRAINAL . I haven’t insisted that “no apology is required” either.

If Siptu’s campaign against SINALTRAINAL consisted of printing leaflets for its members who wanted to picket UCD to explain their side of the story to students there, then I wouldn’t say that is anything for Siptu to apologize for. Was that visit to UCD the extent of the “ international counter-solidarity campaign against SINALTRAINAL in the trade union movement” that you refer to , or was there something more sinister involved ? Don’t forget that it was the SINALTRAINAL president, Luis Javier Correa Suarez, (?) who made the accusations against Siptu . Was that meeting between Siptu and Sinaltrainal minuted ,or do we have to take the Sinaltrainal word on everything and doubt everything Siptu says? As I have written before ,these are serious matters that do need to be looked into thoroughly.

Siptu officials accused SINALTRAINAL officials of lying ,did they ? It could be the case that the SINALTRAINAL officials were lying ,in which case Siptu would be entitled to call them liars . It’s not after all wrong to call somebody a liar if you think they are lying. That certainly needs to be cleared up. Where and when did Siptu make this accusation of lying and under which circumstances? I can’t remember seeing any quotes in any of the many threads where Siptu officials directly accused SINALTRAINAL officials of lying. Siptu did say that it had investigated the circumstances behind the murder of the workers at the Colombian plant and were not convinced by SINALTRAINAL’s account of the events . That isn’t the same as saying that the SINALTRAINAL officials were lying.

If Siptu did falsely accuse the Colombian union of lying , they should apologise , but I 'm not sure if they did .If they did that doesn't make Siptu officials " beyond the pale" unless they did it deliberately and maliciously . Falsely accusing somebody of lying is of course always a bad thing to do ,but sometimes the person doing the accusing can be genuinely mistaken . I like to think that EEeeeek for instance wasn’t making a deliberately false accusation of lying against me when he wrote to me in 2005 .

“you are at base a liar trying to make a cowardly bootlicking union bureaucracy look good.” .

Eeeeek was defending Gearoid’s Mayday statement at the time which Gearoid had headlined

“Coke Workers repaid for Loyalty to Company”.

I had said that this was an insult directed against Coke workers ,but was unable to convince the many coke boycotters on the thread.

“He is clearly talking about Siptu Bureaucrats Anton. You will have to try harder “ , is what eeeeeeeeek wrote in Gearoid's defence .

But Gearoid’s statements since on this thread ( quoted above ) have clearly shown eeeek’s 2005 statement to be wrong . Gearoid was referring to the Coke workers . Gearoid should have made clear that he was directing his one-fingered Mayday salutation to the Coke workers and not left eeeek and chekov to stick their necks on his behalf. That’s why I think that Gearoid should apologize to the likes of Eeeeek and Chekov as well as to the Coke workers.

by Topper Mon Oct 05, 2009 17:19

I’ve already said what I think about what Gearoid said and won’t be drawn any further down the garden path on the matter – as I said, I don’t expect your demand for an apology will be met, and I hope that it won’t be met.

When I gave examples of where I thought the SIPTU officials were at fault, I didn’t use emotive language like “reactionary”, I didn’t call them “scabs” or whatever. I just gave two examples of their behaviour that I thought was indefensible. You’ve addressed those examples now. In the first case, you say it was ok for SIPTU to accuse SINALTRAINAL of lying if they thought they were lying. That’s just not good enough. We have to remember the context – SIPTU officials issued the statement I quoted above just after students at UCD had voted to support the boycott. Immediately after that vote, Coke and its supporters in UCD tried to overturn it. There was a second referendum barely a month later, and Coke sent over a senior Latin American executive to Ireland to make its case in the media.

In that context, it was music to Coke’s ears for an Irish trade union to issue a statement asserting that the charges against the company were groundless, and implying that SINALTRAINAL were lying. You try and tone down the statement by paraphrasing it as follows: “SIPTU did say that it had investigated the circumstances behind the murder of the workers at the Colombian plant and were not convinced by SINALTRAINAL’s account of the events.” Let’s not beat around the bush – they implied in unmistakable terms that SINALTRAINAL were making the whole thing up.

If you’re going to do that, it’s not enough to say “we think the allegations are false / we think SINALTRAINAL are lying”. You have to explain WHY you think that. It’s an extremely grave charge to level at fellow trade unionists, especially ones who face a constant threat of assassination (as I said, nobody can dispute the fact that SINALTRAINAL activists have been murdered or threatened with murder by paramilitaries, whether or not you accept the claim that Coke was complicit in those murders and threats).

After all, the SIPTU officials in question met with a SINALTRAINAL shop steward who came to Ireland on a speaking tour at the time. They would have heard his description of his own experience of being held in jail for six months after plant managers falsely accused him and another worker of planting a bomb in the factory (there was no bomb). If they really thought he was lying, they should have been honest enough to say so to his face. You can’t just say “these allegations are false” without giving your reasoning. What was the content of SIPTU’s alleged “investigation” which “proved” that Coke had no case to answer?

It’s very hard to see why SINALTRAINAL would just make it all up. What possible incentive would they have? The Colombian vice-president Francisco Santos explicitly denounced SINALTRAINAL for “slandering” foreign companies like Coke and Nestle. As anyone who follows Colombian politics can tell you, there is a direct link between denunciations of social activists by Alvaro Uribe and his ministers, and the kidnapping, torture and murder of those activists by the right-wing paramilitaries. There’s a tag team between the government and the paramilitaries: one legitimises murder, the other carries it out. Why would anyone put themselves (literally) in the firing line by launching a campaign against Coke if they weren’t telling the truth about their experiences? After all, if they were making it all up, it wouldn’t be long before the truth came out. It’s not like Coke doesn’t have the resources to put across its side of the story.

The second point I made was about the threat to launch an international campaign against SINALTRAINAL. You question whether that actually happened, or at least whether it happened as it was reported. It’s true that we only have one account to base our opinions on – the one issued by SINALTRAINAL themselves. So it comes down to this again – do we believe they were telling the truth? Again, I find it very hard to see what incentive they would have for lying. Why would SINALTRAINAL want to go around picking unnecessary fights with the Irish trade union movement? They have enough enemies to be contending with – the Colombian state, the paramilitaries, and the companies where their members work. They probably hadn’t even heard of SIPTU before the Coke boycott became a controversial issue among Irish trade unionists. So why would they make false allegations that SIPTU officials threatened to launch an international campaign against SINALTRAINAL in the trade union movement? What would they have to gain from making those allegations?

I don’t think there’s anything more to be said on the matter, unless there are new points to be made. Let those with ears to hear, hear. Let those with eyes to see, see. I don’t see any need for an “investigation” of this matter. We just have to make our mind up about who’s telling the truth. Either SINALTRAINAL were telling the truth, and the SIPTU officials threatened to launch an international campaign against their union, or they are not. If you think they are liars, say so directly. It would have been better for everyone if the SIPTU officials had come out directly and stated their belief that SINALTRAINAL were making false allegations against Coca Cola, and told SINALTRAINAL members to their faces that they were liars, instead of issuing statements which only make sense on the assumption that SINALTRAINAL were making the whole thing up. I can’t say I have much faith in the sincerity of someone who is willing to denounce the entire campaign as “reactionary”, yet affects to be completely unable to decide whether the SIPTU officials concerned had done anything the least bit wrong. The faux-innocence is getting to be very wearisome indeed. Until you can make your mind up that 2 plus 2 does indeed equal 4, instead of telling us that you're not sure if it equals 4 or 5 or 28 and there's a need for further investigation of the matter, I suggest you withdraw your demands for an apology from anyone as they will be falling on the stoniest of ground.

by Marc Spring Fri Mar 26, 2010 23:44

Hagiography of Jack O'Connor here http://www.lookleftonline.org/2010/03/jack-oconnor-inte...view/

Rather amusing in light of the above. Depicts him as a kind of avatar of James Connolly and Jim Larkin, the fearless critic of partnership (now that it's dead) and defender of the people. Not someone who floated to the top of Ireland's corrupt mainstream trade union movement surfing the wave of partnership. As I say, amusing in a grim if-you-didn't-laugh-you'd-cry kind of way.

by joe Sat Mar 27, 2010 13:18

I’d urge anybody who was unfamiliar with the way the Boycott Killer Coke Campaign has operated over the years to read for themselves the interview with Jack O’Connor Marc has just put up, and then read Marc’s introduction to it again .
I don’t know who Kevin Brannigan is but his interview with O'Connor isn’t a “hagiography” ,and it doesn’t make him out to be an “avatar of Connolly and Larkin” .That’s just the spin that Marc has put on it.
When people write using hyperbolic clichés about how they think a trade union leader is supposed to be - “sleazy sellout” - they don’t criticize bureaucracy effectively .Crying wolf is bad enough when it’s a boy doing it ,but the coke boycotters should have grown up a little in the five years they’ve been screeching .
I don’t know what the opposite of hagiography is ,but whatever it is , that’s the methodology the boycotters use. In doing so ,and I ‘m beginning to wonder whether it isn’t intentional , they miss the point:
Nowhere in the interview does Jack O’Connor pose as the “fearless critic of partnership” . O’Connor is clearly still defending partnership when he says ,
“It wasn’t social partnership itself that inflicted that damage, but our failure as a movement to ensure people’s participation within the framework of social partnership.”