3/15 Blue-Green Alliance Challenges Corporate Power (SSA, Coca Cola, etc)

Monday, March 15, 11 am, Coca Cola Corporate HQ, 7901 Oakport, Oakland.
Heralding the release of their 2004 Corporate Rogues Gallery, the Alliance
for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment--a coalition between organized
labor and environmentalists--will hold a press conference and rally in front
of Coca Cola Corporate Headquarters in Oakland, featuring Colombian Trade
Unionist Luis Adolfo Cardona. Cardona, a negotiator for the Sinaltrainal
union at the Coca Cola bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia, was the target of
an attempted kidnapping; the secretary-general of the union was murdered at
the plant. Other corporations targetted in the report include SSA, a
corporation profiteering from the illegal war and invasion of Iraq, Dow,
Maxxam, Walmart, Gap, Cintas, GE, Smithfield Foods (hog factory farming), AK
Steel, and Rio Tinto (mining). FULL PRESS RELEASE BELOW. Directions: Go
right on Oakport off Edgewater, just west of 880 (Edgewater crosses
Hegenberger just after 880 overpass). More info: 510-548-3113 or
925-376-7329.



The Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment

Corporate Targets Unveiled by Blue-Green Alliance
Colombian Trade Unionist in Bay Area to Speak Out Against Coca-Cola

For immediate release
Contacts: Karen Pickett, ASJE (510) 548-3113 March 12, 2004

Trade unionists and environmental activists will hold a sidewalk press
conference Monday, March 14 at the Oakland Coca Cola corporate offices (7901
Oakport-off 880 near Oak. Airport) to release a report on corporate behavior
that is bad for labor, degrades the natural world, harms communities and
compromises human rights. Speakers at the 11 am press conference include
? Luis Adolfo Cardona, a union leader from Colombia living under political
asylum in the U.S., here for a teach-in sponsored by UCB's Labor Center this
weekend
? Karen Pickett, Board member and co-founder of the Alliance for Sustainable
Jobs and the Environment (ASJE) and redwoods activist
? Jack Heyman, business agent with the ILWU who was arrested and injured
when Oakland police fired on anti-war protesters at the Oakland docks last
spring, and others

The 2004 Rogues Gallery, profiling 11 corporate "rogues" shows that
corporations whose codes of conduct lead them to violate labor standards
invariably maintain the same disregard for the environment, and vice versa.
The report states that although economic sustainability and biological
sustainability are not necessarily the same things, the same forces and
practices undermine both.

The report's author, the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment
was born in the course of a bitter struggle for labor rights and
environmental justice with the Maxxam Corporation, owner of Kaiser Aluminum
and Pacific Lumber Company. Profiled on the list are Maxxam, Cintas
industrial laundry operation, General Electric, the Gap clothing giant, port
operators Stevedoring Services of America, Rio Tinto mining company,
Coca-Cola, factory hog farmers Smithfield Foods, Dow Chemical Company, now
owners of Union Carbide, AK Steel (now in transition due to a blue-green
campaign), and the big box moving into a small town near you-Wal-mart.

Each profile details why the particular corporation is bad for labor and bad
for the environment and provides sources of information. For example, a Coca
Cola bottling plant in Florida has caused major pollution problems while
their plants in Columbia have lawsuits lodged against them because of
horrific violence rained upon trade unionists in that country. A major union
organizing drive by UNITE (Union of Needleworkers, Industrial and Textile
Employees) is underway at Cintas, the largest uniform company in the U.S.,
while a 12-state review revealed wastewater discharge violations at 28
Cintas plants in 11 states. Houston-based Maxxam Corporation policy
decisions caused Kaiser Aluminum to violate the National Labor Relations Act
and lock out workers at four plants around the U.S., while Maxxam-owned
Pacific Lumber has logged watersheds on California's north coast into a
state of meltdown.

The Coca Cola bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia where Mr. Cardona worked as
a negotiator for the Sinaltrainal union (Union of Food Industry Workers),
was the site of the murder of the union's secretary-general, and attempted
kidnapping of Cardona himself.

Oakland port operators SSA gained the ire of labor due to their particularly
combative stance during contract negotiations with the ILWU that gained
international attention last year. SSA gained a contract to operate the deep
water port , and are part of the port privitization efforts in Bangledesh,
besides raising environmental questions regarding their east coast
developments.

"Half of the world's largest economies are not nations, but corporations,"
said Karen Pickett of ASJE. "An alarming erosion of workers' rights and the
disintegration of the biological fabric upon which we depend accompanies the
exponential growth of these corporate behemoths. The common ground of our
movements is rising like a mountain erupting under our feet. This alliance
is powerful. There are no jobs on a dead planet." ###