-STECSA has a long background of struggle. Can you summarize that struggle for us?

-Our Workers’ Union of Embotelladora Central Sociedad Anónima (STECSA) has suffered numerous attacks from the various managements that have been in charge of Coca Cola over the last 30 years, in particular during the management of the American John Trotter the union saw times of repression and terror. That is why our union has nine martyrs, seven of them murdered and two disappeared in a mass kidnapping perpetrated in 1980 at the headquarters of the National Workers’ Federation (CNT), where our fellow union members were at that moment.

Then the company changed management, and Roberto Méndez, Mexican, and Anthony Zash, from Puerto Rico, took over. At that time, there was a similar situation to the one we’re going through now: there was no interest in defending the market share, there was a shortage of products, there was no support either for advertising and maintenance of machinery and delivery trucks, which led to consumers being somewhat neglected. An attempt was made to justify an illegal shutdown of the plant in the results of that fraudulent and voluntarily negative policy, and Méndez and Zash abandoned the company’s facilities.

At that point, we saw that we needed to occupy the factory while we tried to find a solution. After more than a year of occupation and dealings, during which we were victims of threats and acts of terrorism, we were finally able to reopen the plant, thanks to the international solidarity expressed through an international boycott against Coca Cola organized by IUF, and also due to resoluteness of our people.

The Coca Cola franchise was granted to a nationally-owned local group headed by Carlos Porras. With these people we worked for 13 years without any major problems. They sold their representation to the PANAMCO group, whose first measure was to tell us that we had to renounce to eight articles of the Collective Labor Agreement, which meant giving up everything we had won and achieved throughout years of hard existence and struggle as an organization. This triggered a strong resistance from the workers, which allowed us to keep our Agreement intact.

PANAMCO -and with it the Embotelladora Central SA plant- was later absorbed by the Mexican-owned FEMSA. Almost immediately after this new management took over we reached a situation of impending strike, which was averted when management realized that our union’s strong membership was not due to pressures but rather to a history of and a will to struggle. The union’s Executive Committee and Advisory Council has always been open to negotiations, but always with a view to finding what is fair for all parties, not in terms of winners and losers.

-What is the situation today?

-After being able to solve the essential part of our collective bargaining, through negotiations, we are now faced with what see as a very serious problem. We have reported to the Coca Cola Company, the parent company in the United States, that Embotelladora Central’s territory is being invaded by two other franchises that operate in Guatemala, and that this invasion is accompanied by a price war. After many years and despite being headed by completely different individuals, the company’s management has once again abandoned the market, removing the refrigerating equipment that customers were using. These refrigerators are repainted and used to sell Tecate beer, which is not distributed by Embotelladora Central.