Here, there and everywhere: SABMiller’s goes global with
antiunion practices
The Fourth Central American Beverage Conference
(Managua, April 26 and 27) was a significant event held
in the framework of Rel-UITA’s political decision
to organize and develop Latin American Federations by
sectors of industry, where our International
organization has a high membership.
Union delegates from the global corporations
Coca-Cola and SABMiller assembled in
Nicaragua. Most prominent among these was Mninawa
Nyusile, in representation of the Food and Allied
Workers Union (FAWU) of South Africa. Nyusile’s
presentation evidenced that the problems that
Rel-UITA has denounced in the region in connection
with SABMiller are the same difficulties that
workers in South Africa are facing daily. The
testimony of this South African unionist confirms,
beyond any doubt, Rel-UITA’s reports in several
articles, which prompted -among other reactions- a press
release issued by SABMiller in Colombia,
under the title: “Bavaria answers false accusations
by IUF and SICO.”
The ink in SABMiller’s “official and urgent press
release,” where it discredited the reports printed by
our International organization, were not dried yet when
-in the middle of the Conference- the Colombian
newspaper El Tiempo published an article where it
informed that Bavaria was under investigation for
violating antitrust laws.
The article looks at the situation generated by the
transnational corporation Heineken’s request
to investigate Bavaria for “prohibiting
distributors, bars and restaurants from selling
Heineken products, if they want to have the
Italian beer Peroni, a SABMiller brand,
on their shelves.” El Tiempo also said
that “Bavaria gave out money and other incentives to
some bars and restaurants with the aim of
discouraging them from selling other beers.”
The workers demand that SABMiller observe their
right to unionize and their right to collective
bargaining, and they denounce the corporation’s
antiunion practices, such as the confiscation of SICO’s
newspaper with the warning from management that “these
publications are banned,” and their “Code of Ethics,”
which forbids workers and their families from drinking
or having in their homes products sold by the
competition, as they consider this an act of disloyalty
to the company and grounds for dismissal.
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In Managua,
Luis Alejandro Pedraza
© Rel-UITA
May 9,
2007 |
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