northshorecolombia.blogspot.com/2007/02/colombia-news-f -
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Published on: 2/14/2007
Last Visited: 3/7/2008
In July 2005, the London-based Colombia Solidarity Campaign published "The Anti-Coke Manifesto," a booklet by its secretary, Andy Higginbottom, a frequent visitor to Colombia.He reported that in 1993, SINALTRAINAL had 1,440 members working in Coke plants, but by 2004 that number had fallen to 389.Since at least the early 1990s, he says, Coke has used brutal methods to maximize return on its investments in Colombia and takes full advantage of the government's anti-labor policies.
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Andy Higginbottom of England's Kingston University has written: "In Colombia, neoliberalism as an economic model -- identified especially by the policies of privatisation, deregulation and the 'flexibilisation' of labor -- was imposed from 1990 onwards."In that year new labour laws were passed that eliminated nearly every legal protection for permanent employment contracts, which encouraged subcontracting and temporary working.As a result, Higginbottom noted, "there are very few private industry trade unions left."
Higginbottom estimated that in 1990, the Coca-Cola "system" in Colombia employed more than 12,000 workers, of whom 9,000 had permanent employment contracts.
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