Coca-Cola Cebu is set to retrench the workers following the termination of their contract with manpower agency Exeltech Manpower and Services Incorporated. However, the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights noted that the retrenchment actually comes following an order from the Department of Labor and Employment to regularize the workers, calling the move a “naked display of corporate greed."
“Unions are integral to the struggle for those rights, because without a union, what do workers have?”
“In the five years that the union has existed, it has succeeded in the struggle for regularization when the workers went on strike in 2017, sorted out the union fund after the previous leadership left nothing, conducted multiple series of educational discussions to help the workers understand their rights, its leaders have studied how to best run the union in order to serve its workers, and advanced the struggle for livable wages and benefits through [Collective Bargaining Agreements].”
Labor group Defend Coca-Cola Workers reported cases of harassment against as early as January of this year, when Coca-Cola management brought workers to Fort Sto. Domingo, Santa Rosa, and Camp Vicente Lim, Calamba, for anti-union seminars.
Defend Coca-Cola Workers described the incident as a “clear case of harassment and anti-union practice”, calling it “shameful and infuriating” that Coca-Cola would “collude with the AFP and PNP to take advantage of the hunger, fear and struggle faced by many due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“It’s disheartening that while workers are uniting to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, towards just compensation, and against widespread lay-offs, NTF-ELCAC is hard at work oppressing workers’ rights.”
“The fight for our rights does not stop at this historical triumph. We will join forces with other workers in other factories experiencing the same working conditions and capitalist suppression—especially now that we have once again proven the power of strikes.”
Read also: What prompted Coke workers to strike
“The workers who toil every day for Coca Cola to take home billions of profits have been experiencing the worst working conditions under the 99%-Coca-Cola-owned Red System agency.”
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