Coca-Cola Banned from Michigan Campus

Bloomberg News

Friday 30 December 2005

The University of Michigan will remove Coca-Cola Co. products from campus, becoming the 10th school to enact a ban over an investigation of working conditions at bottling plants in Colombia.

University officials will stop selling Coke products on Jan. 1, spokeswoman Julie Peterson said today in an interview. Coca-Cola's sales at the university were $1.4 million in 2005, she said.

Student activists are pressuring universities to stop selling Coca-Cola products because they claim the company has not done enough to stop violence against union workers in Colombia and won't agree to the terms of an investigation. The International Labor Rights Fund has said Coca-Cola and two Colombia bottlers are "complicit in" anti-union violence toward employees.

Coca-Cola denies the charges and the company has agreed to a third-party investigation, spokeswoman Kari Bjorhus said today.

"We believe Coca-Cola is sincere in its desire to ensure fair labor practices and a safe working environment," University of Michigan officials said in a Dec. 29 letter to Coca-Cola. The letter added that the company had not met its guidelines for an investigation so it would "temporarily suspend" Coca-Cola products from campus.

NYU Ban

New York University, the largest private university in the US, on Dec. 8 decided to ban Coca-Cola products, which include Sprite, Dasani water and Minute Maid juices.

Universities that have not renewed their contracts with Coca-Cola also include Bard College and Union Theological Seminary, both in New York, and Carleton University and Macalester College, both in Minnesota.

Schools that have cited the Colombia labor issue as part of their reason for pulling Coca-Cola products are Rutgers University in New Jersey, Santa Clara University in California, Salem State College in Massachusetts and the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

Shares of Coca-Cola fell 16 cents to $40.44 at 12:50 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

Coca-Cola has been operating for more than 70 years in Colombia, according to the company's Web site. It distributes to about 500,000 retailers, including small family-run bodegas that control about 40 percent of the country's retail market, the site said.