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Issue Number 32, October 2009
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 32, October 2009
THERE’S BLOOD IN YOUR COFFEE!
Auckland Protest In Solidarity With Striking Filipino
Nestlé Workers
- Luke Coxon
“We are determined to get justice, even if our fight
has caused the murder of our two union presidents, the
death of 22 of our co-workers, the forced stopping of our
children from school and the forfeiture of our
properties", Noel Alemania, union leader.
In June 2008 I spent a day with the striking workers of
Nestlé Cabuyao. For more than seven years 600 workers
from the Cabuyao factory of Nestlé Philippines have been
on strike in order to enforce their right to negotiate
their retirement benefits. In 1991, as a result of a
previous strike, the Supreme Court of the Philippines
ruled that Nestlé management could not exclude the
retirement benefits from the collective bargaining
agreement (CBA). In 2002 Nestlé workers were forced to
go on strike as a result of Nestlé management’s
refusal to heed the workers’ demand. In 2006, the
Supreme Court again ruled and reaffirmed the validity of
its 1991 decision. It explicitly ordered Nestlé
management to return to the negotiating table (and by
necessary implication to call back its workers) to resume
CBA negotiations with the Union of Filipro Employees
(UFE), including the issue of retirement benefits.
To date, the company has deliberately and contemptibly
flouted the court's orders, just as the Government has
deliberately and contemptibly failed to enforce them. The
protracted dispute has been marked by militarisation of
the factory and the violent dispersal of the workers'
picket lines and protests at the factory gate and
elsewhere by the police and military, measures that the
company has encouraged and with which it has been fully
complicit. This repression has directly or indirectly
resulted in 23 strike related deaths, including union
leader Diosdado "Ka Fort" Fortuna, who was
assassinated on his way home from a picket line on
September 22, 2005. His predecessor, Union President
Meliton Roxas, was assassinated in front of the picket
line on January 20, 1989, during the workers' previous
strike involving the same issue. To date, not a single
perpetrator has been apprehended for these murders, in
spite of strong indications that they were the handiwork
of the police, military or their agents.
Taking The Message Into Nestlé’s Auckland
Office
On March 6th, 2009, Auckland Philippines Solidarity (APS)
decided to organise a protest in solidarity with the
striking workers and against the actions of Nestlé. We
emailed union leader Noel Alemania who was very pleased
with our action and informed us that the workers were
also holding a rally that same day. A week before the
action I went to scope the Nestlé offices in New Market.
When we turned up for the protest though I was shocked to
find that the office had moved. Lucky they had put the
address of the new office on the door so we waited for
about 20 minutes and when about 30 people had massed we
all headed to the shiny new offices in Carlaw Park. When
we arrived we realised the very new impressive building
did not have any street frontage, so we decided that we
should take our protest inside the building to make sure
we got our presence felt.
We entered and marched to the Nestlé foyer, where we
displayed our placards, chanted “justice for Nestlé
workers” and requested a meeting with management to
express our concerns. They were definitely surprised to
see us and we were even more surprised when the New
Zealand Operations Manager agreed to meet us. I informed
him of why we were there and gave him our statement of
which he promised to pass on to Nestlé management in the
Philippines and Switzerland. We continued our chanting
inside the building for about 20 minutes then took the
protest outside to the street. The protest action was our
contribution to the call for international solidarity to
hold Nestlé accountable for the brutal killings and
repression of striking workers.
One Of The World’s Five Worst Union Bashers
A few weeks later I was surprised to receive a six page
letter in response to our statement from the Nestlé
Philippines Human Resources Director, refuting point by
point everything raised in our statement. Nestlé had
taken our protest very seriously indeed and was obviously
very concerned about their brand image. The letter noted:
“We also welcome the chance to detail the issues in
the spirit if transparency and candid exchange that have
consistently marked our interaction with all our
publics”.
So in the interest of “transparency” and
“candid exchange” we wrote back to let them
know that APS would be sending a representative*
to Manila to further clarify what the real situation of
the striking workers was and that he would want to meet
them. Unfortunately Nestlé declined our offer, stating
there was no need as the Department of Labor of the
Philippines supported the actions of the company. *That
representative was Mark Muller, National Distribution
Union organiser, who visited the Philippines in May 2009
to participate in the KMU’s annual International
Solidarity Affair. See Mark’s report on his
visit, elsewhere in this issue. Ed.
While Nestlé products are advertised as “good food,
good life”, Nestlé has been named, by the
International Labor Rights Forum ( www.laborrights.org ), as one of the
five worst companies in the world for violating the
rights of its workers. It has also resorted to killing
trade unionists in Colombia and seems willing to stop at
nothing to prevent militant unionism of its factories It
is likely that any further “candid exchange”
will have to take place again in the Nestlé offices with
placards and loud hailers.
For more information please check out the
following:
The Website of the striking workers.
http://www.blood-in-your-coffee.blogspot.com .
The Nestlé workers’ battle for their basic rights
has been going on for many years. For instance, see
“Nestlé Workers’ Epic Struggle”, by
Murray Horton, in Kapatiran 23, November 2003, http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo23/Kap23Art/art100.htm - Ed.
Luke Coxon is spokesperson for Auckland Philippines
Solidarity and a PSNA member.
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