Colleagues,
Can I please ask for your support for this important international campaign against Pepsi.
Global snack and beverage giant PepsiCo is violating the rights of a courageous
group of workers in West Bengal, India who formed a trade union and were fired
as a result. In 2013, workers at 3 warehouses handling only PepsiCo products registered their new union with the authorities. They were harassed, assaulted by company goons and then 162 workers out of 170 employed in three warehouses were brutally fired. In May 2013, in response to national and international protests, they were offered their jobs back, but under conditions that strip them of their human rights. They were told they could return to work if they declared they would never again join a union, made to sign false statements which they were told were legally binding, and told to cut up their union cards and step on them as they walked into the warehouses. Twenty-eight of these workers who refused to surrender their rights were told at the time they could not return to work and would be blacklisted. The IUF is supporting their struggle.
PepsiCo arrogantly rejected an offer by the government of the United States to provide mediation of the dispute. Despite this, the IUF was eventually able to engage PepsiCo in long but ultimately fruitless talks. PepsiCo has now said the workers can apply for warehouse jobs or jobs at the company's bottling plant but offers no timetable, no remedy for earlier human rights abuses and no guarantees that their human rights will be respected in the future.
Please visit this page of the IUF website to complete an online postcard which can be sent to Pepsi to register your protest at what is happening in West Bengal, and to send an important message of solidarity to the workers and their families: http://www.iuf.org/cgi-bin/campaigns/show_campaign.cgi?c=952
In Solidarity
Ian
