Coca Cola: Employees Safety

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Coca Cola: Employees Safety

The Coca Cola Company is a multinational corporation, which produces soft drinks. It is often termed as coke, which is the trademark of the company. The company started in 1886, in Atlanta, and the first sales were at the Pharmacy of Jacob. It was originally sold in drugstores, as a coca wine. It was sold as a copyright medicine, and it became popular in the United States. When the bottling system developed, the company became famous across the globe and the coca cola is now used as the brand name up to today. The company’s mission is to strive in order to refresh the world, create value and make a difference. Their long-term success is to maintain safety and health of their employees.

From the website of the Coca Cola Company, their fundamental long-term success is through maintaining safety and health for their workers. The company is committed by carrying out their business in a manner that ensures environmental health and safeties of workers are maintained. The company’s Safety Management System ensures that the safety of workers and loss prevention are maintained (The Coca Cola Company (2011). This system defines the company’s systematic approach employed in managing the safety and health of workers as well as prevention of loss. The system operates worldwide through following the standard performance and requirements. The system requires that the company maintains public safety though manufacturing products that are greener friendly. The system also recognizes the hazards as well as provides mitigation measures to environmental risks.

Coca Cola Company monitors and takes mitigation measures in the operation process and license the system structure that they use. This is fundamental because it enables the company to ensure that the working environment is safe thus creating better performance of the company. The TCCSMS is one of the integrated management systems, which the company employs in maintaining quality and working safety. This is done in order to enable that workers are protected from negative impacts that may result from the operational process. At the company, they take the health and safety of their employees seriously. The company has a belief that accidents are always preventable, so they commit themselves in promoting and rewarding the safety behaviors. This is through educating their employees, managing health and safety is their first priority.

The TCCSMS system has diverse operational control measures that are imperative in managing the operational risks and the unknown aspects (The Coca Cola Company (2011). The control measures usually align with the global standards and requirements of promoting environmental health and safety. Thus, the company provides full implementation of the control measures in order to ensure that they are adhering to international standards of maintaining health and safety in the global basis. The company’s system caries out an audit system process internally. This is done in order to ensure that the company is efficiently implementing control measures in operational process (Nets, 2011).

Another article that is against the safety and health of employees is the article from the website of Natural News. This article provides an analysis of the campaigning programs made by Colombia union calling for significant improvement for working conditions especially on workers’ safety and healthy. The campaigning programs have been done in many countries to stop the killer coke since 2004. The products are considered being unhealthy because the company has not taken the health and safety of their employees seriously. Moreover, the aim of the unions is to protect workers from unfair treatment thus enabling them to achieve their intended objectives. However, the Coca Cola Company in Colombia violates human rights. It was reported that some of the union leaders campaigning for health and safety provision of employees are being murdered by kidnappers hired by the company (Huff, 2010).

In addition, there had been a controversy over the issue of the Coca Cola Company. The company was sued in the court of law for the establishment of the plant, which caused serious damage to the environment thus affecting the agricultural sector (Joseph, Chennai and Kochi, 2010). Another issue was raised about the effect the company caused that created a negative image to the environment because of discharging hazardous wastes from the industries. Moreover, the plant exhausted the ground water in the surrounding area where it was located thus contributing to the water shortage. This led to the closure down of the Hindustan Coca Cola Company in 2004 by the government.

My opinion is that the coca cola company still lacks environmental health and safety system. Though, the company aims to provide health and safety of workers as their first priority, they have not achieved it. This is because many countries especially those in developing countries where the company is located have not successfully been in apposition of providing healthy and safety of workers. Thus, poor working environment will lead to poor performance thus lowering the performance level. In addition, it will lead to public protest by the labor unions such as the one, which was carried out in Colombia thus contributed to controversial issues. The workers will be forced to protest for the human rights of working in a safe environment thus contributing bad reputation of the company.

In conclusion, Providing safety and health environment is fundamental to any organizations. Coca Cola Company strives to provide their employees a health and safety environment in order to improve their performance. Thus, they work hard to their performance on health and safety of the environment. It is their priority to promote favorable working environment in order to promote sustainable environment. On the other hand, the company has been reported to have been producing the killer coke, which affects the health of people since 2004. Moreover, the company does no longer provide safety and health services to their employees. Thus, the union members in Colombia argue that the company violates human rights something that has been raised controversial issues in the court of law.

References

Huff, A. E. (May 22, 2010). “Coca Cola’s murderous record of anti-union activity in

Colombia exposed”. Natural news. Retrieved on December 6, 2011 from http://www.naturalnews.com/028844_Coca-Cola_Colombia.html

Joseph, G, Chennai and Kochi (June 30, 2010). “New divisions emerge in government on

Coca Cola”. Business Standard. Retrieved on December 6, 2011 from http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/new-divisions-emerge-in-govtcoca-cola/399827/

Nets. (May 25, 2011). The Coca-Cola Company joins NETS Board of Directors. Retrieved

on December 6, 2011 from http://trafficsafety.org/news/the-coca-cola-company-joins-nets-board-of-directors

The Coca Cola Company. (2011). Safety and Health. Retrieved on December 6, 2011 from

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/citizenship/occupational_safety_health.html