Pepsi, no Coke...
Posted on 06/14/2014 11:00:49 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Coca-Cola will have to reemploy and reimburse the 821 workers it sacked in April when it closed four of its bottling plants in Spain now that a judge has ruled the drinks multinational carried out the lay-offs unlawfully.
The sudden lay-off of 1,190 (finally 821) Coca-Cola employees from its bottling plants in Madrid, Mallorca, Alicante and Asturias were, according to holding company Iberian Partners, needed to improve efficiency.
But Spain’s High Court ruled on Friday that the fizzy drinks giants had not carried out the merging of all of their eight bottling plants in Spain appropriately.
They also blamed them for not informing unions representing the workers of their imminent lay-offs and the restructuring of the plants.
According to the sentence, all 821 laid-off employees will now have to be hired again by Coca-Cola and remunerated with all the salaries they missed out since the plant closures last April.
The main problem they face now is that the bottling plants have been closed down for several months, Spanish daily El País reported.
Numerous demonstrations were held outside the plants in the lead up to the verdict by Spain’s High Court on Friday.
In February, around 2,000 protesters marched to central Madrid from the closed down plant in Fuenlabrada during a five-hour protest.
They waved signs reading: "Boycott, they are destroying jobs" and "No to the lay-offs".
"The plants are profitable but they are throwing us into the street," said Francisco, 51, who had worked at Coca-Cola for 17 years.
"It is a modern plant but they are shutting it just so they can make more profits" he added. "The 'happiness' of Coca-Cola is a sham."
Never mind that, the Rats want to ban soda.
If Coca-Cola had any balls, they would shut down all operations in Spain, remove all their assets and say good bye. Let Spain wallow in it.
Spain,Portugal,Italy,Greece....all members of Europe’s “Siesta Bloc”.
Leftist policies are always about feel-good instant gratification and relentless denial of basic economic realities.
Exactly. Going forward, this will have exactly the opposite effect from what the law intends to do, that is, reduce unemployment.
Yet another reason, if anyone actually needed more reason, for businesses to set up operations in Spain.
Pepsi, no Coke...
“If Coca-Cola had any balls, they would shut down all operations in Spain, remove all their assets and say good bye. Let Spain wallow in it.”
Problem with your idea is that that too is probably illegal, unless Coke simply wanted to abandon their physical assets in Spain. Do you think that Spain would allow Coke to remove it’s mfg. equipment w/o some serious bucks paid to the government?
Indeed...,screw,coke and their feel good No Ingles commercials.
Hitler kept the bottling plants and made Fanta. Fanta is Nazi drink, yes.
Titan International’s Maurice “Morry” Taylor, who goes by “The Grizz” for his bear-like no-nonsense style, told France’s left-wing industry minister in a letter published by Paris media that he had no interest in buying a doomed plant.
“The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three,” Taylor wrote on February 8 in the letter in English addressed to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg.
“I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way!” Taylor added in the letter,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/us-france-workers-idUSBRE91J0OF20130220
I know a Frenchman (now American) who was running several family owned businesses in France. The government decided how much money you’re going to make in the coming year and you owe the tax on that money on January 1st. The government always said he was going to make more than he did and it wasn’t possible to get a timely refund and always a huge fight. You can’t fire workers unless you pay their pay and benefits for an additional five years. So, one Friday he locked everything up and immigrated to the US. He left it all to the government. He said it was the best decision he ever made. (He also said something in French which sounded like f*ck the b*st*rds.) He’s now managing a business here for somebody else.
I can get around that. Simply "upgrade" the facilities with "new" equipment and pull out the essentials.
Let the spaniards find out when they try to start up the plants on their own that the "new equipment" is actually cheap Chinese mock-ups that look new but are entirely nonfunctional. Usually because they are made of styrofoam forms painted to look real and in some cases with wires coming out of them.
I would have everything I needed out of there in a flash, and all the essential employees would be enjoying a weeklong "vacation" (in reality physically relocating to the new work location) which would not be scheduled to end until just before the factories are due to open.
Take that, fascist overlords.
People (even on FR) think that the problem with unions is pay and benefits. This is the real problem though. Unions want to run every aspect of the plant.
Coke is not going to go out of business over this but a business has to be able to hire, promote, and layoff as needed without interference from government. It’s often a matter of survival.
The employees pretend to work, so I will pretend to pay them.
Coke should just shut down the rest of its plants.
They should close ALL their plants there.
What would the government do if a convoy of bulldozers showed up and started plowing the place down?
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