Approach

At The Coca-Cola Company, our respect for human and workplace rights is engrained in our culture and guides our interactions with suppliers, customers, consumers, employees and the communities we serve. Our commitment to respecting human rights guides the way we conduct business and governs all aspects of our work, from the suppliers we work with, to how we engage each other in the workplace, to our interaction with customers, consumers and the communities we serve.

In 2011, TCCC formally endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, adopted by UN Human Rights Council in 2011. We have implemented all three of the components that must be put in place under the Principles for companies implementing respect for human rights in a corporate context:

  • A policy commitment to meet the responsibility to respect human rights
  • A due diligence process to identify, prevent, mitigate and be accountable for human rights abuses; and
  • Processes to enable the remediation of any adverse human rights impacts the company causes or to which it contributes.

We also work with our bottling partners and suppliers to help them implement the Principles.

Global Goal: By 2015, achieve and maintain going forward a 98 percent compliance level for Company-owned and Company-managed facilities upholding the standards set in our Workplace Rights Policy. India Progress: On-track (end 2013 – 98% compliance)

Global Goal: By 2015, achieve 90 percent compliance with our Supplier Guiding Principles among independent franchise bottling partners and suppliers. By 2020, achieve 95 percent compliance with our Supplier Guiding Principles among our suppliers. India Progress: On-going (end 2013 – 82% compliance)

The foundation of our approach lies in four key documents: our Human Rights Statement, Workplace Rights Policy4, Supplier Guiding Principles, and Global Mutual Respect Policy. With our system operating in more than 200 markets, a key challenge is to proactively identify and address human rights issues in our global value chain. To this end, our dedicated Global Workplace Rights group is specifically charged with identifying human-rights risks throughout our value chain and developing easy to-use due-diligence tools to help the business identify human rights risks and avoid unintended missteps, and to mitigate human rights harm when it occurs.