For the first time ever, a Resolution was presented at Coca Cola’s  annual shareholder’s meeting on Coke’s fair employment in Israel-Palestine.

On April 27, the the Annual Meeting was confronted with “the elephant in the (board) room”: a clarion call for the company to sign the Holy Land Principles— a corporate code of conduct for American companies doing business in Palestine-Israel, based on the highly effective Mac Bride Principles for Northern Ireland.

The Holy Land Principles are pro-Jewish, pro-Palestinian and pro-company. The Principles do not call for quotas, reverse discrimination, divestment, disinvestment or boycotts. The Principles do not take any position on solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The Principles do not try to tell the Palestinians or the Israelis what to do. The Holy Land Principles only called on Coca Cola to sign the Holy Land Principles.

The Resolution received over 67 Millon votes, 67,414,643 (2.2%), with 100,463,104 abstentionsAt close of business on April 27th, the value of Coke’s shares were $44.68. So the value of the share votes for HLP represented $301,208,624,924.00The value of abstentions was $448,868,148,672.00Therefore, the combined total of money not supporting Coca Cola was over $750 Billon ($750,077,773,596.00) and, therefore, a total of  167,877,747 votes not supporting Coca Cola.

Fr. Sean Mc Manus— President of the Washington-based Holy Land Principles, Inc.— said : “Coca Cola’s position was, ‘Endorsing these principles for one geographic area could risk undermining the universality of our own Human Rights Policy. We believe our policies work best when they can be applied throughout our entire enterprise.’ As I’ve said before,  that’s like responding to the urgent call ‘Black Lives Matter’ by saying all lives matter. It is evasion and denial.The companies initially, and for a long time,  tried that type of evasion about their operations in Northern Ireland, but eventually they saw the light and 116 companies signed the Mac Bride Principles.”

Fr. Mc Manus continued :“Next year we will file a new Resolution calling on GE —at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information—to disclose the breakdown of its workforce in Palestine-Israel using the nine job categories which are utilized in the U.S. Department of Labor’s EEO -1 Report (Equal Employment Opportunity): 1.Officials and managers; 2. Professionals; 3. Technicians; 4. Sales; 5. Office and clerical; 6. Craft Workers (skilled); 7. Operatives (semiskilled); 8. Laborers (unskilled); 9. Service workers.”

Fr. Mc Manus concluded: “Fair employment by American companies doing business in the Holy Land is the  existential question  that is not going to go away. Companies can run, but they cannot hide as they did before we launched the Holy Land Principles on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2012.The issue had been shamefully ignored, but that day is gone. The Holy Land Principles is an idea whose time has come— and there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

Holy Land Principles, Inc

Holy Land Principles, Inc

HOLY LAND PRINCIPLES,Inc., dedicated to getting the 545 American companies doing business in Palestine-Israel to sign the Holy Land Principles.

The Holy Land Principles are pro-Jewish, pro-Palestinian and pro-company.

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