Cruel Coke keeps reasons to oppose soda tax all bottled up

Santa Fe Coke has stoked fear in the hearts of its employees. At one meeting, Santa Fe Coke’s CEO announced that Santa Fe layoffs would surely result if pre-K is passed. At another meeting, the Santa Fe Coke VP accompanied her grandson (perhaps 9 years old) who testified that he was afraid his father (a Coke employee) would lose his job and not be able to take care of him.

This fear-mongering is manipulative and cruel, and Coke employees have responded with understandable upset and anger. However, in a March 23 city disclosure report, it turns out that Santa Fe Coke paid $30,410.82 for “time, meals and transportation of employees,” so maybe the employee comments should be taken as paid advertisements, even though they might have been genuinely fearful of losing their jobs.

Such claims of job loss also reveal how neither the employees nor the public at large has any trustworthy information about the financial standing of Santa Fe Coke.

Meanwhile, Santa Fe Coke has joined the side of International Coke, which spends millions on its campaigns in multiple cities to avoid sugary drink taxes. They do this either directly or through the American Beverage Association, a front group funded by Coke. Together, International Coke, Santa Fe Coke and the ABA have already contributed $315,288.72 to the Santa Fe antipre-K campaign — that’s 99 percent of the $317,350 that the group has raised.

The Santa Fe soda tax would be on the distributor, not on small businesses. If International Coke — which reaped billions in profits last year — and Santa Fe Coke want to pass on the tax to small businesses, that’s their decision.

Santa Fe Coke distributes all over Northern New Mexico, so it has many places to continue to sell its products with no tax. It sells many non-sugary drinks that it could substitute for sugary drinks. In Berkeley, sugary beverage sales declined by 21 percent after a soda tax was initiated — but water sales were up 63 percent. Bottlers will do just fine.

Additionally, Coke’s fastest growing and most profitable size is 8 ounces, which sells for twice as much per ounce as larger sizes. So it can continue to make more profit out of selling smaller sizes of sugary drinks.

As a private enterprise, Santa Fe Coke has no obligation to open its books to public scrutiny so others can see whether its fears or claims are warranted. This lack of transparency also means that we cannot determine whether Coke faces minor adjustments to its business plans to accommodate changing consumer preferences or if it faces a far more serious challenge, as it has claimed.

But Santa Fe Coke unsuccessfully sued Santa Fe in 2003 to stop our Living Wage Ordinance. It claimed it would put them out of business. Why should we believe them now?

Gutelius lives just south of Santa Fe.