One of Coca Cola's major partners, Swire Beverages, has indicated it intends to convert agency-supplied contract workers in seven Chinese mainland bottling plants to permanent staff status. The move follows criticism of wages and working conditions in Coca Cola plants by the Beijing-based Coke Concerned Student Group (CCSG) and the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM).

In a letter to SACOM, Swire Beverages, part of Hong Kong conglomerate Swire, and one of Coca Cola's key bottling partners said, "We have given the mandate to all our bottlers to convert production line dispatch workers who have worked for Swire Beverages for over one year into permanent staff in the next year or two," and that the company's goal is "to gradually reduce the number of dispatch workers in production lines to a minimum level."

Over the past year CCSG has published two highly-critical reports on wages and working conditions in Coca Cola bottling plants, the latest after students took summer jobs at the Zhongcui bottling plant in Hangzhou to investigate labor conditions there. The investigation attracted media attention when one of the students was beaten up while collecting his wages from a labor contract agency.

CCSG said this week that it "appreciated Swire Beverage's efforts" towards changing the status of contract staff. Nevertheless after meeting with representatives of Swire and Coca Cola in Beijing on December 17, both CCSG and SACOM said they were disappointed at the progress that had been made on key issues they had raised. In particular CCSG complained that "Swire Beverages refused to provide a plan or any concrete timetable for the conversion to staff status."

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