Coca-Cola has settled a National Labor Relations Board complaint with a former employee who claimed the beverage giant fired him in retaliation for his role in trying to organize a union at a metro Atlanta bottling plant.
Greg Guice, a bulk delivery driver in the company’s Sullivan Road plant in College Park, will receive $42,500 in ending his complaint against the company that dates back to his dismissal in 2012. Guice’s grievance was to go before an administrative law judge on February 12.
Coca-Cola denied that it had done anything wrong in settling the dispute.
“Coke knew that they were violating my rights when they discriminated against me for organizing a union in Atlanta,” Guice said in a statement. “Now I have a piece of justice. I hope that Coke employees see this settlement as a victory for us all in our efforts to win a voice on the job and a Teamsters contract.”
Guice, who helped to spearhead an unsuccessful effort to organize a union at the College Park facility in 2010, alleges that the company two years later used his absence from work to take his ill father to the hospital as an excuse to fire him. He said the company termed the absence ‘unexcused,’ even though he had earned appropriate time off for his time away.
In a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board alleging “anti-union discrimination,” Guice alleged his had been under the company’s scrutiny since the 2010 organizing effort, including speaking out on the subject that year at Coke’s annual shareholder’s meeting. He said also he was instructed by management to remove a union insignia from his uniform and in 2012 was issued a “disciplinary warning” from a plant supervisor after further questions arose about organizing discussions.
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