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The Ten Worst Corporations of 1999
The Ten Worst Corporations of 1999
January 1, 2000
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert
Weissman
Charles Dickens, where are you when
we need you?
Never has "It was the best of times, it
was the worst of times" served as a more
apt commentary on society than today.
The NASDAQ just broke 4,000 and has
nearly doubled in 1999. The Dow is at
near-record heights as well. Internet,
computer and communications
technologies are evolving at a stunning
velocity. A lot of people are becoming
incredibly wealthy, and a lot are having
fun on the Internet.
If you want, you can look at this state
of
affairs and say that everything is fine.
Go
ahead, pat yourself on the back.
Or, you can look at a different set of
snapshots and ask these and many other
probing questions:
Why does the United States, the richest
nation in the history of the world,
warehouse its elderly in what are
euphemistically called nursing homes,
permitting many to live out their last
years in social isolation and sometimes
filth and neglect?
Why are profitable and fast-growing
corporations permitted to expose their
workers to dangerous and
life-threatening conditions that could be
avoided with minimal investments?
Why are the poor, undereducated and
unsophisticated subject to a host of
financial scams that empty their small
savings accounts or throw them into
debt?
Why are working people in the United
State who try to organize into unions
regularly subjected to threats of firing
and plant closure, harassment,
intimidation and managerial refusal to
bargain with duly elected unions?
Why does the United States permit the
massive concentration of economic and
political power through mergers and
acquisitions that work to foreclose
democratic options for the future?
Why do rich societies permit their
corporations to engage, directly or
indirectly, through contractors and
subcontractors, in brutally exploitative
practices in developing countries --
practices that have long been outlawed
in the rich countries?
Why indeed.
There is of course no one single answer
to these and the many other critical
questions that should be asked in a
society that does so much to generate
wealth, at least as measured by
conventional standards, but so little to
distribute that wealth -- or justice --
evenly. But there is one connecting
theme that serves, at least, as a partial
answer to many of these questions:
concentrated corporate power.
Each year, to highlight the
consequences of corporations and greed
run amok, Multinational Monitor
publishes a list of the 10 worst
corporations of the year.
Here's this year's list, in alphabetical
order:
Avondale: Good riddance
For more than half a decade, Avondale,
which operates a shipyard in New
Orleans, waged a vicious campaign to
block recognition of its employees'
desire
for a union -- a desire springing in no
small part from way below industry
standard wages and a gruesome
workplace casualty record of a death a
year. In August, Avondale was acquired
by Litton, which agreed to recognize the
workers' union in November.
Citigroup: The standard in political
corruption
Citigroup played the lead role in
ushering
the "Financial Services Modernization
Act" through the U.S. Congress, in the
process joining with the rest of the
financial services industry to set a new
standard in legalized bribery. The Act
will
tear down the regulatory walls between
banks, and insurance companies and
securities firms, paving the massive
concentration of financial wealth and a
future of industry bailouts, weakening
the
Community Reinvestment Act and
permitting huge intrusions on consumer
privacy.
Del Monte: Banana imperialism into
the twenty-first century
In September, Bandegua, the
Guatemalan subsidiary of Coral Gables,
Florida-based Fresh Del Monte Produce
(now a separate company from
California-based Del Monte Foods),
dismissed 900 of its banana workers.
When other unionized Bandegua
workers tried to organize a solidarity
protest, the union leadership was met
with a 200-person, armed goon squad
which chased the leadership out of town,
threatening to kill them if they
returned.
Del Monte and Bandegua deny
responsibility, but they have certainly
benefited from the threats.
Guardian Postacute: Maggots
everywhere
After learning that of Guardian Postacute
Services Inc., a San Francisco Bay area
nursing home chain, had permitted dirty
feeding tubes to be installed into
patients
who then became infested with maggots,
had permitted patients to lie for
extended
periods in their urine and feces, and had
failed to take strong action against an
employee who sexually abused patients,
Santa Clara County Deputy District
Attorney Randy Hey has filed criminal
charges against Guardian.
Hoffman La Roche: Take the market,
pay the fine
Earlier this year, the Swiss
pharmaceutical giant F. Hoffmann-La
Roche Ltd. paid $500 million -- the
largest fine in U.S. antitrust history --
for
its efforts with German chemical maker
BASF to allocate market shares for
certain vitamins sold in the United
States
and elsewhere. The whistleblower who
inspired the case says Roche's response
to the fines was to redouble its efforts
to
gain total control of the vitamin market.
Tosco: Four dead workers
On February 23, 1999, four workers at a
Tosco Corp. facility in Avon, California
were burned to death after they tried to
replace a leaky oil pipe. The San
Francisco Chronicle reported that one
Tosco employee, Anthony Creggett,
claimed shortly after the fire that plant
managers had refused a request by four
workers to shut down the
high-temperature distillation tower
during
the repairs on the pipe.
Tyson: Seven deaths in seven
months
Maybe we should consider raising our
own chickens. Clearly, relying on
multinational corporations to raise
millions of birds for us in unsanitary
and
dangerous conditions is not working out.
Tysons Foods is a case in point. Do you
really want to buy your chicken from
these people? Consider this: seven
workers have been killed at Tyson
facilities this year. There have been no
reported job-related deaths at any other
poultry company in 1999.
U.S. Bank: Big brother is watching
Earlier this year, U.S. Bank agreed to
stop selling its customers' personal data
-- everything from social security
numbers to account balances, from birth
date to number of credit cards -- to a
telemarketing firm. But that came only
after Minnesota Attorney General Mike
Hatch filed a lawsuit against U.S. Bank,
alleging it violated the federal Fair
Credit
Reporting Act and engaged in consumer
fraud and deceptive advertising.
Whirlpool: Preying on the poor
Earlier this year, an Alabama jury hit a
recently spun off Whirlpool subsidiary,
Whirlpool Financial, and one of its
dealers with a $581 million verdict for
targeting illiterate and poor people in a
sales scheme involving satellite
television dishes. Lawyers representing
the victims said that Whirlpool had
dealers all over the state going
door-to-door soliciting poor,
unsophisticated and elderly customers to
purchase satellite television dishes for
$1,100 plus 22 percent interest. The
same equipment could be bought at an
electronics store for $199. On appeal, an
Alabama appellate court agreed only to
knock the verdict down to $301 million.
W.R. Grace: You can't eat enough of
it
At least 192 people have died of
asbestos-related disease from a mine
near Libby, Montana that was owned by
W.R. Grace for nearly 30 years,
according to a report that appeared in
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. At least
another 375 have been diagnosed with
the fatal disease. For three decades,
Grace mined enormous deposits of
vermiculite in the earth of nearby
Zonolite Mountain. Under the vermiculite
are millions of tons of tremolite, a rare
and exceedingly toxic form of asbestos.
Community residents say Grace for
years told residents and workers that the
dust was harmless. "When my father was
a young man they told him, 'You can't eat
enough of that stuff. It won't bother
you.
He's dead,'" Patrick Vinion, a Libby
resident, says. Now Vinion, who never
worked as a miner, is himself dying from
asbestos-related disease.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the
Washington, D.C.-based Corporate
Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. They are
co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on
Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common
Courage Press, 1999).
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert
Weissman