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The 14 Worst Corporate Evildoers
*Global Exchange*
*December 12th, 2005*
Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of
modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account.
Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power have
created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers, which are
governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine
loyalty only to their stockholders.
Several of the companies below are being sued under the Alien Tort Claims
Act, a law that allows citizens of any nationality to sue in US federal
courts for violations of international rights or treaties. When corporations
act like criminals, we have the right and the power to stop them, holding
leaders and multinational corporations alike to the accords they have
signed. Around the world--in Venezuela, Argentina, India, and right here in
the United States--citizens are stepping up to create democracy and hold
corporations accountable to international law.
*Caterpillar*
For years, the Caterpillar Company has provided Israel with the bulldozers
used to destroy Palestinian homes. Despite worldwide condemnation,
Caterpillar has refused to end its corporate participation house demolition
by cutting off sales of specially modified D9 and D10 bulldozers to the
Israeli military.
In a letter to Caterpillar CEO James Owens, The Office of the UN High
Commissioner on Human Rights said: "allowing the delivery of your ...
bulldozers to the Israeli army ... in the certain knowledge that they are
being used for such action, might involve complicity or acceptance on the
part of your company to actual and potential violations of human rights..."
Peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed by a Caterpillar D-9, military
bulldozer in 2003. She was run over while attempting to block the
destruction a family's home in Gaza. Her family filed suit against
Caterpillar in March 2005 charging that Caterpillar knowingly sold machines
used to violate human rights. Since Corrie's death at least three more
Palestinians have been killed in their homes by Israeli bulldozer
demolitions.
*Chevron*
The petrochemical company Chevron is guilty of some of the worst
environmental and human rights abuses in the world. From 1964 to 1992,
Texaco (which transferred operations to Chevron after being bought out in
2001) unleashed a toxic "Rainforest Chernobyl" in Ecuador by leaving over
600 unlined oil pits in pristine northern Amazon rainforest and dumping 18
billion gallons of toxic production water into rivers used for bathing
water. Llocal communities have suffered severe health effects, including
cancer, skin lesions, birth defects, and spontaneous abortions.
Chevron is also responsible for the violent repression of peaceful
opposition to oil extraction. In Nigeria, Chevron has hired private military
personnel to open fire on peaceful protestors who oppose oil extraction in
the Niger Delta.
Additionally Chevron is responsible for widespread health problems in
Richmond, California, where one of Chevron's largest refineries is located.
Processing 350,000 barrels of oil a day, the Richmond refinery produces oil
flares and toxic waste in the Richmond area. As a result, local residents
suffer from high rates of lupus, skin rashes, rheumatic fever, liver
problems, kidney problems, tumors, cancer, asthma, and eye problems.
The Unocal Corporation, which recently became a subsidiary of Chevron, is an
oil and gas company based in California with operations around the world. In
December 2004, the company settled a lawsuit filed by 15 Burmese villagers,
in which the villagers alleged Unocal's complicity in a range of human
rights violations in Burma, including rape, summary execution, torture,
forced labor and forced migration.
*Coca-Cola*
Coca-Cola Company is perhaps the most widely recognized corporate symbol on
the planet. The company also leads in the abuse of workers' rights,
assassinations, water privatization, and worker discrimination. Between 1989
and 2002, eight union leaders from Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia
were killed after protesting the company's labor practices. Hundreds of
other Coca-Cola workers who have joined or considered joining the Colombian
union SINALTRAINAL have been kidnapped, tortured, and detained by
paramilitaries who are hired to intimidate workers to prevent them from
unionizing.
In India, Coca-Cola destroys local agriculture by privatizing the country's
water resources. In Plachimada, Kerala, Coca-Cola extracted 1.5 million
liters of deep well water, which they bottled and sold under the names
Dasani and BonAqua. The groundwater was severely depleted, affecting
thousands of communities with water shortages and destroying agricultural
activity. As a result, the remaining water became contaminated with high
chloride and bacteria levels, leading to scabs, eye problems, and stomach
aches in the local population.
Coca-Cola is also one of the most discriminatory employers in the world. In
the year 2000, 2,000 African-American employees in the U.S. sued the company
for race-based disparities in pay and promotions.
*Dow Chemical*
Dow Chemical has been destroying lives and poisoning the planet for decades.
The company is best known for the ravages and health disaster for millions
of Vietnamese and U.S. Veterans caused by its lethal Vietnam War defoliant,
Agent Orange. Dow also developed and perfected Napalm, a brutal chemical
weapon that burned many innocents to death in Vietnam and other wars. In
1988, Dow provided pesticides to Saddam Hussein despite warnings that they
could be used to produce chemical weapons.
In 2001, Dow inherited the toxic legacy of the worst peacetime chemical
disaster in history when it acquired Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and its
outstanding liabilities in Bhopal, India. On Dec. 3, 1984, a chemical leak
from a UCC pesticide plant in Bhopal gassed thousands of people to death and
left more than 150,000 disabled or dying. Dow still refuses to address its
liabilities in Bhopal.
Dow Chemical's impact is felt globally from its Midland, Michigan
headquarters to New Plymouth, New Zealand. In Midland, Dow has been
producing chlorinated chemicals and burning and burying its waste including
chemicals that make up Agent Orange. In New Plymouth, 500,000 gallons of
Agent Orange were produced and thousands of tons of dioxin-laced waste was
dumped in agricultural fields.
*DynCorp*
Private security contractors have become the fastest-growing sector of the
global economy during the last decade--a $100-billion-a-year, nearly
unregulated industry. DynCorp, one of the providers of these mercenary
services, demonstrates the industry's power and potential to abuse human
rights. While guarding Afghan statesmen and African oil fields, training
Iraqi police forces, eradicating Colombian coca plants, and protecting
business interests in hurricane-devastated New Orleans, these hired guns
bolster the security of governments and organizations at the expense of many
people's human rights.
DynCorp's fumigation of coca crops along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border led
Ecuadorian peasants to sue DynCorp in 2001. Plaintiffs argued that DynCorp
knew--or should have known--that the herbicides were highly toxic.
In 2001, a mechanic with DynCorp blew the whistle on DynCorp employees in
Bosnia for rape and trading girls as young as 12 into sex slavery. According
to a lawsuit filed by the mechanic, "employees and supervisors were engaging
in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal
weapons, women, [and] forged passports." DynCorp fired the whistleblower and
transferred the employees accused of sex trading out of the country,
eventually firing some. None were prosecuted.
*Ford Motor Company*
Among automakers, Ford Motor Company is the worst. Every year since 1999,
the US Environmental Protection Agency has ranked Ford cars, trucks and SUVs
as having the worst overall fuel economy of any American automaker. Ford's
current car and truck fleet has a lower average fuel efficiency than the
original Ford Model-T.
Ford is also in last place when it comes to vehicle greenhouse gas
emissions. According to a recent report by the Union of Concerned
Scientists, Ford has "the absolute worst heat-trapping gas emissions
performance of all the Big Six automakers."
Despite the company's recent greenwashing PR campaign, its record has
actually worsened. According to Ford's own sustainability report, between
2003 and 2004, the company's US fleet-wide fuel economy decreased and its
CO2 emissions went up. Ford has also lobbied against lawmakers' efforts to
increase fuel economy standards at the national level and is also involved
in a lawsuit against California's fuel economy standards.
*KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root): A Subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation*
KBR is a private company that provides military support services. Notorious
for its questionable bookkeeping, dishonest billing practices with US
taxpayer dollars and no-bid contracts, KBR has violated human rights on the
U.S. dollar.
KBR's dubious accounting in Iraq came to light in December 2003 when
Pentagon auditors questioned possible overcharges for imported gasoline. In
June 2005, a previously secret Pentagon audit criticized $1.4 billion in
"questioned" and "unsupported" expenditures. In 2002 the company paid $2
million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit that accused KBR of inflating
contract prices at Fort Ord, California.
Many third-country national (TCN) laborers have been hired by KBR to
"rebuild" Iraq. Generally hailing from impoverished Asian countries, they
have unexpectedly become part of the largest civilian workforce ever hired
in support of a U.S. war. Once abroad, the workers find themselves with few
protections and uncertain legal status. TCNs often sleep in crowded trailers
and wait outside in scorching heat for food rations. Many lack adequate
medical care and put in hard labor seven days a week, 10 hours or more a
day.
*Lockheed Martin*
Lockheed Martin is the world's largest military contractor. Providing
satellites, planes, missiles and other lethal high-tech items to the
Pentagon keeps the profits rolling in. Since 2000, the year Bush was
elected, the company's stock value has tripled.
As the Center for Corporate Policy (www.corporatepolicy.org) notes, it is no
coincidence that Lockheed VP Bruce Jackson--who helped draft the Republican
foreign policy platform in 2000--is a key player at the Project for a New
American Century, the intellectual incubator of the Iraq war.
Lockheed Martin is not the only defense contractor that goes behind the
scenes to influence public policy, but it is one of the worst. Stephen J.
Hadley, who now has Condoleeza Rice's old job as Assistant to the President
for National Security Affairs, was formerly a partner in a DC law firm
representing Lockheed Martin. He is only one of the beneficiaries of the
so-called revolving door between the military industries and the "civilian"
national security apparatus. These war profiteers have a profound and
illegitimate influence on our country's international policy decisions.
*Monsanto*
Monsanto is, by far, the largest producer of genetically engineered seeds in
the world, dominating 70% to 100% of the market for crops such as soy,
cotton, wheat and corn.
Monsanto is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate,
marketed as Roundup. Roundup is sold to small farmers as a pesticide, yet
harms crops in the long run as the toxins accumulate in the soil. Plants
eventually become infertile, forcing farmers to purchase genetically
modified Roundup Ready Seed, a seed that resists the herbicide. This creates
a cycle of dependency on Monsanto for both the weed killer and the only seed
that can resist it. Both products are patented, and sold at inflated prices.
Exposure to the pesticide is documented to cause cancers, skin disorders,
spontaneous abortions, premature births, and damage to the gastrointestinal
and nervous systems.
According to the India Committee of the Netherlands and the International
Labor Rights Fund, Monsanto also employs child labor. In India, an estimated
12,375 children work in cottonseed production for farmers paid by Indian and
multinational seed companies, including Monsanto.
*Nestle USA*
The problem of illegal and forced child labor is rampant in the chocolate
industry, because more than 40% of the world's cocoa supply comes from the
Ivory Coast, a country that the US State Department estimates had
approximately 109,000 child laborers working in hazardous conditions on
cocoa farms. In 2001, Save the Children Canada reported that 15,000 children
between 9 and 12 years old, many from impoverished Mali, had been tricked or
sold into slavery on West African cocoa farms, many for just $30 each.
Nestle, the third largest buyer of cocoa from the Ivory Coast, is well aware
of the tragically unjust labor practices taking place on the farms with
which it continues to do business. Nestle and other chocolate manufacturers
agreed to end the use of abusive and forced child labor on cocoa farms by
July 1, 2005, but they failed to do so.
Nestle is also notorious for its aggressive marketing of infant formula in
poor countries in the 1980s. Because of this practice, Nestle is still one
of the most boycotted corporations in the world, and its infant formula is
still controversial. In Italy in 2005, police seized more than two million
liters of Nestle infant formula that was contaminated with the chemical
isopropylthioxanthone (ITX).
Additionally, violations of labor rights are reported from Nestle factories
in numerous countries. In Colombia, Nestle replaced the entire factory staff
with lower-wage workers and did not renew the collective employment
contract.
*Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International (a.k.a. The Altria Group
Inc.)*
Among tobacco companies, Philip Morris is notorious. Now called Altria, it
is the world's largest and most profitable cigarette corporation and maker
of Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Parliament, Basic and many other brands of
cigarettes.
Documents uncovered in a lawsuit filed against the tobacco industry by the
state of Minnesota showed that Philip Morris and other leading tobacco
corporations knew very well of the dangers of tobacco products and the
addictiveness of nicotine. To this day, Philip Morris deceives consumers
about the harm of its products by offering light, mild and low-tar
cigarettes that give consumers the illusion these brands are "healthier"
than traditional cigarettes.
Although the company says it doesn't want kids to smoke, it spends millions
of dollars every day marketing and promoting cigarettes to youth. Overseas,
it has even hired underage "Marlboro girls" to distribute free cigarettes to
other children and sponsored concerts where cigarettes were handed out to
minors.
As anti- tobacco campaigns and government regulations are slowing tobacco
use in Western countries, Philip Morris has aggressively moved into
developing country markets, where smoking and smoking-related deaths are on
the rise. Preliminary numbers released by the World Health Organization
predict global deaths due to smoking-related illnesses will nearly double by
2020, with more than three-quarters of those deaths in the developing world.
*Pfizer*
Pfizer is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world; it is also one of
the worst abusers of the human right of universal access to HIV/AIDS
medicine.
In addition to Viagra, Zoloft, Zithromax and Norvasc, Pfizer produces the
drug fluconazole (an antifungal used by AIDS patients) under the name
Diflucan, and sells it at inflated prices most poor people cannot afford.
The company refuses to grant generic licenses of fluconazole to governments
in countries like Brazil, South Africa, or Dominican Republic, where
patients are forced to pay $20 per weekly pill, though the average national
wage is only $120 per month.
Pfizer also values shareholder profits over safety standards. In Europe in
2005, it withdrew from scientific studies of a new class of AIDS drugs
called CCR5 inhibitors, choosing instead to rush its own untested CCR5
inhibitor onto the European market without full information about the drug's
side effects.
*Suez-Lyonnaise Des Eaux (SLDE)*
The privatization of water has had a disastrous impact on the human right to
clean water, and the French company Suez is the worst perpetrator of this
abuse. The company's billions of dollars in profit come at the expense of
poor people living in countries where thousands lack access to potable
water, and, because of private water contracts, are also facing skyrocketing
water prices.
Suez goes by many names around the world--Ondeo, SITA and others--to mask
its worldwide net of controversial activities. In Manila, Philippines, after
seven years of water privatization under a Suez company (Maynilad Water)
contract, studies showed that water rates increased in some neighborhoods by
400 to 700 percent. These studies also showed that the negligence of the
company resulted in cholera and gastroenteritis outbreaks that killed six
people and severely sickened 725 in Manila's Tondo district.
In Bolivia, a Suez company (Aguas de Illimani) left 200,000 people without
access to water and caused a revolt when it tried to charge between $335 and
$445 to connect a private home to the water supply. Countless people were
unable to afford this charge in a country whose yearly per capita GDP is
$915.
Unfortunately, the IMF and World Bank are playing a key role in pushing
water privatization all over the world. Many countries have been required to
open up their water supply to private companies as a condition for receiving
IMF loans, and the World Bank has approved millions of dollars in loans for
the privatization of water systems.
*Wal-Mart*
Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation in the world. It owns 5,100 stores
worldwide and employs 1.3 million workers in the United States and 400,000
abroad, as well as millions more in the factories of its suppliers.
Many people have heard of the way that Wal-Mart steamrolls its way into
every possible town, destroying local supermarkets and countless small
businesses. We have also heard about Wal-Mart's long track record of worker
abuse, from forced overtime to sex discrimination to illegal child labor to
relentless union busting. Wal-Mart also notoriously fails to provide health
insurance to over half of its employees, who are then left to rely on
themselves or taxpayers, who provide for a portion of their healthcare needs
through government Medicaid.
Less well known is the fact that Wal-Mart maintains its low price level by
allowing substandard labor conditions at the overseas factories producing
most of its goods. The company continually demands lower prices from its
suppliers, who, in turn, make more outrageous and abusive demands on their
workers in order to meet Wal-Mart's requirements.
In September 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit on
behalf of Wal-Mart supplier sweatshop workers in China, Indonesia,
Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Swaziland. The workers were denied minimum wages,
forced to work overtime without compensation, and were denied legally
mandated health care. Other worker rights violations that have been found in
foreign factories that produce goods for Wal-Mart include locked bathrooms,
starvation wages, pregnancy tests, denial of access to health care, and
workers being fired and blacklisted if they try to defend their rights.
--- End Message ---
