Here's a new post on a topic long of concern to world-system types. Contact
info is as the bottom.
Timmons Roberts
>
> Monday, December 23, 1996
>
>MULTINATIONAL MONITOR ANNOUNCES TEN WORST CORPORATIONS OF 1996
>
> Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Caterpillar, Daishowa, Daiwa
>Disney, Freeport, Gerber, Mitsubishi, Seagram's, and Texaco are
>the Ten Worst Corporations of 1996, according to an article in
>the December 1996 issue of Multinational Monitor magazine.
> Multinational Monitor's ten worst list, now in its
>ninth year, is designed to highlight the most egregious acts of
>corporate crime, violence and other wrongdoing.
> Russell Mokhiber, the author of the article, chastises the
>Clinton administration for "failing to confront corporate crime
>and violence head on" and for failing to "admit to an ugly
>reality -- corporate crime and violence inflicts far more damage
>on society than all street crime combined."
> Mokhiber points out that while the FBI reports burglary and
>robbery combined cost the nation about $4 billion in 1995, white-
>collar fraud, generally committed by educated people of means,
>costs at least 50 times as much -- $200 billion a year, according
>to very conservative estimates.
> Similarly, while the FBI puts the street homicide rate at
>about 24,000 a year, the Labor Department points out that more
>than twice that number -- 56,000 Americans -- die every year on
>the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung, brown
>lung, asbestosis and various occupationally-induced cancers.
> The Ten Worst Corporations for 1996 are:
> * ADM, for committing price-fixing crimes that cost
>consumers $500 million. [PD NOTE: an ag corporation]
> * Caterpillar, for anti-union practices.
> * Daishowa Inc., for clearcutting timber areas in Alberta,
>Canada, then suing a citizen group in Canada for trying to bring
>public attention to the company's destructive activity.
> * Daiwa Bank Ltd., for committing financial crimes that
>resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in customer losses.
> * Disney, for hiring sweatshop contractors in the Third
>World, including Burma and Haiti, to sew Disney garments.
> * Freeport McMoRan, for polluting areas near one of its
>copper mining sites in Irian Jaya, Indonesia.
> * Gerber for pressuring Guatemala to exempt baby food
>products from the country's tough infant formula law.
> * Mitsubishi, for destroying tropical rainforests around the
>world and for tolerating widespread sexual harassment at
>Mitsubishi Motor's Illinois facility.
> * Seagram's, for lifting a 48-year old voluntary ban on
>broadcast advertising of distilled spirits.
> * Texaco, for mistreating minority employees, and then
>seeking to destroy documents to cover up the episode.
> Multinational Monitor, founded by consumer advocate
>Ralph Nader in 1980, is a monthly magazine that focuses on issues
>of multinational corporate power.
>
> For More Information
> Please Contact:
> Rob Weissman at
> (202) 387-8030 or
> Russell Mokhiber at
> (202) 737-1680
>
>
>
>
>
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Timmons Roberts
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology/Center for Latin American Studies
Tulane University
New Orleans LA 70118
tel: 504-865-5820/FAX 504-865-5544
timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu
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"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi
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