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What’s your favorite job creating corporation? Coke, Walmart, ToyRUs, Ford, Apple, Philip Morris, Citibank or another? The profit motive of these businesses can sometimes lead to UnAmerican results. Did I say ‘sometimes?’ I meant pretty much all the time and replace ‘UnAmerican’ with ‘Evil’ and I think we’re getting somewhere. Here’s a fun game. Google your favorite company and “class action” or “fraud” or “murder” or “child labor” or whatever you can think of in that vein and see what comes up.
Here’s a very brief list of our Heroic Captains of Industry (very brief by necessity of space…I could go all day listing this shit):
Coca-Cola:
suppliers buy materials from El Salvadoran companies that use child labor.
continued its Nazi distribution throughout World War II.
bottling plants in Colombia, Pakistan, Turkey, Russia, Peru, Chile, Guatemala and Nicaragua pursuing unionization were met by Coca-Cola Company contracted paramilitary security forces to silence organizing workers with violent detention, torture and murder.
Nike:
has employed children as young as 10 making shoes, clothing and footballs in Pakistan and Cambodia.
has factories in China, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, where its employees include children working twelve-hour shifts earning as little as sixteen cents an hour. The work areas in these countries are unsafe, unsanitary, injurious, environmental hazards. Workers get beaten resulting in broken bones and lost appendages, as well as suffering kidney damage from one permitted bathroom break per day.
manufacturers engage in physical abuses in Nike factories including workers being struck on the head, pinched or being forced to stand, kneel or run in the hot sun as punishment. There have also been numerous cases of workers being sexually molested by supervisors within Nike factories.
WalMart:
uses child and slave labor for clothing, food processing and product assembly, working up to 18 hours / day in China (and its Special Economic Zones where child pay is 3 cents / hour), Nepal, India, Thailand, and Bangladesh.
stole wages from the 186,000 employees workers by not paying overtime earned and compelling 'off the clock' labor including 'working lunches and breaks.' Due to WalMart's litigious stance and deep pockets, the company can outlast any plaintiffs in marathon court battles. Alternatively WalMart rarely loses or suffers any meaningful court imposed penalty.
routinely intimidates WalMart associates from organizing labor unions by closing any WalMart store where organizing is suspected or terminating individuals leading the union initiative. Due to WalMart's deep pockets, it can string out litigation until the plaintiff's funds are exhausted.
McDonald's:
Brazilian shops, Chinese and Indian suppliers practice child / slave labor. McDonald's Winnie the Pooh, Snoopy, Hello Kitty, and other toys are made for children by children working 7 a.m. to midnight. A Pennsylvania McDonald's manager enforced 25 hour shifts on his foreign born employees. McDonald's blaming down-line management for these transgressions keeps the highly profitable child labor pool viable for the entire franchise's economic benefit.
illegally fired or intimidated workers for taking action or making statements aimed at improving their wages and working conditions, including participating in nationwide protests.
forced employees to work off the clock getting paid only when customers were in McDonald's restaurants. McDonald's did not pay overtime and struck hours off of employee time cards. McDonald's did not permit timely breaks or reimburse employees for the cost of cleaning uniforms driving their wages below minimum wage standards. "We've uncovered several unlawful schemes, but they all share a common purpose -- to drive labor costs down by stealing wages from McDonald's workers," said Michael Rubin of Altshuler Berzon LLP, an attorney who represents California workers.
Apple:
employees in China, in a one year period, attempted over two dozen suicides. Many were successful.
foreign factories order mandatory pregnancy tests, employ indentured servants, and routinely dock their child laborers pay for not working long enough hours or performing excruciating long term manual labor.
Chinese suppliers run a modern day 'company store' where employees live onsite and have all sundry living expenses deducted usually totaling over half of their meager pay.
Toys "R" Us:
had 307 child labor violations at the Toy chain's 35 New England stores in a single year.
has been caught exploiting slave labor (mostly with children) to collect materials such as cotton" from Uzbekistan suppliers.
suppliers fromThe Sturdy Products factory in China’s Shenzhen employs many workers as young as age 14, forces staff to sign “voluntary” documents agreeing to work beyond the maximum overtime legal limit, and crams workers into poorly ventilated prisons saturated with hazardous chemicals. Investigators found that workers routinely averaged an excessive 120 hours of overtime a month. Sturdy Products management also denies their 6,000 factory workers basics such as social insurance and freedom of association. Despite the tense and overbearing environment, employees “feel helpless because it is not easy … to find another job.” Toys R Us is reaping the benefits of products / toys made at these factories.
Monsanto:
uses child labor on cottonseed plantations in India that supply Monsanto and supply seed companies licensed by Monsanto. All these seed companies pay significant amounts of royalty to Monsanto. In North Gujarat, a center of cottonseed production, children under 18 comprise of 52% of the total labor force of Monsanto suppliers, and nearly a third of those children are younger than 14. In a recent survey, children were identified on every single one of 38 Monsanto suppliers reviewed recently.
contractor Rural Power SA was raided by Argentinian tax agency (AFIP) discovering conditions of slavery in the contractor's cornfields. The slave workers toiled 14 hours a day, captive to the fields, with pay withheld until workers were permitted to buy food items from the company store at grotesquely inflated prices.
forced India, under the World Bank's structural adjustment policies, to open up its seed sector to Monsanto. "Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds which needed fertilizers and pesticides and could not be saved" Says Vandana Shiva, leader of the movement to oust Monsanto from India in her 2004 article The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalization. "As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants. A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness. As debts increase and become unpayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide. More than 25,000 peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997 when the practice of seed saving was transformed under globalization pressures and multinational seed corporations started to take control of the seed supply. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life" Roughly 46 Indian farmers commit suicide per day and 183,000 farmers have taken their lives since the imposition of Monsanto seeds began. This has been described as genocide.
Ford Motor Company
knowingly profited from slave labor in Nazi concentration camps and at the German based Ford manufacturing company. Newly declassified government documents indicate that Ford's son Edsel, the company president at the time, could have been prosecuted for trading with the enemy had he not died in 1943. 11 letters between Edsel and the head of Ford's French division in 1942 suggest that the parent company in Detroit knew and approved of the manufacturing efforts being undertaken on behalf of the German military by Ford.
knowingly profited from deadly tire / SUV combination. By late 2001, rollovers of Ford Explorers triggered by blowouts of Firestone tires had claimed 271 lives in the U.S. and dozens more overseas. Ford and Firestone covered up safety problems with the tire / SUV combination for a decade.
operated an onsite detention center in Ford Motor Argentina, in collaboration with the Argentinian military dictatorship, to kidnap, detain, and torture Ford workers and union organizers, with one worker 'disappearing.' In May 2013, three former Ford executives were indicted for crimes against humanity. The three men are accused of giving names, ID numbers, pictures and home addresses to security forces who hauled two dozen union workers off the floor of Ford's factory in suburban Buenos Aires to be tortured and interrogated and then sent to military prisons.
Walt Disney:
clothing contractor based in Haiti paid 12 to 28 cents per hour to workers making "Mickey Mouse" pajamas leaving those workers living "on the edge of misery."
contractors in Bangladesh paid employees 8 to 19 cents an hour for working 15 hours a day, seven days a week leaving the workers on "the edge of starvation."
Chinese-based contractors abused workers with up to 96 work hours weekly in sweat shop conditions. Pay ranged from 33 to 42 cents an hour, wages were improperly calculated, rampant wage theft occurred, excessive deductions for onsite living expenses were taken and workplace accidents were the norm. Child labor and sexual harassment were prevalent at the supplier work sites as were brutally unsafe working conditions.
licensee Dream International toy factory, in Shenzen, China, imposed low wages and inhumane working conditions in what was described as a factory that was a "fire trap."
contractor Tazreen Fashion factory in Bangladesh had a fire killing 100 workers. 1000 workers were killed in the collapse of a building housing Disney suppliers.
supplier in California was violating minimum wage, overtime, industrial homework and child labor laws. After the company went out of business, Disney agreed to pay $903,000 into a fund to cover back wages for the workers whose rights had been violated.
https://www.schmerltzmag.com/copy-of-abuse
That my fellows, is not even the tip of the iceberg. So much for self-regulating companies. Please respond with informed consumerism.
Here’s a very brief list of our Heroic Captains of Industry (very brief by necessity of space…I could go all day listing this shit):
Coca-Cola:
suppliers buy materials from El Salvadoran companies that use child labor.
continued its Nazi distribution throughout World War II.
bottling plants in Colombia, Pakistan, Turkey, Russia, Peru, Chile, Guatemala and Nicaragua pursuing unionization were met by Coca-Cola Company contracted paramilitary security forces to silence organizing workers with violent detention, torture and murder.
Nike:
has employed children as young as 10 making shoes, clothing and footballs in Pakistan and Cambodia.
has factories in China, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, where its employees include children working twelve-hour shifts earning as little as sixteen cents an hour. The work areas in these countries are unsafe, unsanitary, injurious, environmental hazards. Workers get beaten resulting in broken bones and lost appendages, as well as suffering kidney damage from one permitted bathroom break per day.
manufacturers engage in physical abuses in Nike factories including workers being struck on the head, pinched or being forced to stand, kneel or run in the hot sun as punishment. There have also been numerous cases of workers being sexually molested by supervisors within Nike factories.
WalMart:
uses child and slave labor for clothing, food processing and product assembly, working up to 18 hours / day in China (and its Special Economic Zones where child pay is 3 cents / hour), Nepal, India, Thailand, and Bangladesh.
stole wages from the 186,000 employees workers by not paying overtime earned and compelling 'off the clock' labor including 'working lunches and breaks.' Due to WalMart's litigious stance and deep pockets, the company can outlast any plaintiffs in marathon court battles. Alternatively WalMart rarely loses or suffers any meaningful court imposed penalty.
routinely intimidates WalMart associates from organizing labor unions by closing any WalMart store where organizing is suspected or terminating individuals leading the union initiative. Due to WalMart's deep pockets, it can string out litigation until the plaintiff's funds are exhausted.
McDonald's:
Brazilian shops, Chinese and Indian suppliers practice child / slave labor. McDonald's Winnie the Pooh, Snoopy, Hello Kitty, and other toys are made for children by children working 7 a.m. to midnight. A Pennsylvania McDonald's manager enforced 25 hour shifts on his foreign born employees. McDonald's blaming down-line management for these transgressions keeps the highly profitable child labor pool viable for the entire franchise's economic benefit.
illegally fired or intimidated workers for taking action or making statements aimed at improving their wages and working conditions, including participating in nationwide protests.
forced employees to work off the clock getting paid only when customers were in McDonald's restaurants. McDonald's did not pay overtime and struck hours off of employee time cards. McDonald's did not permit timely breaks or reimburse employees for the cost of cleaning uniforms driving their wages below minimum wage standards. "We've uncovered several unlawful schemes, but they all share a common purpose -- to drive labor costs down by stealing wages from McDonald's workers," said Michael Rubin of Altshuler Berzon LLP, an attorney who represents California workers.
Apple:
employees in China, in a one year period, attempted over two dozen suicides. Many were successful.
foreign factories order mandatory pregnancy tests, employ indentured servants, and routinely dock their child laborers pay for not working long enough hours or performing excruciating long term manual labor.
Chinese suppliers run a modern day 'company store' where employees live onsite and have all sundry living expenses deducted usually totaling over half of their meager pay.
Toys "R" Us:
had 307 child labor violations at the Toy chain's 35 New England stores in a single year.
has been caught exploiting slave labor (mostly with children) to collect materials such as cotton" from Uzbekistan suppliers.
suppliers fromThe Sturdy Products factory in China’s Shenzhen employs many workers as young as age 14, forces staff to sign “voluntary” documents agreeing to work beyond the maximum overtime legal limit, and crams workers into poorly ventilated prisons saturated with hazardous chemicals. Investigators found that workers routinely averaged an excessive 120 hours of overtime a month. Sturdy Products management also denies their 6,000 factory workers basics such as social insurance and freedom of association. Despite the tense and overbearing environment, employees “feel helpless because it is not easy … to find another job.” Toys R Us is reaping the benefits of products / toys made at these factories.
Monsanto:
uses child labor on cottonseed plantations in India that supply Monsanto and supply seed companies licensed by Monsanto. All these seed companies pay significant amounts of royalty to Monsanto. In North Gujarat, a center of cottonseed production, children under 18 comprise of 52% of the total labor force of Monsanto suppliers, and nearly a third of those children are younger than 14. In a recent survey, children were identified on every single one of 38 Monsanto suppliers reviewed recently.
contractor Rural Power SA was raided by Argentinian tax agency (AFIP) discovering conditions of slavery in the contractor's cornfields. The slave workers toiled 14 hours a day, captive to the fields, with pay withheld until workers were permitted to buy food items from the company store at grotesquely inflated prices.
forced India, under the World Bank's structural adjustment policies, to open up its seed sector to Monsanto. "Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds which needed fertilizers and pesticides and could not be saved" Says Vandana Shiva, leader of the movement to oust Monsanto from India in her 2004 article The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalization. "As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants. A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness. As debts increase and become unpayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide. More than 25,000 peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997 when the practice of seed saving was transformed under globalization pressures and multinational seed corporations started to take control of the seed supply. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life" Roughly 46 Indian farmers commit suicide per day and 183,000 farmers have taken their lives since the imposition of Monsanto seeds began. This has been described as genocide.
Ford Motor Company
knowingly profited from slave labor in Nazi concentration camps and at the German based Ford manufacturing company. Newly declassified government documents indicate that Ford's son Edsel, the company president at the time, could have been prosecuted for trading with the enemy had he not died in 1943. 11 letters between Edsel and the head of Ford's French division in 1942 suggest that the parent company in Detroit knew and approved of the manufacturing efforts being undertaken on behalf of the German military by Ford.
knowingly profited from deadly tire / SUV combination. By late 2001, rollovers of Ford Explorers triggered by blowouts of Firestone tires had claimed 271 lives in the U.S. and dozens more overseas. Ford and Firestone covered up safety problems with the tire / SUV combination for a decade.
operated an onsite detention center in Ford Motor Argentina, in collaboration with the Argentinian military dictatorship, to kidnap, detain, and torture Ford workers and union organizers, with one worker 'disappearing.' In May 2013, three former Ford executives were indicted for crimes against humanity. The three men are accused of giving names, ID numbers, pictures and home addresses to security forces who hauled two dozen union workers off the floor of Ford's factory in suburban Buenos Aires to be tortured and interrogated and then sent to military prisons.
Walt Disney:
clothing contractor based in Haiti paid 12 to 28 cents per hour to workers making "Mickey Mouse" pajamas leaving those workers living "on the edge of misery."
contractors in Bangladesh paid employees 8 to 19 cents an hour for working 15 hours a day, seven days a week leaving the workers on "the edge of starvation."
Chinese-based contractors abused workers with up to 96 work hours weekly in sweat shop conditions. Pay ranged from 33 to 42 cents an hour, wages were improperly calculated, rampant wage theft occurred, excessive deductions for onsite living expenses were taken and workplace accidents were the norm. Child labor and sexual harassment were prevalent at the supplier work sites as were brutally unsafe working conditions.
licensee Dream International toy factory, in Shenzen, China, imposed low wages and inhumane working conditions in what was described as a factory that was a "fire trap."
contractor Tazreen Fashion factory in Bangladesh had a fire killing 100 workers. 1000 workers were killed in the collapse of a building housing Disney suppliers.
supplier in California was violating minimum wage, overtime, industrial homework and child labor laws. After the company went out of business, Disney agreed to pay $903,000 into a fund to cover back wages for the workers whose rights had been violated.
https://www.schmerltzmag.com/copy-of-abuse
That my fellows, is not even the tip of the iceberg. So much for self-regulating companies. Please respond with informed consumerism.
