Corporate Responsibility Mondays
Well it’s about time to switch over to food. This week, I’ve chosen Sara Lee Corporation. Which most of just equate with Apple Pies and other dessert foods. However Sara Lee operates many different companies and products that exist under the umbrella of The Sara Lee Corporation. Some of the recgonizable companies include: Bali (underwear), Ballpark (hot dogs), Champion (clothing), Hanes (clothing), Hillshires Farm (food), Jimmy Dean (food), Playtex (girl stuff), and Sara Lee Foods (food).
The Sara Lee Corporation is a notorious offender of labor and environmental laws, constantly finding its way to the Top 10 Worst Corporations List.
When it comes to Fair Trade coffee products, Sara Lee gets the lowest score of all of its competitors on a grading system that takes into account the price they pay to the farmers, policy alternatives, financial contributions, and leadership in industry-wide initiatives.
FRAUD - Sara Lee was one of the several major food companies implicated as conspiring to cover up a massive accounting scandal at U.S. Foodservice (owned by Royal Ahold). Between 2000 and 2003 U.S. Foodservice inflated earnings by $800 million, aided by falsified rebate contracts from clients such as Sara Lee and ConAgra. Sara Lee maintains that they are innocent of misconduct, however the company terminated three sales executives linked to the scandal. - Washington Post
GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS - Earthgrains Baking Companies, Inc., a subsidiary of Sara Lee, reached a $5.25 million settlement with the Department of Justice and the EPA for committing the “largest ever corporate-wide violations of stratospheric ozone protection regulations.” Of the 67 facilities run by Earthgrains, 57 leaked refrigerants at a rate 35% higher than allowed by law. In addition, the company made no attempt to correct leakage problems even after their discovery.
ETHICS - In a report obtained by the Detroit Free Press through the Freedom of Information Act it was revealed that managers at Sara Lee’s Bil Mar plant in western Michigan knew they were shipping tainted hot dogs and deli meats, according to statements from workers and a meat inspector to federal criminal investigators. The federal meat inspector also told investigators that managers were aware the plant had increased levels of listeria about eight months before the 1998 nationwide listeriosis outbreak that killed 15, caused six miscarriages and sickened 101 people.
DISCRIMINATION - In May 2002 Sara Lee agreed to pay $3.5 million to 139 black employees who complained of racial harassment and retaliation at Sara Lee subsidiary Hygrade Food Products Corp., a hot-dog plant that closed in 2001. The settlement came after 23 separate racial discrimination suits were filed in June 2001 by African-American employees against the company. The suits, filed in U.S. District Court, alleged that the African-American employees of the Philadelphia Ball Park brand hot dog factory were harassed, subjected to racial epithets, and denied promotions.
SWEATSHOP LABOR - According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, clothing from Champion Products, a subsidiary of Sara Lee Corp., is manufactured in a Thai factory that has long exploited its workers by underpaying, denying payment of overtime wages, requiring forced overtime work, and providing none of the working welfare necessary under Thai law. Employees were made to work in shifts, which each lasted for 12 hours with strict limits on permission time to use the toilet. Women workers have also been sexually harassed and violated. Workers who organized a 1998 strike were fired for their activities.
Sources: Responsible Shopper, Corp Watch, Washington Post, U.S. Department of Justice
As always, be sure to check out Ariah’s post on positive companies that are making advances in creating a more sustainable world.
[tags]Responsible Shopper, Corporate Responsibility, Corp Watch, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Sweatshop Labor, Sara Lee[/tags]
I never knew of the evil that resided in Winston-Salem, NC, headquarters to Sara Lee AND where my parents live. Thanks for the info. Josh!
I work for Flower’s Bakery now and I always knew Sara Lee was evil. Flower’s only does one thing, baking. Sara Lee is involved in many different areas. From what I have seen over the years the more diverse a corporation becomes, the more problems it creates. Flower’s has the USFS contract now, and the corporate honchos in Thomasville keep a close eye on what goes in and out. We do business with ConAgra, which I have a problem with because they pay family farms half of what they normally do for corn. I heard a good piece on NPR a few weeks ago about the politics of corn, who knew food could be so divisive.
so is there going to be anything left that you can eat or buy?
good insights jason. and i’m sorry winston-salem is so evil andy.
ashley . . . i hear grass is pretty tasty these days. j/k. no i agree. i hope my point doesn’t come across as some guilt trip. or me being absolute. for example, i just got back from wal-mart where i bought $30 worth of envelopes for my business. and i really hate and mega-loathe wal-mart.
i’m simply trying to provide the information that most of us don’t hear. so that perhaps we will be informed about what all goes on and what all it takes to bring us such delicious and cheap products. and what that costs the people that produce them. their quality of life.
by no means am i trying to be absolute about things.
and my friend ariah is posting on an alternative to the “bad” company that i’m highlighting each week. so we’re not without options if we choose to avoid or minimize our relationships with certain companies with questionable policies. unfortunately . . . most of the “better” companies just don’t get highlighted because they’ve chosen to stay small. when you get big, things enter into the equation that often lead you to the point of ignoring ethical actions.
I think you should do positive companies too. Even every-other (2 positive, 2 negative/month would be excellent).
It seems to me that if you actually want to cause change, your more likely to actually encourage companies to change by promoting socially responsible ones than you are to encourage company changes by shame-ing irresponsible ones.
I mean, let’s say OfficeMax is a great company, and Office Depot is horrible (fictional example). If you tell me Office Depot is ‘deh sux’, I could still goto staples, officemax, wal-mart (well, that’s out, but work with me) or dunder-mifflin. .. so, more likely than not (1 in 4 shot), I won’t do anything to vote with my wallet that promotes socially responsible companies, as I won’t necessarily know OfficeMax is leet.
Here’s an alternative idea: why not pick an industry each week, and you do a negative one, and Ariah can do a positive one (you may do this, his blog is blocked at work but yours isn’t, so hard for me to say)?
yeah. good thoughts eric.
that’s what ariah and i are doing each week. i’m doing a negative one. he’s doing the positive one. and they are in the same industry. we’ve been doing that for all 4 weeks. i sort of bring to the surface the negative ones and he counters it by proposing an alternative in the same industry.
it’s really not that hard. it just takes a bit more time to be informed when spending. which i know is something that you and heather do . . . stay informed. but for most of us (including myself) we sort of just buy without thinking. some of just don’t care. while the rest of us just don’t want to put the time into it to be informed. or worse yet don’t want to be inconvenienced. i just think when someone else is pulling an 80 hour work week for $40 so i can eat an apple pie . . . i should probably be inconvenienced enough to learn about that.
I think this is interesting. I’m a new visitor so at first I was like, “what the heck is going on here?!? who cares about Sara Lee in the first….ahhh I see what’s going on here!”
I like the neg reviews/pos reviews. Although, I would certainly shop at Dunder Mifflin over the other sub par choices if I had the chance
Eric,
Sorry my blog is blocked at your work. That’s weird. Anyways, if you want I can try and subscribe you to the email posts so you can still get them…
let me know
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