Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

Time to take out the maker of one of the best fast food dessert . . . the Hersey Pie . . . and it’s provider Burger King. And again . . . just to reiterate . . . I’m only highlighting companies that I use and am big fans of. This is an overflow of my own personal research for my purchases. I’m not just arbitrarily calling out companies I don’t like.

As always make sure to check out Ariah’s post where he highlights another company that is attempting to do a better job with the products and service that they offer. This week he’s bragging on Chipolte (courtesy of Eric’s recommendation).

TOXINS: “In August 2005 California Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed suit against nine producers of potato chips and french fries concerning toxic contents in their popular foods. Lockyer is seeking a court order requiring the companies to warn consumers that some of their food products are made with acrylamide, a chemical identified by the state as a human carcinogen. Plaintiffs in the case include McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Frito Lay, H.J. Heinz, Proctor & Gamble and Wendy’s.”

WORKER RIGHTS: “The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit on behalf of about 511 current and former workers at about half of the 351 Burger Kings run by franchisee Carrols Corp. This is the biggest sexual harassment suit ever filed by the agency. Most of the alleged victims are girls or women. According to the suit female employees tell of managers or co-workers hugging and kissing them or fondling their breasts or buttocks. Some supervisors made suggestive or vulgar comments to female workers; others pressured them to have sex or go out on dates, according to court records. At least one co-worker allegedly exposed himself to a female employee. Sometimes, Carrols’ management fired or suspended offenders. In other cases, victims’ complaints to managers resulted in little or nothing being done.”

In another case . . . “In February 2005 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit against Burger King on behalf of a 16 year-old former employee who claimed she was fired after refusing the store manager’s repeated requests for sex. According to the lawsuit, the teenager started working at a Milwaukee Burger King in January 2003 and refused the store manager’s requests for sex. In September 2003, she was fired after making plans to complain about the harassment to some of the company’s managers who were scheduled to visit the restaurant, the lawsuit said. The manager who fired Merriweather is in his mid-30s and still works at the restaurant, Kamp said. ”

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES: “In March 2005 Burger King agreed to pay civil penalties of $170,000, plus $35,000 in costs, to settle a lawsuit over an abandoned store in Sacramento County California. The suit alleged that the fast-food company illegally maintained the site of an abandoned drive-in and allowed it to become a blighted property. According to the suit Burger King destroyed the building in 2004 but left the site open and accessible and filled with solid waste and hazardous materials.”

HEALTH & SAFETY: “In February 2005 Burger King agreed to pay part of a $4 million settlement in a case where a former employee was burned severely when a grease filter exploded at a Burger King restaurant in West Seneca, NY. The woman, who now is 24, suffered burns, five surgeries and permanent scars after a grease machine exploded in 1997, spraying her with 350 degree oil According to her attorney the grease filter was defective, and the restaurant lacked proper training and operating procedures for the device, which exploded after an aerosol canister fell into the machine.”

Sources: Responsible Shopper, Consumer Affairs

[tags]Corporate Responsibility, Fast Food, Burger King, Responsible Shopper[/tags]

Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

So let’s talk about bananas.

Chiquita Bananas sells bananas in over 70 countries making it the world’s biggest banana company (that’ll be the only time on my blog where you see the word banana used 3x’s in a sentence; 4 if you count this sidenote).

Throughout its history, Chiquita’s operations have contributed to the destablization of at least one Central American country, and compounded the problems of poverty and deteriorating health among banana plantation workers. Chiquita’s predecessor, United Fruit Company, used its political might to convince the U.S. to topple the popularly elected government of Guatemala in the 1950s (which is also made mention of in Empire’s Workshop which I’m currently reading). Over one-hundred thousand people were killed or disappeared as a result of the power struggle that ensued. The company still faces criminal charges for using toxic agrochemicals known to cause sterility and birth defects on Central American banana farms a decade after the substances were banned in the US. Chiquita has excelled past its competitors by using Rainforest Alliance environmental standards in banana production. Chiquita recently announced plans to break into the green marketplace with the production of Fair Trade Certified bananas, however plans were called off when a hurricane wiped out the plantation and all workers were laid off (source: Responsible Shopper).

You can check out their profile on Responsible Shopper or their Wiki for a full list of all their human rights, environmental, and labor violations.

But I thought I’d take a different approach this week. Since some of my readers have complained about this series being way too negative . . . I thought instead of writing a long laundry list of their unethical behavior . . . I’ll instead refer you to the above link.

And instead focus my time on the topic of being informed about our purchases. To be quite honest, until Chiquita Bananas got busted recently for paying terrorists for protection in Columbia . . . I had no idea about their business ethics.

This poses an interesting question for me/us. For 25 years . . . I ate, enjoyed, consumed, and bought Chiquita Bananas without ever once considering anything outside of buying something that I desired . . . namely a banana. You could call this “shopping blindly”. But I find it interesting that I never once stopped to ask any questions about my purchase. It would make sense that if I’m giving my money towards something . . . that I would want to know where that money is going.

I mean after all, this is what most use as an excuse for not giving money to homeless people. We’re scared they’re going to buy alcohol or worse yet . . . drugs. This is very similar to the stance that some Americans have taken towards Citgo Gasoline since it’s owned by Hugo Chavez and Venezuela. They have decided not to give money to Citgo because they don’t feel like their money being used for things they don’t believe in. And if not those examples, I think most of us would agree that if we knew the money that we gave to someone was going to be used to take the life of someone else (to buy a gun, to pay someone else to kill them, etc.) that we would be extremely hesitant about handing over our money to said person.

But somehow when it comes to our day-to-day shopping experiences . . . most of us have taken an “ignorance is bliss” policy. Partly because it honestly takes a little bit of work to be informed about the companies that we buy from.

So my challenge for all of us . . . is not to wait for unethical behavior to get exposed nationally by the likes of CNN or FOX before we decide to boycott shady companies.

If we wait until these exploitations make it to the mass media we are just reactionary. There is no reason that we have to wait for the Kathy Lee sweatshop scandals and the Chiquita Bananas stories to break before we become informed.

Try this . . . before your next pre-planned purchase . . . spend as little as 5 minutes on the internet looking up the particular company that you are preparing to give your hard earned money to. You’ll be surprised as the wealth of reliable information that is available to you that most mass media outlets don’t report until it becomes “news-worthy” and scandal-icious.

But it goes on every day. With companies that we shop at everyday. And if it’s deemed un-American to support Hugo Chavez then it has to be just as un-American to support slavery in sweatshops. And un-American to support environmental carelessness. And un-American to support harassment and rape.

Be proactive.

I’m not sure what’s more American at this point . . . to sit on our ass and do nothing. Or to actually take a stand and fight for other’s freedom.

As always be sure to check out Ariah’s excellent thoughts that propose hopeful alternatives.

[tags]Corporate Responsibility, Chiquita, Chiquita Bananas, Hugo Chavez, Citgo, Responsible Shopper, Spending Habits, Shopping Habits, Empire’s Workshop[/tags]

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]

Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

This week’s featured company is Kohl’s. At another attempt to try and show how unbiased I am, Kohl’s is a store that I love to go to because it has cheap “name brand” clothes. I mean currently, I’m wearing a pair of shorts I got at Kohl’s. I chose this company because it’s somewhat in the same genre of other stores that I enjoy like Nordstrom Rack and TJMaxx. And just because it’s “cheaper” for us to buy doesn’t mean it costs any less for those who make it.

Again my attempt is not to be a moralist . . . but began with me wanting to be more informed about what goes in to the low cost of the products that I buy.

Don’t forget about Ariah’s post on a company that is playing its role in creating a sustainable world.

Kohl’s is a rather large company with over 107,000 employees. It also brought in 13.4 billion in revenue in 2006. By all inidications a rather lucrative and profitable company. But they have a litany of complaints against them.

They sell clothing produced by the Leader Garment Factory in El Salvador. This factory gave mandatory pregancy tests. Women who tested positive were immediately fired. This factory also had an obligatory overtime shifts which was 6 days a week, 13 hours a day. Which is 78 hours a week. As compensation the workers were paid $0.60 an hour. Which is a third of the cost of living (which is extremely, extremly small). Meaning that these employees get paid $46.80 for 78 hours of work. Which is what I spent in the store when I bought my pair of shorts and 2 t-shirts.

In other factories that supplied Kohl’s clothing . . . in addition to the 80 hour work week and wages that were 27 percent below the national required minimum wage . . . employees had to work in unsanitary conditions where in the summertime the temperature in the factories would easily be over 100 degrees.

Another large garment factory supplier to Kohl’s (owned by the Taiwanese and operated in Nicaragua) fired employees who attempted to form a legal union. Shortly after its formation, over 400 of the new union workers were fired including their newly elected leaders. Despite government pressure, the factory has refused to reinstate the workers and make upgrades to their labor practices.

Here are a couple examples of their mark-ups. When a shipment of carpenter shorts cleared customs in Miami they had a customs value of $7.15 but were sold in store for $34 . . . a 320% mark-up. A shipment of carpenter jeans had a customs value of $11.52 per pair and sold at $34 . . . for a 195% mark-up.

In addition, their CEO Lawrence Montgomery (the guy who does the least amount of work along the food chain) $1.646 million dollars in 2005 alone. And cashed out $8.4 million in stock options . . . leaving $35.37 million in unexercised stock options.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Sources: Responsible Shopper, National Labor Committee

Don’t forget about Ariah’s post on a company that is playing its role in creating a sustainable world.

[tags]Social Responsibility, Corporate Responsibility, Kohl’s, Department Stores, Sweatshop Labor, Responsible Shopper[/tags]

Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

Last week I introduced a new little running thread. Basically trying to highlight some corporations that we may or may not take for granted. I know for me, for the longest time, I never really thought about where my money was going or what it was supporting. Recently, I’ve been attempting to at least become a bit more informed about the practices and ethics of places that I give my money. Also on the advice of many of you I’ve decided to feature a positive company each week too. But since it’s tough enough to find adequate and accurate information on 1 company let alone 2, my new/good friend Ariah Fine is going to join me each week in blogging about a corporation that is practicing healthy business ethics.

Realizing that half of what I say is crap and the other half hypocritical at best . . . and realizing that I probably need to reiterate for the 50th time that I’m not a moralist, legalist, or absolutist about anything that I think . . . that there would be no better way to convey both of those points than taking a stab at my golden god . . . Apple. Meanwhile Ariah is blogging about some of the better tech companies out there over on his site.

There are 2 main things that I’ll highlight and you can take a look at their full corporate profile here.

1) Apple is a leading contributor to what is now becoming known as “e-waste”. Essentially, when computers are broken or “done with” they are liquidated to countries overseas who then take them and have people (mostly children) strip them for parts. The computer companies, in this case Apple, are supposed to go through the computer and take out all of the harmful chemicals and toxic waste internally within the computer, before they get sent off to be stripped for parts. Unfortunately this usually does not happen and children end up spending 8 hour shifts breaking computers down, all the while coming in contact with harmful “e-waste”. This is a common practice in the computer industry, but Apple is considered to be one of the more innovative, “green” companies, so there is no reason why they can not take the lead in setting higher environmental standards when it comes to “e-waste”.

2) This is something that most people wouldn’t expect but if we’re honest, it still contributes to a non-sustainable world. It is a practice based on deception and greed. There is a thing in the corporate world called “backdating”. In most innovative companies, it’s hard to hire and keep talented, cutting-edge talent. Giving them “raises” in salary don’t typically do the job of keeping them happy or keeping them committed to the company. So many companies use other incentives such as stock options (which most of the time don’t kick in until after 4 years of employment). The only problem is that the IRS likes to tax anything that is given of value. So many CFO’s have begun the practice of “backdating”. Basically, if a stock share is worth $50 dollars today. They’ll backdate when they gave it to them . . . perhaps when the stock price was as low as $5. On something as small as 5,000 shares that’s a difference in $225,000 that the companies don’t have to pay taxes on. While I would love to stick it to Uncle Sam as much as the next person, what this effectively does is drive down the stock price for those who were there in the beginning and paid $5. It punishes them for their foresight while rewarding the new hot shot. It’s unethical and Apple has multiple complaints and fines levied against them because of this practice of backdating.

Sources: Responsible Shopper, Wired Magazine (March 2007), & Apple’s Wiki

Don’t forget Ariah’s post.

[techtags: Apple, Backdating, E-Waste, Responsible Shopper, Wired Magazine, Corporate Responsibility]