June 2004
Bad Apples and Good Apples
Bad Apples
BECHTEL — The San Francisco-based multinational is shifting a big chunk of its operations to the right coast, a mark of its rise in the Bush military-industry re-election complex. As one Bechtel flak put it (mildly): “It made sense to be closer to the customer.” Bechtel’s $600 million noncompetitive government contract to restore Iraq’s devastated infrastructure now stands at almost $2 billion. Meanwhile, their work remains mired in accusations of corruption and shoddy construction. Before the war, according to Iraqi UN reports (later confirmed by US and British officials), Bechtel built military infrastructure and plants for Saddam Hussein’s regime during its most repressive era. When Bechtel lobbied for an Iraqi-Jordan oil pipeline with Saddam Hussein, who was their pitchman? Donald Rumsfeld! Bechtel is also responsible for the failed privatization of Bolivia’s water supply as documented in The Corporation.
CHEVRONTEXACO — Ah, the sweet smell of refinery toxics at dawn! More lawsuits and asthma. At least this oil giant is an equal-opportunity intercontinental polluter. In Richmond, California, community activists have battled toxic releases from the firm’s refinery for years. In Ecuador, ChevronTexaco is in court for massive pollution of forests. From 1971 to 1991, Texaco extracted 1.5 billion barrels of oil from the Ecuadoran Amazon, leaving a witches’ brew of dumped chemicals and oil spills (Ecuador’s gross domestic product is half that the firm’s annual sales). In Nigeria, it is under fire for leasing helicopters to the military to attack villagers protesting pollution of the Niger Delta. Last year, ChevronTexaco joined the ranks of War Profiteers Inc., when it began importing Iraqi crude to the Bay Area. The new war dividend: oil has jumped to $40 per barrel.
SAFEWAY — Safeway locked-out its employees in a bid to claw back workers’ health benefits by some $4,000 to $6,000 a year. A long running campaign to get Safeway either to remove or label genetically engineered food it sells has met with stiff corporate resistance. Doubtless, Safeway, with 150 Bay Area stores, worries about Wal-Mart. But critics suggest that Safeway needs to squeeze its union workers because of a series of “poorly planned, overpriced acquisitions, mistimed stock repurchases...and failure to deliver on promised marketing and financial targets.”
BAYER — The friendly little aspirin maker operating in the Berkeley flatlands is a migraine-in-the-making. First, there’s that 2003 lawsuit filed by hemophiliacs charging that the company knowingly sold potentially HIV-tainted blood-clotting products. Then, in early 2004, it reached a $782 million out-of-court settlement with 2,000-plus plaintiffs over its anti-cholesterol drug, Baycol. 100 people died from using it. When the company finally recalled Baycol, investors were tipped-off first, before doctors and public health officials.
STEVEDORING SERVICES OF AMERICA — Known affectionately to its union workers as “ASS backwards,” Seattle-based SSA, got a lucrative no-bid contract to operate the formerly state-run Iraqi deep-water port of Umm Qasr. And how did SSA become a beneficiary of Bush’s effort to privatize all things Iraqi? Hint: SSA’s lobbyist was a Shrub aide when he was governor of Texas. SSA has tried busting unions from New Orleans to Oakland and was reportedly the force behind the President’s invocation of the Taft-Hartley Act to lock-out the Oakland ILWU last year. It was at SSA’s behest that the Oakland Police went wild last year, shooting antiwar protesters and ILWU members with wooden dowels and rubber bullets.
Good Apples
CLIF BAR — Fortune Small Business magazine dubbed Clif Bar Inc. founder Gary Erickson one of the country’s “best bosses” and the Berkeley-based company has received the Millennium Award for Corporate Environmental Leadership from Mikhail Gorbachev’s Green Cross International and Global Green USA. It has reduced its ecological footprint by introducing improved low-impact packaging, high-quality organic ingredients, and “climate-neutral” renewable energy. In South Dakota, Clif Bar is also financing the construction of a 10MW wind-electricity project on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation
GIVE SOMETHING BACK — This Oakland-based office products company is out to “save the world, one paperclip at a time.” Founded 11 years ago, Give Something Back (GSB) has kicked back nearly $3 million to local health, cultural, educational, and environmental programs. GSB routinely donates more than half of its after-tax profits (more than 68 times the US corporate average). GSB has been voted one of America’s “10 most generous companies” and, in 2002 and 2003, was named one of the Bay Area’s Largest Corporate Philanthropists by the San Francisco Business Times.
— Tim Kingston, Communications Director, Global Exchange
REAL GOODS TRADING COMPANY — This alternative-power and green-lifestyle pioneer has won the Direct Marketing Association’s Robert Rodale Award as the country’s most environmental catalog company. Real Goods’ use of recycled paper for its catalogs and packaging saves 6,900 trees, 2.8 million gallons of water, and 1.7 kWh of electricity a year. On August 15, 1998, Real Goods marked its “Billion Pound CO2 Goal” by selling enough alternative energy products to prevent the production of one billion pounds of global warming carbon dioxide.
WORKING ASSETS — If Working Assets is your phone company, you’re talking the talk. This SF-based long-distance and wireless provider is known as the company that invented the phrase “socially responsible.” Since 1985, WA has donated $40 million to the likes of Greenpeace, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Planned Parenthood. For each buck you spend talking, Working Assets donates a penny. For each WA credit card purchase, a dime goes to progressive nonprofits. WA customers decide where the donations go, based on an annual vote. WA regularly alerts customers to critical political and environmental issues and provides free Citizen Action calls — more than 3 million a year. In April, WA won the Maggie Award for its support of women’s health issues.
POWERLIGHT CORP. — Berkeley-based PowerLight is the country’s leading designer, manufacturer and installer of grid-connected solar-electric systems. Inc magazine has ranked PowerLight among the top 500 fastest growing privately held companies in for the past four consecutive years. In March, PowerLight crowned the Moscone Center with a 675-kilowatt solar electric system and has partnered with Alameda County to install 1.11 MW of solar power.
— Gar Smith
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