CorpWatch Exclusives
 | Boeing Helps Kill Proposed Law to Regulate Drones by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog March 30th, 2013 Boeing, the aircraft manufacturing giant from Seattle, helped defeat a Republican proposal in Washington state that would have forced government agencies to get approval to buy unmanned aerial vehicles, popularly known as drones, and to obtain a warrant before using them to conduct surveillance on individuals. |
 | South African Gold Miners Sue Over Deadly Lung Disease by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog January 3rd, 2013 Thousands of gold miners have asked permission from South African courts to sue some 30 mining companies over negligence in health and safety that the miners allege has caused them to contract silicosis, a debilitating and potentially fatal lung disease. |
 | H&M Targeted for Uzbek Cotton Allegedly Grown with Forced Labor by Puck Lo, CorpWatch Blog December 27th, 2012 Swedish company H&M, the world’s second-largest clothing retailer, is under pressure to cut ties with supplier South Korea-based Daewoo International and others that purchase cotton from Uzbekistan, where the government allegedly forces children and adults to harvest the white fiber for little or no pay. |
 | Bolivia pushes back against Swiss commodities giant Glencore by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, CorpWatch Blog July 24th, 2012 Glencore corporation, the secretive Swiss commodities giant which has become one of the world's biggest trader of grain, oil and minerals, has hit an unlikely roadblock. The Bolivian government nationalized the Colquiri tin and zinc mine, the third Glencore asset to be seized by the state in five years. |
 | Sweatships at Sea: Carnival Cruises Pay Below International Standards by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog May 1st, 2012 Carnival Cruise staff on UK ships are paid $1.20 an hour or $400 a month in basic wages, according to the Guardian newspaper. These workers lose their tips, ie roughly 15 percent of wages, unless they get at least a 92 percent favorable rating from customers. |
 | Global Horizons Indicted for Human Trafficking by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch September 15th, 2010 Mordechai Orian, president of Global Horizons, a Los Angeles-based labor recruiter, was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for "engaging in a conspiracy to commit forced labor and document servitude" of some 400 Thai citizens who were brought to work on farms in the U.S. |
 | BP: Beyond Petroleum or Beyond Preposterous? (2000) by Kenny Bruno May 12th, 2010 In 2000 British Petroleum launched an expensive ad campaign, re-branding its corporate image into the eco-friendly "BP: Beyond Petroleum.” We said it then. When a company spends more on advertising its environmental friendliness than on environmental actions, that's greenwash. Three long weeks into the BP oil disaster roiling the Gulf of Mexico, CorpWatch's December 2000 skewering of its new image sadly, bears repeating. |
 | Mission Essential, Translators Expendable by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch August 11th, 2009 Ohio-based Mission Essential Personnel supplies over 2,000 translators to the Pentagon in Afghanistan, who play a critical role in protecting local and military lives. These interpreters are a key communications link. But if they are wounded or killed, they are often left to fend for themselves. This special features video of CorpWatch interviews with three Afghan whistleblowers, recorded in country in April. Click through to hear their story. |
 | Regulating Ramatex: Authorities Shut Out as Malaysian Investor Threatens Namibian Environment by Moses Magadza, Special to CorpWatch April 5th, 2009 For nearly six years Ramatex Textile and Garment Factory barred government regulators from entering industrial premises leased from the City of Windhoek. Ramatex came to Namibia in 2001, lured by the newly implemented African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Evidence of environmental violations finally emerged after the company absconded. |
 | Inheriting Halliburton's Army: What Will Obama Do With KBR? by Pratap Chatterjee, TomDispatch.com February 22nd, 2009 President Obama will almost certainly touch down in Baghdad and Kabul in Air Force One sometime in the coming year to meet his counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he will just as certainly pay a visit to a U.S. military base or two. Should he stay to eat with the troops, he will no less certainly choose from a menu prepared by migrant Asian workers under contract to Houston-based KBR, the former subsidiary of Halliburton. |
 | Norilsk Nickel: A Tale of Unbridled Capitalism, Russian Style by Anton Foek, Special to CorpWatch October 9th, 2008 The launch of Russia’s stock markets in the early 90s and privatization of state assets has profoundly impacted Russian society. As the case of mining giant Norilsk Nickel illustrates, this experiment has given rise to both immense personal wealth for a new elite, and economic uncertainty for the ordinary citizen. |
 | Toyota: Auto Industry Race to the Bottom by Barbara Briggs, Special to CorpWatch September 16th, 2008 Globally, Toyota is known for its innovation and quality of products like the Prius hybrid. A closer look at operations in Japan, the Philippines, Myanmar and the U.S. reveals a story of extreme working conditions, union-busting and other corporate abuses. In Japan and elsewhere, workers are speaking out. |
 | A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo by Michael Deibert, Special to CorpWatch June 26th, 2008 In the DRC, a nation rich in natural resources yet confounded by civil war and endemic poverty, artisanal mining communities are struggling for their livelihoods as foreign multinationals like AngloGold Ashanti rush to cash in. |
 | Playing with Children's Lives: Big Tobacco in Malawi by Pilirani Semu-Banda, Special to CorpWatch February 25th, 2008 Cigarettes may be damaging not only your own health, but also that of some of the world's poorest children. Much of Malawi's thriving tobacco industry rests on the backs of exploited children, some as young as five years old. |
 | Barrick's Dirty Secrets: Communities Respond to Gold Mining's Impacts Worldwide May 1st, 2007 A new CorpWatch report details the operations of Barrick Gold in nine different countries, focusing on the efforts on the part of the communities to seek justice from this powerful multinational. Download Spanish version of report |
| US: Swift sued over hiring
by Christine Tatum, Denver Post December 12th, 2006 Eighteen former Swift & Co. employees who worked at the meatpacker's Cactus, Texas, plant have filed a $23 million lawsuit alleging that Swift hired illegal workers to depress employee wages. |
 | Guest Workers Seek Global Horizons: U.S. Company Profits From Migrant Labor by Kari Lydersen, Special to CorpWatch November 3rd, 2006 Global Horizons is one of the biggest companies in the business of importing temporary foreign workers to do jobs in the U.S. ranging from agriculture to nursing. Their workers endure similar working conditions to undocumented workers, prompting government investigations. Global Horizon Responds |
 | A U.S. Fortress Rises in Baghdad:
Asian Workers Trafficked to Build World's Largest Embassy
by David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch October 17th, 2006 Workers accuse the Kuwait contractor building the US embassy in Baghdad of smuggling low-paid South Asians into Iraq and labor trafficking. Still, the US State Department casts a blind eye on the complaints as it rushes to complete its most ambitious project ever. |
 | Iraq After Halliburton by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch July 12th, 2006 The controversial multibillion-dollar deal with oil services giant Halliburton to provide logistical support to U.S. troops in Iraq has been canceled. What should happen next? Read our three alternative annual reports on Halliburton, to learn the real legacy of the company's incompetence and corruption. Listen to an interview with CorpWatch's director, Pratap Chatterjee. |
 | A Proxy Battle: Shareholders vs. CEOs by Kevin Kelleher, Special to CorpWatch June 13th, 2006 Earnest shareholder resolutions presented at company annual general meetings on everything from human rights to executive compensation are routinely shot down in flames. But shareholder resolutions may have an effect, even in defeat. |
 | Target: Wal-Mart Lite by Kari Lydersen, Special to CorpWatch April 20th, 2006 Shopping in a Target store, you know you’re not in Wal-Mart. But, critics say that in terms of working conditions, sweatshop-style foreign suppliers, and effects on local retail communities, big box Target stores are very much like Wal-Mart, just in a prettier package. |
 | Happy Meals, Unhappy Workers by Aaron Glantz and Ngoc Nguyen, Special to CorpWatch March 6th, 2006 Vietnamese workers earn less than $2 a day making stuffed animals and Happy Meal toys for U.S. consumers. An ongoing series of wildcat strikes this winter has forced the government to raise wages to prevent factories from moving to other countries. Listen to an interview about this article with Aaron Glantz on CorpWatch Radio. |
 | Baghdad Embassy Bonanza by David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch February 12th, 2006 A controversial Kuwait-based construction firm accused of exploiting employees and coercing low-paid laborers to work in war-torn Iraq against their will is now building the new $592-million U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Listen to an interview with David Phinney about this article on CorpWatch Radio. |
 | Vedanta Undermines Indian Communities by Nityanand Jayaraman, Special to Corpwatch November 15th, 2005 Vedanta, a fast growing British mining and aluminium production company founded by a billionaire expatriate Bombay businessman, threatens communities in India with environmental degradation and widespread pollution. |
 | The Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline: BP’s Time Bomb by Hannah Ellis, Special to CorpWatch June 2nd, 2005 With their newly opened pipeline, British Petroleum (BP) is cutting a path of environmental and social irresponsibility from the Caspian to the Mediterranean. |
 | 'Tis the Season for Shareholder Activism by Jan Frel, Special to CorpWatch May 4th, 2005 Every spring, activists and investors attend annual general meetings to protest and meet face-to-face with CEOs and corporate boards. The goal is to place their agendas -- on everything from the environment to labor practices -- front and center. |
 | Meat Packer's Union on the Chopping Block by Sasha Lilley, Special to CorpWatch April 18th, 2005 Today's meat packing industry relies increasingly on high-speed, treacherous disassembly lines. Perhaps that's why Tyson Foods, Inc. -- a giant in a flourishing industry -- is working to take apart a union that prioritizes safety over speed. |
 | Egyptian Asbestos Workers Dying of Cancer by Aaron Glantz, Special to CorpWatch January 13th, 2005 Workers at Aura-Misr, a Spanish-Egyptian asbestos company in Cairo, have been laid off since Christmas, after a ban on asbestos took effect in the country. Many of the fired workers have been diagnosed with cancer and they worry that other workers may soon fall ill and die also. |
 | Sweating for the Olympics by Sasha Lilley, Special to CorpWatch August 11th, 2004 Behind the five intertwined rings of the Athens games, underpaid workers are sewing the shirts, gluing the shoes, and putting zippers to running suits and track apparel branded as Olympic--in working conditions that would make even the most highly trained athlete sweat. |
 | Sweet and Sour by Jim Lobe, Special to CorpWatch June 23rd, 2004 A new report from Human Rights Watch reveals that American corporations such as Coca-Cola may be getting sugar from plantations in El Salvador that employ child labor. |
 | Poison and Profits by Chris Thompson, East Bay Express April 7th, 2004 First California semiconductor firm AXT, Inc. exposed its workers to arsenic. Then it fired them and sent their jobs to China. |
 | The Smell of Money: British Columbia's Gas Rush by Shefa Siegel, Special to CorpWatch March 13th, 2004 In Canada's British Columbia, ExxonMobil, Talisman, Shell, and other energy giants are racing to tap the region's "sour gas". But the potential toxicity of the gas is being ignored. |
 | Money for Nothing and Calls for Free by Nidhi Kumar and Nidhi Verghese, Special to CorpWatch February 17th, 2004 As the outsourcing of jobs has become a hot election year issue in the US, call centers in India continue to multiply. Local workers answer calls for US corporations at a fraction of the cost of an American worker. |
 | Operation Sweatshop Iraq by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch February 12th, 2004 Halliburton is hiring temps to work in Iraq: $100 a month for locals, $300 for Indians and $8,000 for Texans. Meanwhile taxpayers are getting charged top dollar, prompting investigations from the United States military. |
 | Jordan's Sweatshops: The Carrot or the Stick of US Policy? by Aaron Glantz, Special to CorpWatch February 26th, 2003 While the world braces for a US war against Iraq, Washington is using its newly inked Free Trade Agreement with Jordan to open sweatshops and secure an ally in the region. |
 | Sweat-Free School Purchasing Resolutions: A New Trend? by Ben Plimpton, Special to CorpWatch February 6th, 2003 School Districts and city governments are promising to purchase "sweat-free" uniforms and sports equipment. Organizers say the grassroots initiatives are a cutting edge in the fight against sweatshops. |
 | West Coast Dockworkers: Victory in the Face of the Bush Doctrine by David Bacon, Special to Corpwatch January 2nd, 2003 West Coast Dockers negotiate a contract despite federal intervention on the side of business. But the Bush administration has fired a warning shot at labor. |
| The Prison Industry: Capitalist Punishment by Julie Light, CorpWatch October 28th, 1999 The CMT Blues scandal and the host of human rights and labor issues it raises, is just the tip of the iceberg in a web of interconnected business, government and class interests which critics dub the ''prison industrial complex.'' |
| La Linea: Gender, Labor and Environmental Justice on the US-Mexico Border by Julie Light, Special to CorpWatch June 30th, 1999 TECATE, Mexico -- Tecate's coat of arms dubs this Mexican town ''Baja California's Industrial Paradise.'' About 30 miles from Tijuana, the city is home to the Tecate brewery and also houses an industrial park filled with assembly plants, or maquiladoras. This ''industrial paradise'' is one of several Mexican border boomtowns that is part of a global production system. |
| Engendering Change by Julie Light, Special to CorpWatch June 26th, 1999 For women working in Mexican assembly plants, known as maquiladoras, insisting on their legal rights takes what are colloquially referred to as cojones. It indicates that Mexico's low wage feminine labor force may not be as docile as foreign employers would like to believe. It also is a harbinger of an incipient movement inside Mexico's expanding export-processing sector. |
| Tijuana Police Defy Court Protection of Maquiladora Strike by David Bacon, Special to CorpWatch May 16th, 1999 TIJUANA -- For two weeks, Tijuana has teetered on the brink of official lawlessness, as city and state police continue to defy Baja California's legal system. Raul Ramirez, member of the Baja California Academy of Human Rights, warned last week that ''the state is in danger of violating the Constitution and the Federal Labor Law... as it succumbs to the temptation to use force.'' |
| MEXICO: Standing up for Health Rights on the Job Special to CorpWatch May 1st, 1999 First hand accounts of two workers who sued a San Diego-based medical manufacturer after a workplace accident. |
| MEXICO: University Professors Photos Draw the Wrath of Border Industrialists by Julie Light, Special to CorpWatch April 29th, 1999 It wasn't just the politically provocative photographs that got Fred Lonidier's exhibit at Tijuana's public university taken down. It was the fact that he had the audacity to leaflet maquiladora workers outside the factory gates and invite them to the gallery that got his show yanked. |
| MEXICO: Miners' Strike Broken in Revolutionary Cananea by David Bacon, Special to CorpWatch March 12th, 1999 In the mile-high mountains of the Sonora desert, just 25 miles south of the border between Arizona and Mexico, over two thousand miners have been locked in a bitter industrial war since mid-November. Here Grupo Mexico operates North America's oldest, and one of the world's largest copper mines -- Cananea -- in a town which has been a symbol of anti-government insurrection for almost 100 years. |
| US: Oregon's Prison Slaveocracy by Dan Pens, Prison Legal News May 1st, 1998 When "get tough" voter measures requiring inmates to work for free, undermined the Oregon State Constitution, lawmakers simply amended it. Prison Legal News co-editor and inmate Pens looks at the impacts on prisoner and labor rights. |
| VIETNAM: Smoke From a Hired Gun by Dara O'Rourke, Transnational Resource and Action Center (TRAC) November 10th, 1997 TRAC is pleased to be able to shed some light on this subject by releasing the first audit of this kind ever to be made public: a confidential Ernst and Young assessment of the Tae Kwang Vina plant, a factory which employs 9,200 workers who produce 400,000 pairs of shoes a month exclusively for Nike in Vietnam. |
| CorpWatch Interviews Lora Jo Foo CorpWatch September 22nd, 1997 Here is an interview with Laura Jo Foo of the Asian Law Caucus and President of Sweatshop Watch on the issue of a Living Wage. |
| Clinton's New ''No Sweatshop'' Agreement by Tim Connor, Community Aid Abroad September 22nd, 1997 In April this year, with much fanfare, US President Bill Clinton announced the introduction of a new ''No Sweatshop'' Code of Conduct for US Apparel and Footwear companies. The code is voluntary, but high profile companies like Nike Inc., Reebok International Ltd. and Liz Claiborne Inc. were among the ten initial signatories. These companies agreed that a set of minimum standards for working conditions in factories would be adhered to in the production of their goods -- wherever that production occurs. |
| Profiting from Punishment by Paul Wright, Prison Labor News March 1st, 1997 The co-editor of Prison Legal News, a Washington State prisoner himself, Wright reports on private companies, like Boeing, that are making out like bandits by using prison labor. |
| Organizing the High Tech Industry CorpWatch February 10th, 1997 CorpWatch interviews John Barton, Organizing Coordinator, Building Service Division, of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and links up with other groups organizing for worker health and safety. |