SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, is another member of the Business Roundtable. Just weeks after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, Whole Foods, an Amazon subsidiary, announced it would be cutting medical benefits for its entire part-time workforce. (Fight for 15)
The Biggest Business Con of 2019: Fleecing Workers While Bosses Get Rich
From Boeing to Whole Foods, companies are touting social responsibility as profits soar. Don’t believe a word of it.
Dec 28, 2019
Corporate social responsibility is the second-biggest con of 2019 (Donald Trump remains in first place).
Consider Boeing, whose board just fired its CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, in order "to restore confidence in the company moving forward as it works to repair relationships with regulators, customers, and all other stakeholders".
Restore confidence? Muilenburg's successor will be David Calhoun, who, as a longstanding member of Boeing's board of directors, allowed Muilenburg to remain CEO for more than a year after the first 737 Max crash and after internal studies found that the jetliner posed an unacceptable risk of accident. It caused the deaths of 346 people.
Muilenburg raked in $30m in 2018. He could walk away from Boeing with another $60m.
Boeing isn't the only large corporation with a confidence problem.
Until his ouster, Muilenburg was a director of the Business Roundtable, an association of 192 CEOs of America's largest corporations. With great fanfare last August, it announced a "fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders" (emphasis in the original) and not just their shareholders.
The Roundtable's commitment came in response to growing public distrust of big corporations, and proposals from several Democratic candidates to rein them in.
Another Business Roundtable director is Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. Just weeks after making the commitment, and despite GM's hefty profits and large tax breaks, Barra rejected workers' demands that GM raise their wages and stop outsourcing their jobs. Earlier in the year GM shut its giant assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio.
About 50,000 GM workers then staged the longest auto strike in 50 years. They won a few wage gains but didn't save any jobs. Meanwhile, GM's stock has performed so well that Barra earned $22m last year.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, is another member of the Business Roundtable. Just weeks after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, Whole Foods, an Amazon subsidiary, announced it would be cutting medical benefits for its entire part-time workforce.
The annual saving to Amazon from this cost-cutting move is roughly what Bezos - whose net worth is $110bn - makes in two hours. (Bezos's nearly completed DC mansion will have 2 elevators, 25 bathrooms, 11 bedrooms, and a movie theater.)
GE's CEO Larry Culp is also a member of the Business Roundtable. Two months after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, General Electric froze the pensions of 20,000 workers in order to cut costs. Culp raked in $15m last year.
Last week the Business Roundtable issued a widely advertised Christmas message. It asserted that the success of the American economy "depends on businesses investing in the economic security of their employees and the communities in which they operate".
Sure. Just in time for the holidays, US Steel announced 1,545 layoffs at two plants in Michigan. Last year, five US Steel executives received an average compensation package of $4.8m, a 53% increase over 2017.
Instead of a holiday bonus this year, Walmart offered its employees a 15% store discount. Oh, and did I say? Walmart saved $2.2bn this year from the Trump tax cut.
The tax cut itself was a product of the Roundtable's extensive lobbying, lubricated by its generous campaign donations. Several of its member corporations, including Amazon and General Motors, wound up paying no federal income taxes at all last year.
Not incidentally, the tax cut will result in less federal money for services on which Americans and their communities rely.
The truth is, American corporations are sacrificing workers and communities as never before, in order to further boost record profits and unprecedented CEO pay.
Americans know this. In the most recent Pew survey, a record 73% of US adults (including 62% of Republicans, and 71% of Republicans earning less than $30,000 a year) said they believed major corporations had too much power. And 65% believed they made too much profit.
The only way to make corporations socially responsible is through laws requiring them to be - for example, giving workers a bigger voice in corporate decision-making, making corporations pay severance to communities they abandon, raising corporate taxes, busting up monopolies, and preventing dangerous products (including faulty airplanes) from ever seeing the light of day.
If the Business Roundtable and other corporations were truly socially responsible, they'd support such laws. Don't hold your breath.
The only way to get such laws enacted is by reducing corporate power and getting big money out of politics.
The first step is to see corporate social responsibility for the con it is.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Robert Reich
Robert Reich is professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former US secretary of labor. His latest book is the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Coming Up Short."
Corporate social responsibility is the second-biggest con of 2019 (Donald Trump remains in first place).
Consider Boeing, whose board just fired its CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, in order "to restore confidence in the company moving forward as it works to repair relationships with regulators, customers, and all other stakeholders".
Restore confidence? Muilenburg's successor will be David Calhoun, who, as a longstanding member of Boeing's board of directors, allowed Muilenburg to remain CEO for more than a year after the first 737 Max crash and after internal studies found that the jetliner posed an unacceptable risk of accident. It caused the deaths of 346 people.
Muilenburg raked in $30m in 2018. He could walk away from Boeing with another $60m.
Boeing isn't the only large corporation with a confidence problem.
Until his ouster, Muilenburg was a director of the Business Roundtable, an association of 192 CEOs of America's largest corporations. With great fanfare last August, it announced a "fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders" (emphasis in the original) and not just their shareholders.
The Roundtable's commitment came in response to growing public distrust of big corporations, and proposals from several Democratic candidates to rein them in.
Another Business Roundtable director is Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. Just weeks after making the commitment, and despite GM's hefty profits and large tax breaks, Barra rejected workers' demands that GM raise their wages and stop outsourcing their jobs. Earlier in the year GM shut its giant assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio.
About 50,000 GM workers then staged the longest auto strike in 50 years. They won a few wage gains but didn't save any jobs. Meanwhile, GM's stock has performed so well that Barra earned $22m last year.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, is another member of the Business Roundtable. Just weeks after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, Whole Foods, an Amazon subsidiary, announced it would be cutting medical benefits for its entire part-time workforce.
The annual saving to Amazon from this cost-cutting move is roughly what Bezos - whose net worth is $110bn - makes in two hours. (Bezos's nearly completed DC mansion will have 2 elevators, 25 bathrooms, 11 bedrooms, and a movie theater.)
GE's CEO Larry Culp is also a member of the Business Roundtable. Two months after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, General Electric froze the pensions of 20,000 workers in order to cut costs. Culp raked in $15m last year.
Last week the Business Roundtable issued a widely advertised Christmas message. It asserted that the success of the American economy "depends on businesses investing in the economic security of their employees and the communities in which they operate".
Sure. Just in time for the holidays, US Steel announced 1,545 layoffs at two plants in Michigan. Last year, five US Steel executives received an average compensation package of $4.8m, a 53% increase over 2017.
Instead of a holiday bonus this year, Walmart offered its employees a 15% store discount. Oh, and did I say? Walmart saved $2.2bn this year from the Trump tax cut.
The tax cut itself was a product of the Roundtable's extensive lobbying, lubricated by its generous campaign donations. Several of its member corporations, including Amazon and General Motors, wound up paying no federal income taxes at all last year.
Not incidentally, the tax cut will result in less federal money for services on which Americans and their communities rely.
The truth is, American corporations are sacrificing workers and communities as never before, in order to further boost record profits and unprecedented CEO pay.
Americans know this. In the most recent Pew survey, a record 73% of US adults (including 62% of Republicans, and 71% of Republicans earning less than $30,000 a year) said they believed major corporations had too much power. And 65% believed they made too much profit.
The only way to make corporations socially responsible is through laws requiring them to be - for example, giving workers a bigger voice in corporate decision-making, making corporations pay severance to communities they abandon, raising corporate taxes, busting up monopolies, and preventing dangerous products (including faulty airplanes) from ever seeing the light of day.
If the Business Roundtable and other corporations were truly socially responsible, they'd support such laws. Don't hold your breath.
The only way to get such laws enacted is by reducing corporate power and getting big money out of politics.
The first step is to see corporate social responsibility for the con it is.
Robert Reich
Robert Reich is professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former US secretary of labor. His latest book is the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Coming Up Short."
Corporate social responsibility is the second-biggest con of 2019 (Donald Trump remains in first place).
Consider Boeing, whose board just fired its CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, in order "to restore confidence in the company moving forward as it works to repair relationships with regulators, customers, and all other stakeholders".
Restore confidence? Muilenburg's successor will be David Calhoun, who, as a longstanding member of Boeing's board of directors, allowed Muilenburg to remain CEO for more than a year after the first 737 Max crash and after internal studies found that the jetliner posed an unacceptable risk of accident. It caused the deaths of 346 people.
Muilenburg raked in $30m in 2018. He could walk away from Boeing with another $60m.
Boeing isn't the only large corporation with a confidence problem.
Until his ouster, Muilenburg was a director of the Business Roundtable, an association of 192 CEOs of America's largest corporations. With great fanfare last August, it announced a "fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders" (emphasis in the original) and not just their shareholders.
The Roundtable's commitment came in response to growing public distrust of big corporations, and proposals from several Democratic candidates to rein them in.
Another Business Roundtable director is Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. Just weeks after making the commitment, and despite GM's hefty profits and large tax breaks, Barra rejected workers' demands that GM raise their wages and stop outsourcing their jobs. Earlier in the year GM shut its giant assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio.
About 50,000 GM workers then staged the longest auto strike in 50 years. They won a few wage gains but didn't save any jobs. Meanwhile, GM's stock has performed so well that Barra earned $22m last year.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, is another member of the Business Roundtable. Just weeks after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, Whole Foods, an Amazon subsidiary, announced it would be cutting medical benefits for its entire part-time workforce.
The annual saving to Amazon from this cost-cutting move is roughly what Bezos - whose net worth is $110bn - makes in two hours. (Bezos's nearly completed DC mansion will have 2 elevators, 25 bathrooms, 11 bedrooms, and a movie theater.)
GE's CEO Larry Culp is also a member of the Business Roundtable. Two months after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, General Electric froze the pensions of 20,000 workers in order to cut costs. Culp raked in $15m last year.
Last week the Business Roundtable issued a widely advertised Christmas message. It asserted that the success of the American economy "depends on businesses investing in the economic security of their employees and the communities in which they operate".
Sure. Just in time for the holidays, US Steel announced 1,545 layoffs at two plants in Michigan. Last year, five US Steel executives received an average compensation package of $4.8m, a 53% increase over 2017.
Instead of a holiday bonus this year, Walmart offered its employees a 15% store discount. Oh, and did I say? Walmart saved $2.2bn this year from the Trump tax cut.
The tax cut itself was a product of the Roundtable's extensive lobbying, lubricated by its generous campaign donations. Several of its member corporations, including Amazon and General Motors, wound up paying no federal income taxes at all last year.
Not incidentally, the tax cut will result in less federal money for services on which Americans and their communities rely.
The truth is, American corporations are sacrificing workers and communities as never before, in order to further boost record profits and unprecedented CEO pay.
Americans know this. In the most recent Pew survey, a record 73% of US adults (including 62% of Republicans, and 71% of Republicans earning less than $30,000 a year) said they believed major corporations had too much power. And 65% believed they made too much profit.
The only way to make corporations socially responsible is through laws requiring them to be - for example, giving workers a bigger voice in corporate decision-making, making corporations pay severance to communities they abandon, raising corporate taxes, busting up monopolies, and preventing dangerous products (including faulty airplanes) from ever seeing the light of day.
If the Business Roundtable and other corporations were truly socially responsible, they'd support such laws. Don't hold your breath.
The only way to get such laws enacted is by reducing corporate power and getting big money out of politics.
The first step is to see corporate social responsibility for the con it is.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.