Meet the 7 Corporations Doing the Most to Undermine Democracy Worldwide

Big Tech, Big Oil, and private equity firms are among the leading companies that profit from controlling media and technology, accelerating the climate crisis, privatizing public goods and services, and violating human and workers' rights, the International Trade Union Confederation revealed on Monday.

The ITUC has labeled seven major companies as "corporate underminers of democracy" that lobby against government attempts to hold them accountable and are headed by super-rich individuals who fund right-wing political movements and leaders.

"This is about power, who has it, and who sets the agenda," Todd Brogan, director of campaigns and organizing at the ITUC, toldThe Guardian. "We know as trade unionists that unless we're organized, the boss sets the agenda in the workplace, and we know as citizens in our countries that unless we're organized and demanding responsive governments that actually meet the needs of people, it's corporate power that's going to set the agenda."

The "corporate underminers of democracy" are:

1. Amazon.com, Inc.
2. Blackstone Group
3. ExxonMobil
4. Glencore
5. Meta
6. Tesla
7. The Vanguard Group

ITUC chose the seven companies based on preexisting reporting and research, as well as talks with allied groups like the Council of Global Unions and the Reactionary International Research Consortium. The seven companies were "emblematic" of a broader trend, and the confederation said it would continue to add "market-leading" companies to the list.

"While these seven corporations are among the most egregious underminers of democracy, they are hardly alone," ITUC said. "Whether state-owned enterprises in China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia; private sector military contractors; or regulation-busting tech startups, the ITUC and its partners will continue to identify and track corporate underminers of democracy and their links to the far-right."

Amazon topped the list due to its "union busting and low wages on multiple continents, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS data centers, corporate tax evasion, and lobbying at national and international level," ITUC wrote.

In the U.S., for example, Amazon has responded to attempts to hold it accountable for labor violations by challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. While its founder Jeff Bezos voices liberal opinions, Amazon's political donations have advanced the right by challenging women's rights and antitrust efforts.

"There is another force, one that is unelected and seeks to dominate global affairs."

Blackstone is the world's largest private equity firm and private real-estate owner whose CEO, Stephen Schwarzman, has given to right-wing politicians including former U.S. President Donald Trump's 2024 reelection campaign. It funds fossil fuel projects and the destruction of the Amazon and profited from speculating on the housing market after the 2008 financial crash.

The United Nations special papporteur on housing said the company used "its significant resources and political leverage to undermine domestic laws and policies that would in fact improve access to adequate housing."

ExxonMobil made the list largely for its history of funding climate denial and its ongoing lobbying against needed environmental regulations.

"Perhaps the greatest example of Exxon's disinterest in democratic deliberation was its corporate commitment of nearly four decades to conceal from the public its own internal evidence that climate change was real, accelerating, and driven by fossil fuel use while simultaneously financing far-right think tanks in the U.S. and Europe to inject climate scepticism and denialism into the public discourse," ITUC wrote.

Glencore is the world's largest commodities trader and the largest mining company when judged by revenue. Several civil society and Indigenous rights groups have launched campaigns against it over its anti-democratic policies. It has allegedly funded right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia and anti-protest vigilantes in Peru.

"The company's undermining of democracy is not in dispute, as it has in recent years pled guilty to committing bribery, corruption, and market manipulation in countries as varied as Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, and South Sudan," ITUC said.

As the world's largest social media company, Meta's platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have roughly as many users as everyone expected to vote in 2024 worldwide—almost 4 billion. Yet there are concerns about what its impact on those elections will be, as right-wing groups from the U.S. to Germany to India have used Facebook to recruit new members and target marginalized groups.

"Meta continues to aid right-wing political interests in weaponizing its algorithms to spread hate-filled propaganda around the world," ITUC wrote. "Increasingly, it has been engaged in dodging national regulation through the deployment of targeted lobbying campaigns."

Tesla made the list for its "belligerent" anti-union stance, as well as the vocal anti-worker and right-wing politics of its CEO, Elon Musk. Of Musk, ITUC observed:

As owner of the social networking platform X (formerly Twitter), he responded to one user's allegations about a coup in Bolivia–a country with lithium reserves considered highly valuable for electric vehicle manufacturers like Tesla–by saying, "We will coup whoever we want. Deal with it!" He has committed to donating $45 million per month to a political action committee to support the reelection campaign of Donald Trump, and sought to build close relationships with other far-right leaders, including Argentina's Javier Milei and India's Narendra Modi. Musk has also re-platformed and clearly expressed his support of white nationalist, antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQ+ accounts since taking ownership of X.

No. 7 on the list is The Vanguard Group, an institutional investor that funds many of the other companies on the list, including with billions in the stock held by workers' retirement plans.

"Effectively, Vanguard uses the deferred wages of workers to lend capital to the self-same companies complicit in undermining democracy at work and in societies globally," ITUC wrote.

ITUC is exposing these companies in part to advance its agenda for a "New Social Contract" that would ensure "a world where the economy serves humanity, rights are protected, and the planet is preserved for future generations."

It and other workers' organizations plan to push this agenda at international gatherings like the U.N. General Assembly and Summit of the Future in New York this week as well as the COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan in November. Yet part of advancing this agenda means raising awareness about the opposition.

"There is another force, one that is unelected and seeks to dominate global affairs. It pushes a competing vision for the world that maintains inequalities and impunity for bad-faith actors, finances far-right political operatives, and values private profit over public and planetary good," ITUC wrote. "That force is corporate power."

However, Brogan told The Guardian that labor groups, when organized across borders, could fight back.

"Now is the time for international and multi-sectoral strategies, because these are, in many cases, multinational corporations that are more powerful than states, and they have no democratic accountability whatsoever, except for workers organized," Brogan said.

To that end, ITUC is gathering signatures for a petition for a global treaty holding corporate power in check.

"For international institutions like the United Nations to reflect the democratic will of workers, they must be willing to hold these corporate underminers of democracy accountable," the petition reads. "That is why we are calling on you to support a robust binding international treaty on business and human rights, one that addresses the impact of transnational corporations on the human rights of millions of working people."