-Caveat Lector-
----Original Message Follows----
Today's New York Times Editorial
December 6, 1998
Corporations and Conscience
Americans are understandably ambivalent about the foreign entanglements
of American business. Overseas operations can
produce profits and support some jobs at home, but they can also help
sustain abusive dictatorships and labor practices. In recent years
companies like Nike and Unocal have embarrassed themselves with
questionable overseas partnerships, but the problem extends far back in
American industrial history.
The issue was highlighted last week in a Washington Post story on
General Motors and Ford operations in Nazi Germany. The Post reported
that after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, the
chairman of G.M., Alfred P. Sloan, told a shareholder that the internal
politics of Nazi Germany "should not be considered the business of the
management of General Motors." The company plant in Germany was highly
profitable. "We have no right to shut down the plant," Mr. Sloan wrote.
General Motors and Ford deny that they helped the Nazis or significantly
benefited from forced labor.
The Post article said American Ford and G.M. executives accepted medals
from Hitler. A G.M. executive met with Hitler and
participated in converting the German G.M. plant to military production
in 1939 and 1940.
The German Ford and G.M. plants were the largest producers of trucks for
the German Army, according to American Army reports.
A 1945 Army report says American Ford helped Hitler acquire crucial
strategic materials.
Ford has found documents showing it profited slightly from its German
plant during years when the plant used forced labor.
Ford and G.M. should give a thorough account of their actions in
Germany, and pay appropriate compensation.
But they were not the only American businesses to profit during the
Third Reich.
The world has no contemporary equivalent of Hitler. But for the past
decade, American companies have cozied up to the junta in Myanmar,
Afghanistan's Taliban, Central Asia's dictators, African kleptocrats and
Colombia's military.
American corporations argue that they can be a positive force in
repressive countries. This can be true. They often pay better than local
companies, and bad publicity has spurred some corporations to sponsor
health clinics and other good works. But these benefits are outweighed
by the political support companies lend to bad regimes. Few ever
criticize their hosts' policies. Governments take their presence as an
American endorsement.
It is unrealistic to expect that corporations will refrain from trade or
investment with bad governments.
But they should hold themselves to some guidelines.
Their own practices should not be abusive, even if local laws allow it.
This means giving workers wages they can live on and good working
conditions.
They also should not collaborate with government repression.
Apparel manufacturers in China and elsewhere have fired workers trying
to organize unions.
Unocal, which is a partner with Myanmar's Government in a gas pipeline
project, is being sued in American courts for alleged use of forced
labor and forced expulsion of villagers. Last week, Unocal did end its
efforts to work with the Taliban on a pipeline through Afghanistan,
primarily because oil prices are low.
The entanglements of oil, gas, mining and other natural resource
companies with dictatorships are complex, as the businesses
sometimes find themselves keeping repressive governments afloat.
The activities of Shell, a British-Dutch company, in Nigeria brought in
nearly half the nation's hard currency.
Companies should use their tremendous power responsibly. Shell's image
is still tainted by its failure to speak out strongly to prevent
Nigeria's 1995 execution of nine environmental activists. Some
regimes are so heinous that simply to continue making profits under them
is reprehensible.
Nazi Germany was surely one.
Corporate officials are not only businessmen, they are
citizens of the world.
--
Ann Leonard
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