Dirt Diggers Digest

Conservatives Discover the Wisdom of Workers

vw-westmoreland The United Auto Workers defeat in the Volkswagen representation election has conservatives gloating, even though their victory came only after they abandoned many of their core principles in favor of political expediency. Elected officials who typically denounce government interference in the market used their pulpits to meddle in a private business matter. Editorialists at the Wall Street Journal, who normally sing the praises of large corporations, declared that the vote showed that “workers are smarter than management.”

Such bogus industrial populism is easy to bandy about when the workers in question were pressured into voting against their own best interests. Typically, it is management and anti-union consultants who are responsible for defeating an organizing drive. In Tennessee, the company remained neutral and the intimidation campaign was carried out by politicians and out-of-state conservative ideologues. Leading the assault was U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, who brazenly promoted the apparent lie that a vote for the union would mean that a new VW assembly line for SUVs would be sited in Mexico instead of Chattanooga.

The Journal admitted that Corker may have been “impolitic” but it defended his “right to free speech.” State politicians also did damage, raising the prospect that VW, which got a $554 million subsidy package when it opened the plant, should not expect future financial assistance if the workers dared to choose the union.

The enthusiasm for the wisdom of the rank and file on the part of the Journal stands in stark contrast to its reaction when workers at VW’s original U.S. plant in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania asserted themselves. Frustrated at the low pay rates they were receiving in comparison to their counterparts at the Big Three plants in Detroit, the unionized VW workers staged a wildcat strike in 1978. Stopping production of VW’s Rabbit, the workers rallied under the slogan “No Money, No Bunny.”

A front-page story in the Journal about the strike (10/13/1978) included the following subheadline: “Pennsylvania Walkout Stirs Doubts on Cost, Stability of American Work Force.” The article quoted a Nissan official as saying: “The Volkswagen strike is quite upsetting to us.”

It was also quite upsetting to VW. Even after the walkout ended, labor-management relations remained hostile at the plant. VW, which was also confronted with a lawsuit charging that it discriminated against black employees, shut down the operation in 1988.

It is likely that VW managers had that experience in mind when they decided not to fight the UAW. Southern U.S. conservatives, like other pro-business types, push the notion that American workers need to accept the realities of a globalized market. What those conservatives refuse to recognize is that one of those realities, at least as far as VW is concerned, is an acceptance of unions and a cooperative approach to labor relations through works councils of the kind that the company wants to adopt in Tennessee. In fact, VW, like other German companies, has a supervisory board with labor representatives.

The latest irony in this situation is that Bernd Osterloh, a labor member of VW’s supervisory board and the head of its works council in Germany, reacted to the election results in Tennessee by saying he might block any future investments by VW in the Southern United States because of the hostility to unions. That would demolish the pernicious conventional wisdom that disempowered workers are always an essential ingredient for economic growth.

Osterloh’s statement helps to bring into focus the truth about the progressive deunionization of U.S. business. Rather than being part of an alignment with the realities of globalization, it is making the United States more of an outlier compared to other wealthy nations. Like this country’s refusal to accept the kind of single payer health insurance that is the norm in the developed world, the ongoing attack on unions puts us out of step with the way a modern economy is supposed to operate and reinforces the dangerous growth of economic inequality.

Healthcare Redlining

Protest-against-insurance-companies-in-Washington_3951547284_m-250x176 Media coverage of the Affordable Care Act these days bounces back and forth between good news and bad. One day the Obama Administration signals that there are more problems with the employer mandate and once again changes the rules. Two days later, federal officials are bragging that ACA enrollment is booming and that even the Young Invincibles are signing up.

Yet perhaps the most significant recent development is the analysis just published by the Wall Street Journal on the limited range of plan options in the ACA exchanges. The newspaper found that in 515 counties across 15 states there is only one insurer selling coverage through the online marketplaces. In more than 80 percent of those counties, the sole insurer is a local Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan.

For the residents of those counties who seek coverage through the exchanges, the ACA is forcing them to do business with a de facto monopoly that can get away with charging inflated premiums. The Journal cites the example of rural, low-income Hardee County in Florida, where comparable exchange-based coverage can cost $200 a month more than in nearby Tampa.

The ACA is premised on the idea that competition would bring down costs and provide better coverage. The Administration and most Congressional Democrats bought into that notion so deeply that they were willing to exclude a public option as unnecessary. That decision looks increasingly bone-headed.

It is true that those who qualify for federal subsidies may be shielded from the cost differentials, but a substantial portion of the uninsured earn too much to qualify for that assistance but are still far from affluent.

A big part of the problem is that major for-profit insurers such as Aetna and UnitedHealth Group have been participating in the exchanges on a very selective basis. The Journal noted that Aetna, for instance, has “targeted areas with stable levels of employment and income to attract desirable customers to its marketplace offerings.”

This is, to put it mildly, infuriating. The ACA was supposed to put a stop to the tendency of Aetna and the other insurance giants to decline coverage to certain categories of people, usually because of pre-existing medical conditions. Now the insurers were supposed to take on all comers, with the federal government functioning in essence as their marketing arm.

It turns out that the national insurers had found another way of cherry-picking. They are simply choosing not to participate in the ACA market in less affluent parts of the country, where they apparently assume that residents are going to have too many medical needs. In a presentation to investors, Aetna admitted that it was participating in exchanges in fewer than one-third of the states.

The decision to limit the scope of their involvement does not result from any financial distress on the part of the major players. In recent weeks Aetna, Humana and Wellpoint have all reported healthy gains in profits for 2013. The big boys are also getting bigger. Aetna swallowed competitor Coventry Health Care, which added $14 billion to its annual revenue stream.

For those of us who advocated a single payer approach, or at least a public option, the behavior of the insurance companies comes as no surprise. These companies have always found ways to increase profits at the expense of coverage, and they always will. Now that they cannot discriminate explicitly against those in poor health, they will discriminate against communities in which think there is likely to be larger numbers of less healthy residents. It is an insidious new form of redlining.

It is disappointing that the Obama Administration, which is going to such great lengths to help businesses adjust to the ACA, seems to have little inclination to help individuals contend with the substandard offerings in some of the exchanges. For them the Affordable Care Act may be far from affordable.

Worker Freedom in Tennessee

vw_uaw2 Major employers facing a union organizing drive, particularly in the South, have long relied on small-business owners, elected officials and other conservative voices to mount a counter-attack.

An interesting variation on this theme is taking place in Tennessee, where Volkswagen seems to be welcoming a United Auto Workers organizing effort at its plant in Chattanooga, yet local as well as national anti-union ideologues are on the warpath nonetheless. They are frantically trying to persuade VW workers to reject the union in a secret-ballot vote scheduled later this month. The company reportedly decided not to simply recognize the UAW, which has gotten a majority of the workers to sign membership cards, because of intense pressure from figures such as Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, who gained notoriety for opposing the federal rescue of the auto industry.

(Full disclosure: I am a member of the United Auto Workers via the National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981.)

VW has rejected the usual practice of foreign automakers, which despite any cooperative relationships with unions at home, have embraced American-style anti-union animus in their U.S. transplants. For many years, the UAW has sought to overcome this intransigence, as seen most recently in the ongoing effort to organize the Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi.

VW wants to import the works council system of labor-management relations it has in Germany, but in the absence of a certified collective bargaining representative, that would amount to an illegal company-dominated union under U.S. labor law.

We thus end up with a situation in which a major corporation wanting to employ a set of practices designed to improve productivity and reduce turnover is being vilified by those who regard union avoidance as one of the grand traditions of the South.

Last month, Stephen Moore, who was recently named chief economist of the Heritage Foundation, told a business meeting in Chattanooga that the union effort at VW is “like inserting a cancer cell into a body. That one cancer cell is going to multiply and kill the body.” Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist is helping to bankroll the opposition, apparently out of a concern that a union advance in Tennessee would impede his fiscal agenda. The National Right to Work Foundation and the Center for Worker Freedom are also involved, though their efforts fell flat when the National Labor Relations Board concluded that neither the UAW nor VW had violated labor law in any way.

Figures such as Moore and Norquist came into prominence as a result of a conservative backlash that big business set into motion three decades ago in response to advances of the labor, environmental and consumer movements. That Frankenstein monster took on a life of its own, and now rightwing groups pursue purist goals even when they conflict with corporate pragmatism — as seen, for example in the tea party push for a government shutdown over the objection of major companies.

These groups operate on the assumption that Americans are inherently conservative and that organizations such as the UAW will lead them astray. Foreign automakers such as Nissan and Toyota have gone along with this notion.

VW seems to have a different view, but for reasons that are generally not acknowledged. It tends to be forgotten that VW was the first foreign automaker to establish an assembly plant in the United States, back in 1978 in Pennsylvania.

After being welcomed by public officials with a subsidy package worth about $100 million — an astounding sum at the time — Volkswagen found that many of the people it hired were unhappy about being paid less than their counterparts at the Big Three plants. A wildcat strike ensued, catching even the UAW off guard. Stopping production of VW’s Rabbit, the workers chanted “No Money, No Bunny.” The plant, which never recovered from the worker unrest, shut down in 1988.

As opposed to the rightwing caricature of unions as the shock troops for a socialist takeover, VW regards the UAW as a partner that can help ensure the smooth functioning of the plant. If that’s done by giving workers more control over their working life, so much the better.

After years of being at the totally at the mercy of management, Southern autoworkers finally have a chance to play a greater role in controlling their destiny. That’s real worker freedom.

Corporate Virtue and Corporate Subsidies

corporate_flag2-1 For a speech that was supposed to focus on the plight of low-wage workers, President Obama’s State of the Union contained a surprising number of favorable references to specific large corporations. I counted seven plugs — for Apple, Costco, Ford, Google, Microsoft, Sprint and Verizon. The Ford mention, which alluded to “the best-selling truck in America,” sounded like a high-level product placement.

Most of these companies were cited for their supposed acts of corporate virtue, such as the role of the telecoms in helping to bring high-speed broadband to schools. There’s something else these firms have in common: they’ve all been recipients of substantial economic development subsidies from state and local governments.

My colleagues and I at Good Jobs First issued two reports this week that take a critical stance toward these types of financial aid to business. In one of the reports, Putting State Pension Costs in Context, we look at how the revenue loss from subsidies and corporate tax breaks and loopholes compare to the cost of public employee pensions in ten states where those retirement benefits have been under attack.

We find that in every one of the states the corporate giveaways far outweigh the current costs of providing pensions to state workers. In the case of Louisiana, for example, the giveaways are more than five times the retirement costs.

State legislators and governors have a tendency these days to get frantic about pension costs. Our research suggest that they should be more concerned about the larger revenue losses stemming from what are often ineffective “incentives” given to business.

The other report, Show Us the Subsidized Jobs, is the latest in our series of surveys on the performance of state governments in disclosing online which companies are getting financial assistance and what they are doing with it, especially in relation to job creation. There are two main messages that emerge from the study.

First is the fact that there is now at least some online recipient disclosure in all but a handful of states. The number has doubled since we did the first of these surveys in 2007. That’s the good news.

The other message is not so encouraging: There are vast discrepancies in the depth and the quality of the disclosure. Some states such as Michigan and North Carolina provide reasonably good disclosure for all their major programs, while others such as Nevada and South Carolina provide bare-bones disclosure — meaning company names only — for only one key program. In many cases no information is reported on the number of jobs subsidized companies are creating or the wages being paid.

To enable detailed comparisons of programs, we rate them on a scale of 0 to 100. Points are given for providing details on subsidy amounts, on job and wage outcomes, and on the inclusion of key information about subsidized projects and companies. We also rate programs on how easy it is to find and use the data.

Based on this system, the states with the best average scores for their key programs are Illinois, Michigan and North Carolina. Being best in relative terms does not mean that the absolute scores are very impressive. Top-ranking Illinois has an average of only 65 and Michigan comes in at 58. Every other state has an average below 50 percent. The average program score is only 21 (or 39 if you leave out those with no disclosure at all). Only seven programs score 75 or above.

These scores are so low mainly because so many programs fail to provide good reporting on outcomes, which account for a large portion of the points in our scoring system. Fewer than half of the 246 programs we examine include any reporting on jobs or wages in subsidized companies. And many of those that do provide only projections rather than the actual amounts. Less than one-tenth of the programs provide actual amounts for both jobs and wages.

In the report we emphasize that transparency does not equal effectiveness or complete accountability. A program can disclose all the essential details but still be a waste of taxpayer money. Transparency is what allows the public to determine when that is the case.

Our interest in disclosure is not only for abstract reasons of accountability. If states put more information online, there were will more for us to capture for our Subsidy Tracker database, a national search engine covering more than 500 programs.

Next month we will introduce Subsidy Tracker 2.0. Along with the raw data, we will add information on the parent company of the recipient firms. This will make it possible to see at a glance how much large companies such as the seven cited above have received across the country. The Dirt Diggers Digest will provide wall-to-wall coverage.

A Great Place for Wage Theft

Restaurant giant Darden, which is being pressured by hedge funds to sell off both its Red Lobster and Olive Garden chains, got some good news recently when it appeared once again on Fortune magazine’s list of the 100 companies that are supposedly the best places to work.

That designation, for a company that has been the subject of numerous allegations of labor abuse, is even more puzzling than the idea that Darden would be better off without the outlets through which it grew into an $8 billion industry powerhouse.

For more than a decade, Darden has been accused by groups such as ROC United of using various means to shortchange its workers on their paychecks, a practice known as wage theft. In 2005 the company agreed to pay $9.5 million to more than 20,000 current and former servers at Red Lobster and Olive Garden outlets in California to settle a lawsuit claiming that the restaurants violated state labor regulations by preventing workers from taking required breaks and by requiring them to purchase and maintain their uniforms.

Three years later, Darden disclosed that it had paid $4 million to settle two class-action lawsuits alleging that it had violated California law in requiring servers and bartenders to make up for cash shortages at the end of their shifts. Also in 2008, Darden reported that it had paid $700,000 to settle another California suit claiming several types of wage and hour violations, including a failure to provide itemized wage statements and timely pay when an employee was terminated.

In 2011, following a U.S. Labor Department investigation that found workers were not being paid for all their hours, Darden agreed to pay $25,000 in back wages to 140 current and former servers at an Olive Garden in Mesquite, Texas. The company was also fined $30,800. That same year, the company consented to pay $27,000 in back pay and was fined $23,980 in connection with a similar federal investigation at a Red Lobster in Lubbock, Texas.

In the wake of the two Texas cases, suits were brought against Darden in several other states. For example, in early 2012 ROC United filed a class action case on behalf of Darden workers at another of the company’s chain, Capital Grille. For technical reasons, the action was later divided into separate actions in five jurisdictions (all are still pending).

An even larger legal challenge to the company came in September 2012, when a class action suit was filed in federal court in Miami on behalf of all current and former employees (back to 2009) at five of Darden’s chains. The 54 named plaintiffs in the case stated that the company did not pay them for the period between the beginning of their shifts and the time customers began to arrive, thereby forcing them to do prep work off the clock. Darden was also accused of failing to pay time-and-a-half for those working more than 40 hours per week and for improperly applying the lower subminimum wage for tipped workers when they were engaged in non-serving tasks.

The complaint in the case — which described the company as having “a steadfast, single minded focus on minimizing its labor costs” by arranging to have “as many tasks as possible performed by as few employees as possible” — also alleged that two of the named plaintiffs had suffered retaliation from management because of their participation in the case. Some 13,000 current and former Darden servers have joined the suit, which is pending.

The ROC United wage theft actions against Capital Grille also allege that the chain has engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination, including the denial of better-paid server and bartender jobs to non-white workers.

In 2009 the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that Darden’s Bahama Breeze chain would pay $1.26 million to settle allegations that managers at its restaurant in Beachwood, Ohio had subjected 37 black workers to repeated overt racial harassment. In addition to the monetary relief, the chain signed a three-year consent decree requiring it to improve its anti-discrimination practices throughout the country.

In September 2013 the EEOC filed suit against Red Lobster, alleging that female workers at its restaurant in Salisbury, Maryland have been subjected to “pervasive sexual harassment.” According to the agency, the harassment was committed by a manager, whose superior was said to have failed to take prompt action on the matter despite complaints from at least one of the affected workers.

Darden has also sought to lower its labor costs by becoming more active in the public policy arena. Until 2007 Darden spent less than $250,000 a year on federal lobbying. Beginning in 2008 that amount jumped to well over $1 million annually.

The company is a prominent participant in the National Restaurant Association (NRA), which promotes policies that enhance the bottom line of chains such as Darden. It has opposed living wage initiatives, worked to keep the minimum wage for tipped workers at $2.13 an hour (where it has remained since 1991) and resisted efforts by labor groups to enact mandatory paid sick days, often by promoting state laws that pre-empt local ordinances on the issue. Darden is reported to have helped write the pre-emption bill in Florida.

All of this somehow escaped the attention of Fortune and the organization, the Great Place to Work Institute, which compiles the list. Or perhaps the Institute doesn’t worry about real working conditions. A 2011 investigative report raised serious questions about its methodology, suggesting it is mostly interested in selling consulting services to the companies it is rating. As a recent Alternet piece notes, the lack of an arm’s-length relationship with those companies is also seen in the fact that Darden CEO Clarence Otis has been a speaker at Institute events.

The designation as a “great place to work” is featured by Darden on its website, but the dubious honor cannot change the company’s dismal labor track record.

Note: This piece draws from my new Corporate Rap Sheet on Darden, which can be found here.

Freedom to Pollute

freedomindustries Recent news reports out of West Virginia sound like they were written as part of a parody of modern business: the company responsible for a chemical leak that contaminated the water supply of hundreds of thousands of people is named Freedom Industries and was cofounded by a two-time convicted felon.

The situation, however, is far from a joke. Freedom Industries spilled a substantial quantity of a substance called 4, methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM) into the Elk River near the intake valve for a water treatment plant serving the Charleston area, sending more than 150 people to the hospital and forcing residents to use bottled water for drinking, cooking and bathing. The plume is now heading toward Cincinnati.

As is all too common in such incidents, it turns out that the 75-year-old facility where the rupture took place had not been visited by government inspectors for more than 20 years. In fact, as a storage rather than a production facility, it was subject to little in the way of federal or state oversight. So much for the idea of regulatory excess.

Given that MCHM is used to process coal, this accident adds to the heavy toll that mining has taken on West Virginia—from the Buffalo Creek flood in 1972 to the Upper Big Branch disaster in 2010 in which 29 miners were killed. It is also significant that Freedom Industries purchases MCHM, for which it serves as a distributor, from a subsidiary of Georgia-Pacific, which in turn is controlled by the rabidly anti-regulation Koch Brothers.

To all this can be added the fact that Freedom Industries was cofounded by an individual named Carl Lemley Kennedy II. As the Charleston Gazette has reported, Kennedy filed for personal bankruptcy in 2005 after he was hit with federal charges of tax evasion and failure to remit employee withholding taxes. He is reported to have admitted to diverting more than $1 million that should have gone to the Internal Revenue Service.

Kennedy’s involvement in Freedom Industries, the Gazette notes, does not seem to have been affected by the fact that he had once pleaded guilty to selling cocaine in connection with a scandal that involved the mayor of Charleston. The paper quotes the current mayor, who is said to have known Kennedy since the 1980s, as an “edgy guy.”

Another remarkable aspect of the story reported by the Gazette is that Freedom Industries was struggling in 2009, and its Elk River facility was able to go on functioning only after the Army Corps of Engineers dredged that portion of the river using federal stimulus funds.

To summarize: a tax evader and drug dealer helped to establish a largely unregulated chemical company that benefitted from the federal stimulus but apparently did little in the way of preventive maintenance and set the stage for large-scale drinking water contamination.

Large corporations such as Dow Chemical and Exxon Mobil have caused vast amounts of environmental damage, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that small-time operators such as Freedom Industries can also do substantial harm. And it is not just producers of hazardous materials but also distributors that can be the culprits. It was another small distributor, West Fertilizer, that was involved in the ammonium nitrate explosion in Texas last April that killed 15 people. Much of the reporting in the wake of that event, particularly with respect to holes in the regulatory system, could have been recycled for the new West Virginia accident.

As long as the illusion of regulation is perpetuated in place of the real thing, these accidents will continue to happen, and the right to pollute will trump the right to be safe from pollution.

J. Ponzi Morgan

morgan_madoff It’s bad enough that for years JPMorgan Chase failed to alert federal authorities about the suspicious transactions being conducted by its customer Madoff Securities in what would later be revealed as a massive Ponzi scheme.

What’s equally damning in the criminal case the bank just resolved with federal prosecutors is that at times JPM seemed to want to get in on Madoff’s action.

The Statement of Facts to which JPM stipulated tells an interesting story about how, beginning in 2006, the bank began investing substantial sums (initially $343 million) of its own money in Madoff feeder funds in addition to issuing derivates tied to those funds and selling them to investors. In 2007 this business seemed so appealing that JPM’s London branch sought to write more than $1 billion in Madoff-linked derivatives.

This move had to be approved by the bank’s chief risk officer, who in 2007 nixed the plan after being told by a colleague that there is a “well-known cloud over the head of Madoff and that his returns are speculated to be part of a Ponzi scheme.” While he was unwilling to risk $1.3 billion under such circumstances, the officer did allow the Madoff exposure to remain up to $250 million.

The JPM London trading desk subsequently became more uneasy about Madoff Securities. It pulled out of the Madoff feeder funds, and in 2008 it filed a report with UK regulators expressing concerns that Madoff’s returns were probably “too good to be true.” JPM failed to do the same in the United States, and that turned out to be an expensive oversight.

JPM’s messy history with Madoff illustrates an interesting point about the relationship between individual white-collar crime and collective corporate crime. There’s long been a tendency to see corruption for self-enrichment (such as embezzlement) as being separate from misconduct by groups of people to enrich corporations (for example, price-fixing conspiracies).

In the case of Madoff and JPM, the two were closely connected. Madoff, who was working through his firm but was essentially running a one-man Ponzi operation, created conditions that were exploited (up to a point) by JPM to enhance the profits of the bank’s derivatives business. Even when that opportunity was deemed too risky by JPM, the bank failed to warn U.S. regulators and went on doing profitable banking business with Madoff.

In other words, the individual fraud being committed by Madoff was a source of profit for JPM, which in a sense became his co-conspirator.

The distinction between individual crime and corporate misbehavior is also a matter of perennial debate when it comes to punishment. Business apologists like to claim that corporations cannot really commit crimes and that only individuals should be prosecuted, knowing full well that such cases are much harder to prove.

What’s needed is a more aggressive approach toward the prosecution of both corporations and the higher-level executives responsible for their misconduct.

The JPM-Madoff case shows the limitations of the current system. No individuals were charged, and the bank was able to take advantage of the kind of deferred prosecution agreement that the Justice Department uses in almost every corporate case. Neither JPM nor the stock market seems to be fazed by the $2.6 billion payout. In fact, this is just the latest in a series of large settlements that JPM has made with prosecutors. Just two months ago, it agreed to pay $13 billion to resolve a variety of federal and state charges relating to the sale of toxic mortgage-backed securities.

Madoff himself was not able to buy his way out of a criminal conviction and prison time (150 years of it). There was a broad consensus that he deserved every penalty that could be imposed, to ensure that he could never defraud again.

We’re still waiting for a system of punishment that provides that kind of definitive treatment for rogue corporations such as J. Ponzi Morgan.

The 2013 Corporate Rap Sheet

The ongoing corporate crime wave showed no signs of abating in 2013. Large companies continued to break the law, violate regulations and otherwise misbehave at a high rate. Whatever lip service the business world gives to corporate social responsibility tends to be overwhelmed by bad acts.

Continuing the trend of recent years, 2013 saw an escalation of the amounts that companies have to pay, especially in the United States, to get themselves out of their legal entanglements. In November JPMorgan Chase set a record with its $13 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and other state and local agencies on charges relating to the sale of toxic mortgage-backed securities. JPMorgan’s legal problems are not over. There have recently been reports that it may face criminal charges and pay $2 billion in penalties in connection with charges that it turned a blind eye to the Ponzi scheme being run by Bernard Madoff while it was serving as his primary bank.

Other banks have also been shelling out large sums to resolve disputes over the sale of toxic securities in the run-up to the financial crisis. Much of the money has gone to settlements with mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bank of America alone agreed to pay out $10.3 billion ($3.6 billion in cash and $6.75 billion in mortgage repurchases) to Fannie.

Here are some of the year’s other highlights (or lowlights):

FORECLOSURE ABUSES. In January, ten mortgage servicing companies–including Bank of America, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase–agreed to an $8.5 billion settlement to resolve allegations by federal regulators relating to foreclosure abuses.

LIBOR MANIPULATION. In February, U.S. and UK regulators announced that the Royal Bank of Scotland would pay a total of $612 million to resolve allegations relating to rigging of the LIBOR interest rate index. In December, the European Union fined RBS and five other banks a total of $2.3 billion in connection with LIBOR manipulation.

ILLEGAL MARKETING. In November, the Justice Department announced that Johnson & Johnson would pay more than $2.2 billion to settle criminal and civil allegations that it improperly marketed the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved use by older adults, children and people with development disabilities.

SALE OF DEFECTIVE MEDICAL IMPLANTS. Also in November, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay more than $2 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits charging that the company sold defective hip implants, causing many individuals to suffer severe pain and injury from metallic debris generated by the faulty devices.

INSIDER TRADING. In March, the SEC announced that an affiliate of hedge fund giant SAC Capital Advisors had agreed to pay $602 million to settle SEC charges that it participated in an insider trading scheme involving a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s drug being jointly developed by two pharmaceutical companies. At the same time, a second SAC affiliate agreed to pay $14 million to settle another insider trading case. Later, SAC agreed to pay $1.2 billion to settle related criminal and civil insider trading charges.

PRICE-FIXING. In July, German officials fined steelmaker ThyssenKrupp the equivalent of about $115 million for its role in a price-fixing cartel. In September, the U.S. Justice Department announced that nine Japanese automotive suppliers had agreed to plead guilty to price-fixing conspiracy charges and pay more than $740 million in criminal fines, with the largest amount ($195 million) to be paid by Hitachi Automotive Systems.

MANIPULATION OF ENERGY PRICES. In July, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered Barclays and four of its traders to pay $453 million in civil penalties for manipulating electricity prices in California and other western U.S. markets during a two-year period beginning in late 2006.

BRIBERY. In May, the Justice Department announced that the French oil company Total had agreed to pay $398 million to settle charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes to officials in Iran.

VIOLATION OF DRUG SAFETY RULES. In May, DOJ announced that generic drug maker Ranbaxy USA Inc., a subsidiary of the Indian company Ranbaxy Laboratories, had pleaded guilty to felony charges relating to the manufacture and distribution of adulterated drugs and would pay $500 million in fines.

VIOLATION OF RULES ON THE SALE OF NARCOTICS. In June, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced that the giant Walgreen pharmacy chain would pay a record $80 million in civil penalties to resolve charges that it failed to properly control the sales of narcotic painkillers at some of its stores.

DEALINGS WITH ENTITIES SUBJECT TO SANCTIONS. In June, New York officials announced that Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi-UFJ had agreed to pay $250 million to settle allegations that it violated state banking laws by engaging in transactions with entities from countries such as Iran subject to sanctions.

LABOR LAW VIOLATIONS. In November, the National Labor Relations Board found that Wal-Mart had illegally disciplined and fired workers involved in protests over the company’s labor practices. A Wal-Mart spokesperson was found to have unlawfully threatened employees who were considering taking part in the actions.

CLEAN WATER ACT VIOLATIONS. In May, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that Wal-Mart had pleaded guilty to charges that it illegally disposed of hazardous materials at its stores across the country. The company had to pay $81.6 million in civil and criminal fines.

HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE VIOLATIONS. In August, Chevron pleaded no contest and agreed to pay $2 million to settle charges that it violated state health and safety regulations in connection with a fire at its refinery in Richmond, California that sent thousands of people to hospital for treatment of respiratory problems.

DELAYS IN RECALLING UNSAFE VEHICLES. In August, Ford Motor was fined $17.4 million by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for taking too long to recall unsafe sport utility vehicles.

PRIVACY VIOLATIONS. In November, Google agreed to pay $17 million to 37 states and the District of Columbia to settle allegations that the company violated privacy laws by tracking online activity of individuals without their knowledge.

Note: For fuller dossiers on many of the companies listed here, see my Corporate Rap Sheets.

Contractor Entitlement Reform

nn_thomp_refineryfire_050324.300w The fiscal austerity crowd is preoccupied with the size of government, but what they rarely acknowledge is that more than $500 billion in annual federal outlays take the form of purchases of goods and services from the private sector. Uncle Sam’s role as the country’s biggest consumer means that federal agencies are in a good position to expect the highest standards of conduct from contractors.

A new report by the majority staff of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee shows that the federal government is not doing a good job of enforcing such standards when it comes to working conditions at contractor companies. In fact, the report shows that violations of occupational safety and health regulations as well as wage and hour laws are rampant among the contractors.

Some key findings of the report:

Eighteen federal contractors were among those companies receiving the 100 largest penalties issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration between 2007 and 2012. Contractors accounted for 48 percent of the dollar value of those penalties.
Thirty-two federal contractors were among the companies receiving the large back-wage assessments ordered by the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the Department of Labor between 2007 and 2012.
The 49 federal contractors in these categories were found to have been cited for 1,776 separate violations and paid $196 million in penalties and assessments. In fiscal year 2012, these same companies were awarded $81 billion in federal contracts.

Misconduct by contractors is an old story, but legislation passed in 2008 was supposed to make it easier for federal agencies to identify bad actors and disqualify them from contract awards. The law provided for the development of an official database along the lines of the Federal Contractor Misconduct Database created by the Project On Government Oversight.

That database did come into being and is known as the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System, or FAPIIS. In its current state, FAPIIS is a big disappointment. The Senate report points out that of the 49 contractors on the lists of largest labor violations only one has such instances of misconduct included in its FAPIIS entry. As the report states with understandable outrage:

In perhaps the most astonishing example of the failures of FAPIIS, BP, despite the deaths, injuries, and massive environmental damage, as well as the billion dollar settlements resulting from the Deep Water Horizon incident, and despite the deaths, injuries and fines resulting from the Texas City refinery explosion [photo], and despite holding $2 billion in contracts in 2012, has no misconduct entries in FAPIIS.

The Senate report does not just point out the limitations of FAPIIS but also demonstrates how more aggressive information-gathering on companies can be done. Its authors delved into the enforcement databases of both OSHA and the WHD to identify which contractors were serial violators. The results are presented both in summary tables in the report and in a 448-page appendix with key data on several dozen of the worst offenders.

In the occupational safety and health category, it is no surprise that the company at the top of the list of violators is BP, which is a rare example of a large company that was actually debarred (albeit temporarily) from doing business with the federal government because of its misconduct.

On the wage and hour side, it is also not surprising that the company appearing most often in the list of the biggest back pay assessments is Wal-Mart, though the company does a miniscule amount of business with the federal government. Also on high up on the list are companies focused on government contracting, such as private prison operator Management & Training Corporation and Pentagon outsourcer IAP Worldwide Services (owned by the private equity company Cerberus Capital Management).

While the Senate report calls on the General Services Administration, which oversees FAPIIS, to clean up the database, it also urges the Department of Labor to do more to publicize the names of contractors that were found to be violators of federal labor laws.

But why stop with DOL? Shouldn’t every regulatory agency take pains to highlight bad actors and make sure federal procurement officials know who they are?

There is much talk of entitlement reform with regard to safety net programs. What we need instead is more attention on corporations that think they are entitled to receive contracts from the federal government even when they show little regard for federal regulations.

Forward-Looking Corporations and the Backward-Looking Ones

Google_ALEC Large corporations like to think of themselves as engines of progress. Sometimes they are, though the progress they engender may be a mixed blessing. Other times, however, they are retrogressive, working to preserve the worst practices of the past.

Both of these tendencies have been on display in the news in recent days. In the forward-looking category we have Amazon and Google, which have let it be known that they are exploring what sound like science-fiction options for home delivery of goods.

Amazon revealed it is developing a system of drones that would fly packages from a distribution center to a customer’s home in a matter of minutes after an order is placed. Meanwhile, Google is reported to be working on a delivery system consisting of driverless cars and robots.

Of all the ways that technology could improve everyday life, it is hard to believe that the most compelling is the ability to have a 10-pack of tube socks flown directly to one’s doorstep. It is also unfortunate that these companies are apparently paying little attention to the massive job losses that their innovations could bring about. Yet by some uniquely corporate definition, such innovations would amount to progress.

In the thoroughly backward-looking category we have the American Legislative Exchange Council, the big-business-dominated organization that puts corporate-designed model bills into the hands of conservative state legislators. The Guardian has been publicizing a new batch of leaked ALEC documents that shed new light on the Neanderthal thinking of the organization.

Among the revelations is that ALEC has been working to promote legislation discouraging homeowners from installing solar panels. Dubbed the Electricity Freedom Act, the model bill calls on states to repeal or limit their renewable portfolio standards, which provide the basis for pressuring utilities to purchase excess power generated by houses with the panels. Rather than seeing those homeowners as helping to address climate change problems, an ALEC official told the Guardian that they are “freeriders.”

Discouraging renewable energy is far from the only way that ALEC encourages retrograde policies. The organization has received a torrent of criticism for its role in promoting voter suppression and “stand your ground” gun laws, which represent a return to the eras of Jim Crow and the Wild West.

ALEC has also had disturbing influence over state policymaking through its publication of a series of Rich States, Poor States reports that purport to give a road map to prosperity. A report written by Peter Fisher and published by Good Jobs First (in which I played a small role) shows how these prescriptions—which include shrinking the public sector, suppressing wages and rolling back regulation—amount to nothing but snake oil.

Thanks to other internal ALEC documents just disclosed by the Guardian, we now know that the latest edition of Rich States, Poor States project was funded by $175,000 from the Searle Freedom Trust and $150,000 from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation. The latter is actually listed in the report as “Koch/Claude Lamb,” which helps make it clear that the foundation is controlled by the Koch Brothers and/or Koch Industries. See more on the foundation here.

It comes as no surprise that the Kochs would be bankrolling such a report, but what’s the story with the Searle Freedom Trust? As Sourcewatch has documented, it is a large funder of rightwing groups such as the American Enterprise Institute at the national level as well as state-level policy groups under the State Policy Network (SPN) umbrella. The trust is featured in the StinkTanks website created by ProgressNow and the Center on Media and Democracy. Another piece just published in the Guardian based on leaked ALEC documents notes that Searle’s connection to the SPN is through its advisor Stephen Moore, an editorial writer at the Wall Street Journal and one of the co-authors of the Rich States, Poor States propaganda.

The money behind the trust comes from the inherited wealth of the late Daniel Searle, who once ran the G.D. Searle pharmaceutical corporation. That corporation, which was acquired by Monsanto in 1985, is largely forgotten. Yet back in the 1980s it was notorious for its Copper-7 birth control device, which was linked to many cases of pelvic infections and infertility. Searle, headed after Daniel Searle’s retirement by Donald Rumsfeld, was found to have been negligent in its testing and marketing of the device.

It is the financial legacy of such corporate irresponsibility which is helping to finance the current rightwing policy agenda. As much as they purport to be forward-looking, today’s corporations supporting that agenda are just as guilty as the Searle Freedom Trust of trying to bring us back to the laissez-faire society of the Gilded Age.

That includes Google, which joined ALEC a couple of months ago (at a time when many corporations are fleeing the group), thus making a mockery of its “do no evil” motto. Equitable public policy, not robotic delivery systems, is what we really need.

Note: The latest addition to my Corporate Rap Sheets collection is about South Korean conglomerate LG and its amazing record of price-fixing scandals.