CBC's corporate predators

BY SEAN HEALY

Organisers of the protest against the Commonwealth Business Council Forum point to the record of the corporate leaders involved as motivation for their action.

• Hugh Morgan, chief executive, Western Mining Corporation, chairperson, CBC Steering Committee for Commonwealth Business Forum 2001. One of Australia's largest mining companies, WMC is notorious for its record of environmental destruction and union-busting. WMC is the target of concerted protest by the indigenous Arabunna people of the Lake Eyre South district for its operation of the Roxby Downs uranium mine, which is steadily draining the water of the Great Artesian Basin.

Morgan and WMC are also prominent “greenhouse sceptics” and have sought to use their influence to prevent, or slow, action on climate change.

• Rahul Bajaj, chairperson, Bajaj Auto: The scion of a long line of wealthy industrialists, Rahul Bajaj is one of India's richest men, the owner and absolute ruler of the country's fifth largest company.

Corporate India's principal spokesperson, Bajaj was one of those most responsible for pressuring the Indian government to deregulate its capital markets, investment rules and trade policies, a policy which has enriched him but further impoverished many Indian farmers and factory workers.

Bajaj's 1997 decision to back the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was one of the major factors behind its ability to win, and since then to keep, federal power.

• Niall FitzGerald, chairperson, Unilever: Unilever is the world's second largest food and household products manufacturer (behind Nestle), selling 1600 brand-names in nearly every country on Earth.

One of the world's most active “corporate citizens”, FitzGerald and his company are movers and shakers in countless international business bodies, including the International Chamber of Commerce, which drew up the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the “corporations' bill of rights” shelved after public protest in 1998.

Despite its attempts to present a clean, green image, Unilever was accused by Greenpeace in March of shameful negligence for allowing its Indian subsidiary to dump several tonnes of highly toxic mercury waste into a popular tourist lake in Tamil Nadu.

• Julian Ogilvie-Thompson, chairperson, Anglo American: By far South Africa's largest corporation, mining giant Anglo American made its fortune by taking advantage of the extreme racism of the country's apartheid era.

In fact, according to the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Anglo American and the big mining companies “pioneered many of the core features of what later came to be known as apartheid”. The toll on black workers has been immense: 87,000 have died in South Africa's mines.

Since the election of the African National Congress government, Anglo American has sought to play down its past, but is one of the major companies pressuring the ANC to privatise government assets, keep a lid on wage demands and implement other pro-business policies.