It seems like the larger a corporation gets, the slimier their actions become. When big profits are a company’s largest - and only - concern, their employees and the world in general tends to suffer. Here are ten companies that have engaged in terribly unethical business practices and are, fortunately, being called out for it.
1. Toyota Ignored Safety Concerns to Save Money
One of the most important aspects of any car company is safety - the concern for safety, how both employees and consumers are kept safe, and how issues are handled should a safety concern arise. Toyota made a huge and unethical failure in 2010 when they basically betrayed their promise as a company by ignoring safety concerns and delaying recall investigations just so they could save a little money.
After confronted with safety concerns regarding faulty breaks and sticking pedals in 2009, Toyota said that phasing in side airbags saved US$124 million and 50,000 man hours, the cost of what it would have taken to recall and fix vehicles. They also stated that delaying a rule for tougher door locks saved them US$11 million.
Despite being ordered to appear before Congress and provide an explanation for their unethical handling of the situation, Toyota didn’t seem to think it was such a big deal.
“We can win back the customer’s confidence; we are doing a better job,” said senior Toyota executive and global managing director on the Toyota board in somewhat of an apology for their delayed recalls. But it seems that they were only sorry after they got caught - it was almost an entire two years before Toyota got called out on this unethical practice after a few deaths and even more complaints about their unsafe vehicles. Their failure to be honest got so bad that they were even accused of hiding evidence in hundreds of rollover and death cases.
2. Halliburton
Infamous Halliburton is one of the world’s largest oil corporations worldwide, operating in over 80 countries. They are also debatably one of the most evil companies in the entire world. Halliburton’s unethical offenses are so many that they are best summarized in list form:
- Halliburton has been accused, multiple times, of engaging in business transactions with countries with which trades are prohibited by the US government.
- Halliburton has been accused of overbilling the US army for food and oil supplies during the Iraq war, 2003.
- Halliburton has been accused of covering up violations of corruption laws and misleading investigators by a former Halliburton employee who states that he received criminal notes on how to handle federal investigations in an email intended for another employee.
- Other ex-Halliburton employees accuse Halliburton of mismanaging waste in Iraq, citing a particular instance in which they abandoned an US$85,000 truck due to a flat tire and charged approximately US$100 for fifteen pounds of laundering services.
- Halliburton faces multiple additional lawsuits for endangering employees, endangering National Guard members by unknowingly exposing them to hazardous chemicals, and over oil spills said to be the result of careless and unsafe practices.
3. Apple
Everyone wants an iPhone and no one really cares if it were made by tiny child slaves who are forced to work in dangerous conditions, inhaling cancerous vapours, for 10 hours a day, seven days a week. And that is why Apple continues to be so profitable.
But as beautiful as their products are, the production side of their business is a dark, horrific and unethical one. Apple manufacturer Foxconn is like hell on earth. Conditions at this plant are so miserable that “anti-suicide nets” had to be installed beneath the windows after a whopping 17 employees leapt to their deaths in protests of the horrific things they had to endure on a daily basis.
Living quarters are like tiny college dorms in a gigantic beehive type factory, each crammed with crappy bunk beds. Exhausting hours, humiliating discipline, unreasonable workloads, and pressure to reduce overtime resulting in lower pay checks are just some of the crappy conditions faced by thousands of Foxconn employees on a daily basis.
The controversy began in 2006 and is still happening today. And while Apple has made efforts to branch out and use some different manufacturers to produce their products, unethical Foxconn is still their go-to company.
Besides using Foxconn, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak claimed that Apple was engaging in unethical tax practices by utilizing an Irish tax loophole to avoid paying billions in taxes on international sales.
4. Trafigura
Multinational metal and energy trading company Trafigura, as a consequence of their 80 billion per year in business profits, is responsible for disposing of the toxic wastes and by-products that are produced as a result of their work. When a leased ship informed Trafigura that a 2006 haul of waste was so dangerous it would cost twenty times the original price quote, Trafigura cut ties with the disposal company and let the ship sit at a large seaport in Africa until another business could be hired for a lower price.
That’s when Compagnie Tommy, a new and inexperienced dumping company, took on the job and illegally dumped the toxic waste without processing it, resulting in sickness for thousands and and death for approximately 10 people.
Trafigura was accused of - but denied - intentionally dumping the waste illegally. In their defense, Trafigura weakly claimed that in-house testing revealed the sludge to be less toxic than originally presumed. A 2009 UN report proved this to be completely fabricated.
After failing to bury a disparaging report from a dissenter via a court order, Trafigura was fined over US$1 million for dumping the waste. Additionally, they’ve also been accused of stealing oil South Sudan.
5. WalMart
WalMart is another behemoth company accused time and time again of being downright evil. Labour unions, community groups, religious organizations, environmental groups and WalMart customers all have one thing in common: they hate the way WalMart does business.
First there is the issue of predatory store placement. When WalMart enters a new town, it’s almost guaranteed to eradicate all of the small businesses in the surrounding areas. How are mom and pop shops supposed to compete against WalMart’s absurdly wide selection and ridiculously low prices? Besides destroying local businesses, WalMart insisted on opening a superstore only two miles down the road from a historical site in Mexico, and the construction of the WalMart parking lot revealed small artefacts beneath the surface during digging. Who cares? Not WalMart.
Then there’s the whole “trying to drive competitors out of the market with unfairly low prices” thing. WalMart has actually been sued for what’s called predatory pricing, or intentionally selling a product at an unreasonably low cost to drive out the competition. Walmart won one of these three cases but settled out of court for the other two.
And let’s not forget the public outcry and outrage surrounding the poor treatment of WalMart’s employees. They’ve been notorious for providing wages so poor that full timers still have to rely on food stamps and welfare just to get by. And working conditions, as described by many of these harrowing first-hand accounts, paint a grisly image of non-investigated sexual harassment in the work place, denied sick leave, reduced working hours and a vehement opposition toward anyone who wanted to work in a union.
In response to the outcries of employee horror stories, megalomaniac WalMart simply requested that employees send in happier stories instead. A pretty creepy and cold response from a company responsible for the well-being of thousands of employees.
6. Monsanto
Monsanto has, time and time again, been named the world’s most unethical company by many including Action for Our Planet and other eco-friendly publications.
Monsanto began what seems to be their plight against humanity in the 70s, when they created toxic chemical Agent Orange for use in chemical warfare in Vietnam. The effects of Agent Orange were so horrible and devastating that half a million children were born with debilitating birth defects due to exposure, and Vietnam residents continue to suffer the poisonous effects today.
Monsanto has since moved on to GMO foods, and owns over 95% of seed patents today. Which means that any farmer accidentally growing unlicensed seeds that have accidentally blown over into their fields are subject to lawsuits, and Monsanto has not hesitated to aggressively sue small farmers, including one 80-something year old man.
Recently, confidential Monsanto reports detailing the company’s cut-throat tactics for squashing smaller competitors and controlling the seed market have been exposed.
Besides being voted the most evil company in the world year after year for their unethical practices and borderline illegal business tactics, a great debate over the safety of GMOs rages on, with Monsanto going as far as to shadily discredit dissenters via fake online profiles.
7. Philip Morris
Philip Morris Tobacco has been lauded as extremely unethical since so much of their advertising seems geared toward children, and what’s more evil than trying to get kids hooked on what is basically a life-threatening drug?
While tobacco advertising regulations are now stronger than ever, Philip Morris (and other tobacco companies) are still criticized for the prominence of their products and ads in delis, convenience stores, and magazines. There’s also the fact that they continue to pay for product placement in movies featuring “cool” characters who smoke and may influence the teens watching them to do the same.
Even their efforts to make themselves look better have been criticized; PBS wonders why anti-smoking ads created by Philip Morris point the blame at other smoking teenagers instead of tobacco manufacturers themselves. After all, the only reason that kid-friendly cigarette mascots like Joe Camel don’t exist today is because we made them illegal.
Even a recently released Surgeon General’s Report in 2012 openly admits the scientific evidence that “consistently and coherently points to the intentional marketing of tobacco products to youth as being a cause of young people’s tobacco use.”
8. DynCorp
Just the letters “PMC” (Private Military Contractor) is enough to send shivers up one’s spine. Dyncorp, a PMC with revenues of US$3 billion annually, has been employed in the so-called war on drugs in Colombia since 2001. Because of their actions in Colombia, they are now the subjects of several lawsuits accusing them of torture, murder, and reckless endangerment of the people and environmental well being of Colombia.
Dyncorp is accused of spraying gratuitous amounts of herbicide on crops which caused major health issues in nearby residents, killing off livestock, and causing the deaths of over 10,000 people.
And that wasn’t the first time Dyncorp did the exact opposite of what they were hired to do: in the late 90s, Dyncorp was employed in Bosnia where they were accused of engaging in statutory rape with children ages 12 to 15, selling the kids to one another as slaves when they were finished with them. While Dyncorp fired five of their employees for this behaviour, they also mind-blowingly fought a proposal by the US Defense department that would officially and formally prohibit PMCs from engaging in such deplorable behaviour.
9. Barrick Gold Corporation
Barrick Corporation, a Toronto-based gold-mining company, has been voted as Covalence’s 12th most unethical company in the world. It was accused of torching up to 300 homes in Papua New Guinea in order to make room for their mining operation. Landowners were given no time to gather possessions and were reportedly physically attacked by armed guards if they attempted to protest the impromptu and violent eviction.
Barrick Corporation is also accused of manipulating land titles in Australia and Chile, and of dumping toxic waste with high levels of arsenic in Tanzania.
10. Chevron
Chevron has been caught trying to evade paying millions in taxes and has been accused of 18 years of unethical practices in a 42-page affidavit detailing their cruel and selfish methods.
Chevron attempted to undermine the Ecuadorian court when a lawsuit was brought against them for deliberately dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the South American rainforest, creating the “Amazon Chernobyl.” Amazingly, they went on to try and hide behind US courts and deny any involvement despite overwhelming scientific evidence of their responsibility in this atrocity.
Chevron is also accused of faking a letter from the Ecuadorian ambassador which falsely dismissed the lawsuit, of attempting to destroy all documents relating to the spill, blocking the gathering of scientific evidence, and refusing to pay court experts. They even went so far as to hire a drug dealer to try and create an unlawful sting operation against the judge presiding over the case in an attempt to discredit him. It didn’t work, but the trial was delayed an extra two years because of it.
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ReplyDeleteAgree 100% on the post about Walmart. Come into town with very low prices to put everyone else out of business. Then spike the prices!!
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