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Latest issue of the Corporate Watch Magazine - The Rules of Engagement
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 In 2008 Corporate Watch decided to begin writing to companies with allegations made about them by grassroots campaigners and publishing their responses. As we did so, we were drawn into several 'engagements' with companies designed to delay and mute dissent.
It was from these engagement exercises, some of which are described here by Tom Anderson in an article titled Dear Corporation, that we decided to produce this issue of the Corporate Watch Magazine, with the aim of exploring why corporations engage with the public and asking whether grassroots campaigners can ever win through engaging with companies. |
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In 2008 Corporate Watch decided to begin writing to companies with accusations levelled at them by grassroots campaigners, sometimes entering into lengthy discussions with them. Many of these communications were published as open letters on the Corporate Watch website, under the header Dear Corporation, along with the companies' responses.
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Beth Lawrence investigates some of the issues facing trade unions organising in the UK since the onset of neoliberalism, including declining/plateauing membership, low representation in the private sector and the weakening of collective bargaining. In this context, how effective can engagements between unions and corporations be. |
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The face that corporations reveal to the public is carefully controlled. This includes almost all their activities, from how much of a particular product a company sells to the amount of public dissent a company may experience. This careful crafting of corporations' public image, determines how effective engaging with corporations on social and environmental justice issues can be. |
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This article is an insider's account of a multinational corporation and its 'partnership' with an international non-governmental organisation (NGO). The organisations involved are anonymised. Naming them would be counter-productive to the argument, as our intention is to examine the processes involved in NGO-corporate partnership. It is useful to name the organisations involved in specific case studies where the aim is to target these specific organisations. The focus of this article is on general principles. In addition, the author had agreed with the corporation in question not to reveal its identity. |
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Robert Palgrave of BioFuelWatch explores how a green entrepreneur proved that it’s who you know and what you say, not what you do, that counts when green money is at stake. |
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Corporations have multiple strategies for dealing with criticism from grassroots campaigns. In the age of PR, one of them is epitomised by 'Hopenhagen' |
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In June 2011, I was one of four candidates to be elected as Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Officers for the Cambridge University Student Union. By October 2011 I had resigned. In the intervening time I had extensively researched SRI at Cambridge University and found both the politics and economics underlying the campaign extremely problematic. SRI constitutes a form of ethical investment banking, involving the positive and negative screening of companies upon a series of ethical criteria, such as environmental policy, labour practices and human rights. It involves categorising multinational corporations as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and using shareholder pressure to reform ‘bad’ corporations, positing a unity of ethical interests and the maximisation of profit; only in extreme cases is outright divestment considered. SRI represents a burgeoning financial market, with £9.5 billion pounds invested in green and ethical retail funds in the UK in 2009, representing a five-fold increase in ten years. |
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Israeli apartheid is big business. Israeli and international arms companies profit not only from supplying the huge Israeli military machine but also by successfully marketing their products, having been used against Palestinians, as 'battle-tested'. Meanwhile, massive state and private funding for the Israeli settler movement ensures that there is always money to be made from building and providing infrastructure and services to illegal, Jewish-only settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. International companies continue to expand into the Israeli market, despite its persistent violations of international law and subjugation of the indigenous Palestinian population. |
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During a Week of Action Against the Deportation Machine in June 2010, campaigners from the Stop Deportation network drew up a list of 'targets' in the UK that contained, alongside government immigration agencies and private airlines involved in deportations, private companies contracted by these to carry out the forcible deportation of migrants. Among these were WH Tours, a Crawley-based coach company contracted by G4S to transport deportees from detention centres to airports, and Carlson Wagonlit Travel, a travel agents contracted by the UK Border Agency to book seats on scheduled and chartered flights for immigration detainees due for deportation. |
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Upstream engagement' is a type of top-down engagement with ‘the public’, facilitated by academics on behalf of government and the industries involved in the development of new technologies. Beth Lawrence explains why this new method is nothing more than a CSR-like exercise. |
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The right of any person under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) to request information held by public authorities, known as the 'right to know', came into force on 1st January 2005. The delayed legislation has proved a useful tool for journalists, researchers, campaigners and the general public to hold government and private companies to account. But the Act's many exemptions and the secretive mentality that still dominates government and business alike have greatly restricted this democratic 'privilege'. Here Shiar Youssef discusses one aspect of the problem, namely how public authorities often endeavour to protect private interests at the expense of public interests. |
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The Campaign for Freedom of Information provides a resource for those wishing to use the Freedom of Information act. Hannah Schling explores the applications and the limits of FOI as a source of information for anti-corporate campaigners. |
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Edelman is one of the largest PR firms in the world and the only major multinational to remain independent of conglomerate giants like the WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic groups. The company was founded by Daniel Edelman, who is considered a key figure in establishing the public relation industry, and is now run by his son Richard Edelman. |
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In an almost surreal corporatisation of politics, and language, a corporate media group has brought us one step closer to the outright ownership of everything by trademarking the phrase 'radical media'. @Radical Media LLC has litigated against Peace News, New Internationalist, Red Pepper and other radical media groups using the phrase in the title of a joint conference to be held in London in October 2011. |
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