The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) released a list of seven corporations undermining democracy. Big Tech, Big Oil, and private equity firms, which “profit from controlling media and technology, accelerating the climate crisis, privatizing public goods and services, and violating human and workers’ rights,” all made the list. The ITUC plans to continue to update the list with new “market-leading” companies and evidence. “While these seven corporations are among the most egregious underminers of democracy, they are hardly alone,” the ITUC noted.
The “corporate underminers of democracy” are:
- Amazon.com, Inc.
- Blackstone Group
- ExxonMobil
- Glencore
- Meta
- Tesla
- The Vanguard Group
OLIVIA ROSANE; olivia@commondreams.org
Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Rosane told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “It doesn’t surprise me that these companies are on the list. With Amazon especially, we know there has been an internal undermining of democracy at the company.” ITUC said that Amazon headed the list due to its union-busting activities, as well as its low wages, monopolistic e-commerce, carbon emissions, tax evasion, and lobbying.
With some of the companies, their role in undermining democracy might not be as obvious. “With the placement of ExxonMobil as number 3, for instance,” Rosane said, “I hadn’t thought about [the way that ExxonMobil has] spread misinformation as undermining democracy. The way that Exxon has stopped action on the climate crisis, and contributed to migration and weather events, is an environmental crime…. Exxon was not only harming the environment but also undermining democracy by undermining our ability to make a collective decision about this situation for so many years.
“Moreover, because of the way that our Western-style democracies are run, corporate power has intense lobbying influence. Organizing is the only way that workers have any lobbying power. If we nominally live in a democracy, but you don’t have a union at work, then you can’t stand up for yourself or your rights at work. That means you’re functionally not living in a democracy. So how these companies treat their workers affects not only the overall democracy but the internal democracy of the workplace.”