According to George Bush and many other prominent US politicians the downfalls of Enron and World Com have laid the basis for a new era of corporate responsibility.
Tighter federal legislation is now in the pipeline seeking to curtail the forms of 'creative' accounting which led to the Enron/World Com collapse and the possibility of other corporations following in their wake.
This conversion to the creed of 'corporate responsibility' is really about calming the nerves of Middle America. Millions of US citizens who invested in the stock market during the 90s have seen their investments diminished by the bursting of the dotcom bubble and by the more recent economic uncertainty which was exacerbated by the September 11 events.
This corporate responsibility though will not extend the US labour market. The labour market will remain highly deregulated with pitifully low rates of unionisation especially in the private sector. US Trade Unions remain shackled by the restrictions of the Taft Hartley Act, similar in scope to Thatcher's anti trade union laws in Britain.
If the new era of US 'corporate responsibility' will not extend to the domestic labour force it will extend even less to workers and communities worldwide. At present foreign nationals can sue US corporations in the federal courts for their alleged corporate crimes and malpractise abroad.
This can be done under Alien Tort Claims Act passed way back in 1789 and the more recent Torture Victims Protection Act. Two leading US corporations, Exxon and Coca Cola have current lawsuits currently pending against them in the federal courts.
Last year the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) and the United Steelworkers of America filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Colombian trade union SINALTRAINAL alleging collusion between the owners of Coca Cola's bottling plant in Colombia and Colombian paramilitaries in the intimidation and murder of trade union activists.
This case is still pending but an alarming twist has taken place in a similar lawsuit recently filed by the ILRF on behalf of 11 individuals from the Indonesian province of Aceh. Aceh is currently the site of armed conflict between the Indonesian state and local guerillas fighting for self determination for the province.
The lawsuit alleges that Indonesian soldiers paid by Exxon to protect an Exxon owned natural gas plant in Aceh were responsible for the murder, torture and intimadation of local villagers and that Exxon was fully complicit in this.
The alarming twist is that the judge presiding over the case asked the US State Department to submit a report stating whether or not it believed the lawsuit would harm US interests abroad if the case went against Exxon.
Not surprisingly the statement by the State Department argued that it would, stating the harm that would be caused to US-Indonesian relations, that US corporations would be discouraged from investing abroad etc etc if the case proceeded and went against Exxon.
Already a previous case has been dismissed in the federal court concerning corporate malpractise in Papua New Guinea on the grounds that proceeding would harm 'US interests'.
There is therefore a real possibility that the case against Exxon could be dismissed which Exxon is now itself arguing for.
No one with the most rudimentary understanding of the nature of imperialism will be surprised of the inherent bias in the US or legal system in favour of its own ruling class.
What though is surprising is the completely open and transparent way that the US ruling class is now prepared to interfere into the workings of its own legal system inorder to protect its interests.
Online Links
www.cokewatch.org - a website monitoring the wrongdoings of Coca Cola.
www.insideindonesia.org - left website dealing with current issues in Indonesia including the adverse activities of Exxon in Aceh.
www.laborrights.org - website of the International Labor Rights Fund.