Violence: Analysis, Intervention, and Prevention

Chapter 6: Understanding and Preventing Corporate Violence and Abusive Behavior in the Workplace

121 6 Understanding and Preventing Corporate Violence and Abusive Behavior in the Workplace Enron, under the leadership of Kenneth Lay, developed into an enormous trading firm in electricity and natural gas, among other commodities. Fortune Magazine listed Enron seventh out of five hundred of the largest corporations in the United States valued by the stock market at over $50 billion. Enron was under pressure to deliver even more wealth for its shareholders. The firm applied aggressive accounting strategies to achieve the desired effect. Enron’s failure in 2001 to disclose detailed information of its inflated share earnings and partnership transactions with Merrill Lynch, Arthur Andersen, Citibank, and JP Morgan Chase led to its collapse. Enron went bankrupt, with debts of $31.8 billion and leaving more than four thousand people jobless . The courts and shareholders accused Lay of hiding billions of dollars of losses and of lying about the state of the energytrading firm (Salter 2008).  | Chapter 6 This chapter focuses on violence by corporations and violence in the workplace. Our global ecology is devastated daily by a myriad of environmental problems caused by multinational corporations. Even as China develops into a formidable economic power, international corporations in the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) dump industrial waste deposits into the Yangtze River, polluting the water and decimating the fish population (Homer-Dixon 2007). Air pollution from corporations using fossil fuels creates acid rain, which is destroying large tracts of forests in Canada and in the Black Forest in Germany (Klare 2002). Corporations also restrict development in developing countries that are dependent on the corporations for manufacturing investment and technology; the global South is forced to cut down its forests to repay foreign debt, which results in deforestation and hunger (Klare 2008). Countries in the global South also depend on the development of a few products in a global marketplace, which creates economic vulnerability for poorer countries (Jeong 2005). Corporations mold public opinion through advertising campaigns and hide information from the public (Clinard and Yeager 1990; Mokhiber 1989). In the United States, the tobacco industry blocked numerous attempts by the government and the public to ban the marketing of tobacco. Corporations also sell unsafe pharmaceutical products and contaminated foodstuffs to developing countries in which legal remedies banning such goods are lax (Homer-Dixon 2001). Local communities have organized to resist the power of the corporations. Baldemar Val ásquez founded the Farm Labor Organizing Committee to organize migrant workers in the United States to nonviolently protest against agribusiness for fair wages and improved working conditions. César Chávez created the United Farm Workers union to inform the American public that pollutant weed killers were poisoning consumers as well as the migrant grape pickers (Reza and Barger 1994). Violence against the environment is also reflected in the lack of environmental laws in the global South that permits developed countries to cheaply sell garbage and radioactive material to corrupt governments, poison water supplies with pharmaceuticals from factories, and sell antipersonnel mines that kill and maim children, women, and the elderly (Klare 2008). Understanding and Preventing Corporate Violence |  Corporate violence is also directed against the worker so that unsafe working conditions and a competitive work environment promote violence in the workplace (Mokhiber 1989). Sexual harassment and workplace bullying are grave issues that impair the health of employees (Gill, Fisher, and Bowie 2002). Discriminatory employment practices exclude certain groups such as same-sex couples and veterans from health and pension benefits (Keashly, Trott, and MacLean 1994). Moreover, the recent global economic recession was fueled in part by greedy banks and Ponzi schemes that have brought countries to their knees. Violence in the workplace costs the global economy billions of dollars every year (Gill, Fisher, and Bowie 2002). This chapter outlines some of the underlying causes and results of corporate violence and violence in the workplace and examines an intervention system that explores the range of interventions needed to address corporate violence and workplace violence. Corporate Violence and Violence in the Workplace Clinard and Yeager (1980) argue that corporate violence inflicts air and water pollution on the health of the public and workers as a result of unsafe and defective appliances, drugs, and food. Plant workers are injured on the job by toxic chemicals without adequate safeguards to protect them (Clinard and Yeager 1980, 9). Corporate and other white-collar crime committed by elites are more damaging to society than street crime in terms of...