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News: Revoke UNOCAL's Charter
Press Release Contacts:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Mary Hood
September 10, 1998 Feminist Majority Foundation
213/651-0495
Nick Penniman
Alliance for Democracy
781/259-9395
ENVIRONMENTAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, WOMEN'S AND PRO-DEMOCRACY GROUPS PETITION
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA TO REVOKE UNOCAL'S CHARTER
___________________________________
"State is Soft on Corporate Crime"
Aiming to guard the public from a global oil company which they say is "a
dangerous scofflaw corporation," 30 citizens' organizations and individuals
today filed a 127-page petition seeking action by the California Attorney
General to revoke the charter of the Union Oil Company of California
(Unocal).
Petitions were delivered to California Attorney General Dan Lungren's
Sacramento office and, in simultaneous 11 a.m. press conferences, to his
representatives at his Los Angeles and San Francisco offices.
Outraged over Unocal's business ties with the anti-woman Taliban militia
in Afghanistan and the military dictators of Burma, as well as over the
corporation's record as a "repeat offender" of environmental, labor and
deceptive practices laws and its "usurpation of political power,"
petitioners ask that the attorney general call on a court to revoke the
company's charter, appoint a receiver, and wind up the corporation's
affairs "in order to fully protect jobs, workers, stockholders, unions,
communities, the environment, suppliers, customers, government entities,
and the public interest."
"We're letting the people of California in on a well-kept legal secret,"
said Robert Benson, professor of law at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles,
and lead attorney for the National Lawyers Guild's International Law
Project for Human, Economic and Environmental Defense (HEED) which
prepared the petition. "The people mistakenly assume that we have to try
to control these giant corporate repeat offenders one toxic spill at a
time, one layoff at a time, one human rights violation at a time. But the
law has always allowed the attorney general to go to court to simply
dissolve a corporation for wrongdoing and sell its assets to others who
will operate in the public interest. California attorneys general haven't
often done it because they've become soft on corporate crime. Baseball
players and convicted individuals in California get only three strikes.
Why should big corporations get endless strikes? "
Benson said that the attorney general of New York recently asked a court
to revoke the charters of two corporations that allegedly put out
deceptive scientific research for the tobacco industry, and a judge in
Alabama has asked his state courts to dissolve the tobacco companies
themselves. In California, according to Benson, in 1976 conservative
Republican Attorney General Evelle Younger asked a court to dissolve a
private water company for allegedly delivering impure water to its
customers.
Unocal, the petition alleges on information and belief, was principally
responsible for the notorious 1969 oil blowout in the Santa Barbara
Channel, and since then has grievously polluted multiple sites from San
Francisco to Los Angeles, has been identified as a potentially responsible
party at 82 "Superfund" or similar toxic sites, has committed hundreds of
violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, treats U.S. workers
unethically and unfairly, has usurped political power, has undermined U.S.
foreign policy, and has engaged in a pattern of illegal deceptions of the
courts, stockholders and the public.
Additionally, the groups allege, Unocal has been complicit in "unspeakable"
human rights violations perpetrated by foreign governments with which it has
business ties in Afghanistan and Burma. The company's dealings with the
Taliban militia in Afghanistan, known for its extremely cruel treatment of
women, have particularly enraged women's groups.
Katherine Spillar, national coordinator for the Feminist Majority
Foundation, one of the petitioning groups, denounced Unocal for its
business dealings with the Taliban to build a gas pipeline which would
bring the regime revenue and legitimacy. "If Unocal thinks it can do
business with a regime that, in effect, denies women their right to exist
as human beings, then we think Unocal's privilege to exist as a
corporation must also be denied," commented Spillar.
Other petitioning organizations include the National Organization for
Women (NOW), Rainforest Action Network, Global Exchange, Earth Island
Institute, Free Burma Coalition, the Alliance for Democracy, the Program
on Corporations, Law and Democracy, Action Resource Center, Amazon Watch,
Asian/Pacific Gays and Friends, Burma Forum of Los Angeles, Democracy
Unlimited of Humboldt County (California), No Petro-Dollars for SLORC,
Project Maje, Project Underground, Surfers' Environmental Alliance, and
the Transnational Resource and Action Center.
Individual petitioners include feminist attorney Gloria Allred, consumer
advocate and attorney Harvey Rosenfield, Santa Monica City Councilmember
Michael Feinstein, and Randall Hayes, president of Rainforest Action
Network.
Ronnie Dugger, founder of the petitioning group Alliance for Democracy,
former editor and publisher of the Texas Observer newspaper, and a
biographer of Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, helped edit the Unocal
petition, and noted: "This is an historic event. It is the first
broad-based effort of this century to use the people's sovereign authority
over a corporation chartered by one of our states to terminate its
privilege to do business. It is a step toward regaining actual democratic
control over these giant corporations we've created."
The petition credits as its inspiration a 1993 pamphlet by Richard
Grossman and Frank Adams, "Taking Care of Business: Citizenship and the
Charter of Incorporation." Grossman, co-founder of the Program on
Corporations, Law and Democracy, one of the petitioning groups, said
Thursday that the courts have "always held that corporations are
artificial entities, 'mere creatures of the state,' and must be summoned
to answer to the people for usurpations of power and violations of the
public trust such as those repeatedly committed by the Union Oil Company
of California."
###
Editor's Note: To arrange interviews with Professor Robert Benson of Loyola
Law School, Kathy Spillar of the Feminist Majority Foundation, Ronnie Dugger
of the Alliance for Democracy or other members of the coalition please
contact
Mary Hood (213/651-0495) or Nick Penniman (781/259-9395). The 127-page
petition is available on the HEED website at http://www.heed.net.
ADDENDUM 1: THE PETITION'S THESES ABOUT CORPORATIONS
Here, with page references in parentheses, are the petition's ten theses
concerning democratic power over law-breaking corporations in general.
THESIS 1: "The courts have consistently held that corporations are 'mere
creatures of the state,' and as U.S. Supreme Court Justice White said in
1978about corporations: 'The state need not permit its own creation to
consume it.'" (2, and see 19-20)
THESIS 2: "Corporations like Unocal claim legal rights as 'persons' under
the law, yet if they were real persons their many 'strikes' would have put
them 'out' of social action permanently." (4)
THESIS 3: "It is hardly a radical or drastic notion that some
corporations should be permanently prevented from doing harm. The state
permanently revokes the privilege to do business of accountants, doctors,
lawyers and others licensed by the state--hundreds of them every year."
(4) "Banks can be seized by the state and liquidated. Insurance companies
may have their certificates of authority revoked. All fifty states and
the District of Columbia have statutes providing for revocation of
corporate charters. The statutes codify the English common law of quo
warranto...meaning by what authority." (21)
THESIS 4: "Why, then, are so few corporate charters revoked in
California, and relatively few across the nation?..Our attorneys general
and our governors have been soft on corporate crime...Now it is seldom
even mentioned that corporate charters are legally revocable." (5, 8)
"Most of us proceed as if the state is limited to fighting corporate
abuses one pollutant at a time, one layoff at a time, one human rights
violation at a time. The public is shammed into believing that government
is trying to govern corporations when in fact the giant recidivist
corporations have figured out how to make their anti- social acts
tolerated by society." (23, 24)
THESIS 5: "..(T)he root of the problem [is] corporate power over sovereign,
democratic people...The [late 19th Century American] Populists tough program
to subordinate corporate power to the will of the people was eroded by
Progressive and New Deal regulatory 'protections' that protected large
corporations..." (12)
THESIS 6: "Corporations today operate out of control as private
governments, more powerful than nation-states...The de facto reality is
that modern day corporations have become entities unto themselves, a
privately-owned company 'can be validly termed a 'private government'
whose power is not responsible or accountable to anyone.'" (14, 15)
"...corporate entities exercise power across borders, in ways which
supercede state control...powers which have not been given to them through
a democratic process but which have been grasped through economic
dominance." (30)
THESIS 7: "...only the full resources of the state will be adequate to
challenge a corporation of Unocal's wealth and size. If the state were to
tell petitioners that they may sue Unocal directly themselves...that would
be a cynical message that the Attorney General, abdicating his
responsibility to protect the public, will nevertheless allow them to go
into the lion's den themselves, armed with sticks." (36)
THESIS 8: The California Unfair Competition Act "incorporates
international law since '(f)rom the earliest days of this republic our
international obligations have been considered part of controlling common
law.' Thus violations of international law that take place thousands of
miles overseas by California corporations are also violations of
California law, actionable here. This is not theory, but hard California
law." (38)
THESIS 9: Even under incorporation statutes "liberalized" in the race for
the laxest state regulation of corporations, "corporate activity must
be...'lawful,' ...and...always in accord with the public policy of the
state...The [latter] limit is inherent in the common law doctrine of
California that the law may never be construed to authorize violations of
public policy." (40)
THESIS 10: Advanced in the context of Unocal: "The State of California,
which granted the Union Oil Company of California existence, possesses the
greatest responsibility to protect the public from the goliath it created."
(40-41)
ADDENDUM 2: SUMMARY OF PETITION'S 10 COUNTS AGAINST UNOCAL
Here is a summary of the petitioners' ten-count "Case Against Unocal," with
page numbers in parentheses.
ONE. Ecocide; Environmental Devastation.
Being in the oil and gas business, Unocal owed the public "a duty of care,"
which it has failed. "The company's environmental devastation extends from
local to global and is serious enough to describe as ecocide...[In
California]
Unocal has demonstrated a pattern and practice of polluting the locations
where it operates...Unocal has proved itself an incorrigible recidivist
environmental polluter." Illustrations are given concerning an 18-mile
stretch of coastline between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara County,
concerning which Unocal has just agreed to pay $44 million, exclusive of the
costs of clean-up. Concerning pollution from its refinery in Rodeo,
California, the company paid $3 million in criminal and civil fines to the
county in 1995 and in 1997 agreed to pay $80 million to settle private
lawsuits for 18,000 individuals. Other offenses are recited. (42-52)
TWO. Unfair and Unethical Treatment of Workers.
Becoming a global company, Unocal has sold off its U.S. refineries and
gasoline stations to finance expanding oil and gas production overseas,
abandoning past and future generations of workers and moving into repressive
countries "where the company could exploit cheap and even slave foreign
labor.
While this is an increasingly typical story as U.S. companies move offshore
abetted by free trade agreements and cheered on by extremist economic
ideologues, it is not an ethical story, nor one that the People of the State
of California, represented by the Attorney General, must sit cross-legged
listening to." This count also reviews the company's hundreds of violations
of federal health and safety workplace rules. (54-58)
THREE THROUGH SEVEN: Complicity in Crimes Against Humanity
THREE. Aiding Oppression of Women.
"Unocal has initiated business dealings with a repressive rebel military
force
in Afghanistan infamous for gross violations of human rights." As lead
partner, with $54.11% interest, in the Centgas consortium for the future
construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to
Pakistan and, potentially, India, Unocal opened negotiations with the
Taliban,
"a militia faction of Muslin extremists in a nation at civil war."
"At gunpoint, the Taliban have enforced the most oppressive regime of gender
apartheid known to the world, banning girls from going to school, banning
women from attending university, prohibiting women from holding jobs,
requiring women to be accompanied at all times in public by a male member of
their immediate families, requiring women to be covered from head to toe in
a
'burqa' with only a small mesh facial openings...requiring windows of homes
with women to be darkened...Women cannot be treated by male doctors, women
are
forced to seek care at a primitive women's hospital with limited supplies,
only a few beds, and no running water. For violation of the Taliban's harsh
edicts women have been beaten, shot at, publicly flogged, tortured, and even
killed."
"As a collaborator with the Taliban, Unocal has become an integral
participant
in the ongoing violation of the human rights of Afghanistan's entire female
population...The Taliban stand to collect $50 million to $100 million a year
in transit fees if the pipeline is built."
A company denial that it was dealing with the Taliban is said by the
petitioners not to square with reputable press accounts. In July 1998 the
company acknowledged that the CentGas consortium deals "with all factions in
Afghanistan." In late August after the U.S. dropped missiles on an alleged
terrorist camp in Afghanistan the company "suspended" all activities
concerning the proposed pipeline and said it would not go forward on it
until
the U.S. recognizes a government in the country. (60-70, 107, 122)
FOUR. Aiding Oppression of Homosexuals.
In Afghanistan, "Taliban policy is to put anyone convicted of homosexual
sodomy to death by burying them alive under mud walls pushed over them by a
bulldozer. Two homosexuals were recently executed in this fashion. Three
others who were still alive 30 minutes after a wall was pushed over them
were
allowed to live, with broken bones.....
"Doing business with the Taliban unavoidably supports their regime of
torture
and death for homosexuals, just as doing business with Nazi Germany
supported
the ovens of the Holocaust," the petition states. (71, 72)
FIVE. Enslavement and Forced Labor.
Unocal has formed a business enterprise with the illegal military
dictatorship
of Burma to build a natural gas pipeline across a civil war zone in the
country. That dictatorship set aside election results that went 82% for its
opposition in 1990. Unocal's interest in the pipeline consortium is 28.16%.
The military dictatorship (SLORC) has confiscated land, relocated villages,
and destroyed rainforest and other habitat for the pipeline; and Unocal "has
profited from the use of forced and slave labor" by the military
dictatorship
and "knew or should have known and could have reasonably foreseen that its
military partner would use forced labor to clear the land for the pipeline
route, build related infrastructure in the area, and provide security for
the
pipeline." U.S. State Department reports on forced labor in Burma are
quoted.
Human Rights Watch/Asia estimates that since 1992 at least two million
people
have been forced to work without pay on roads, railways, and bridges across
Burma. Unocal says there has never been forced labor on the pipeline itself
and the company would not countenance it. (77-85)
SIX. Forced Relocations of Burmese Villages and Villagers.
"Unocal has knowingly profited from the large-scale forcible relocation of
Burmese villages and villagers without compensation," the petition alleges.
(86)
SEVEN. Killings, Torture and Rape.
"Unocal's military business partner [in Burma] has committed widespread
killings, torture, and rapes....Unocal has to have known that it was dealing
with a notorious outlaw regime condemned worldwide for heinous human rights
violations." U.S. State Department and U.N. Commission on Human Rights
reports are quoted concerning, respectively, credible reports of soldiers
"extrajudicial killings and rape" and "extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary
executions and enforced disappearances, torture, abuse of women and children
by government agents." According to the petition, "Unocal knew or should
have
known that SLORC security for the pipeline would lead to human rights
violations and death." (90-96)
EIGHT. Complicity in Gradual Cultural Genocide of Tribal and Indigenous
Peoples.
In the case of the Lubicon Cree people of Canada, Unocal has operated the
Slave Lake oil and gas field since 1981; Slave Lake lies in the Lubicon
Cree's
traditional lands. In the summer of 1994, despite U.N. attempts to protect
the Lubicon Cree people from development impinging on their lands, Unocal
built a $10 million sour gas plant, which smells like rotten eggs, a little
more than a mile upwind from the boundary of the proposed reserve which the
Lubicon Cree and the government of Canada had previously agreed upon. "The
Lubicon Cree believe their traditional economy has been deliberately
destroyed
by the governments of Canada and Alberta as part of a legal strategy. In
this
context, Unocal is complicit as a joint participant...in accomplishing a
gradual cultural genocide." (97-101)
Concerning principally the Karen and Mon tribes in Burma, "Unocal knew or
should have known and could have reasonably foreseen that its military
partner
would intensify its civil war against the tribal peoples of the pipeline
region." (102-103)
NINE. Usurpation of Political Power.
Unocal has "usurped" political power "that it cannot, by its corporate
nature,
exercise" and has aggressively undermined democratic processes at home and
abroad. In Burma and Afghanistan it has taken sides "with brutal human
rights abusers, giving them legitimacy, defending them publicly, working
with
them." In Burma, acting in hostile opposition to the democratically elected
government, Unocal has worked "to subvert the Burmese people's right to
self-
determination." Unocal "has decided to become a global economic and
political
force unto itself," "deploys diplomats as if it were the State Department
itself," and "works to thwart U.S. foreign policy."
One of Unocal's business partners in Burma, wholly owned by the government,
is
accused of being "the main channel for laundering the revenues of heroin"
exported from Burma under control of the Burmese army, and in Afghanistan,
according to the U.S. State Department, the Taliban "claim to forbid drug
use
but they control the opium growing lands and collect a tax from opium
farmers." Yet Unocal management sought strenuously to block its
stockholders' consideration of its business partner's alleged laundering of
drug money in Burma. (105-113)
TEN. Deception of the Courts, Shareholders, and the Public.
Unocal "has exhibited a pattern of deceiving the courts, its shareholders,
and
the public about its activities." In 1996 a federal district judge found
that
a Unocal paralegal, with either the tacit or overt approval of her
superiors,
altered data, withheld information, and gave false responses in verified
court
documents. Unocal, contrary to press reports, told its investors and the
public that it was not doing business with any party in Afghanistan. Unocal
is one of a number of oil companies alleged to have defrauded the public out
of hundreds of millions of dollars by underpaying oil royalties due from
leases on public lands. (114-119)
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Box 2104, Venice, CA 90294
310.396.3254 (voice) * 310.392.9965 (fax)
arcla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mission: To spearhead and support campaigns
that protect the environment, human rights and
social justice; and to provide training and
coordination for grassroots organizing, education
and non-violent direct action.
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