Multinational Corps

A corporation is a form of business organization where the firm is a legal entity separate from its owners. As corporations grow and become multinational, their interests and influence extend accordingly. The decisions made by these corporations are always made with a primary goal of increasing profits. Needless to say, the decisions taken by corporations often regard public interests as inferior to their own, so many of their decisions have a calamitous impression on the public. The multinational corporations, Wal-Mart, Nike, and Gap, had negative impact on the world through human rights violations, through their control of the media, and by putting smaller local companies out of business.

Corporations are often major violators of human rights. "As human rights advocates begin to address corporate crime, they often do so in the absence of any serious government support. As a result, they are tempted to fall back on voluntary codes of conduct adopted by the corporations themselves. At best, this self-monitoring represents "enlightened self-interest" by companies looking for a stable investment climate. At worst, it is nothing more than a public relations ploy which can set back human rights by providing corporations with cover from public scrutiny. In either case, companies are usually more motivated by their bottom lines, than humanitarian interests. And that makes the free market and its corporate agents rather dubious guarantors of human rights." (Light 1999) Large companies often use or lobby for conditions that result in manipulated international trade pacts and agreements, in order to maximize profits, via things such as cheap labour. (Vander Stichele 1998) This can be seen in the form of sweat shops or child labour in the developing world, which Nike was notorious for. Companies like Nike and Gap argue that they provide jobs for people in developing countries, who wouldn't have a chance of finding work otherwise, and give under privileged people an opportunity to have some income compared to nothing. Although they are providing jobs for people in the third world, it is immoral and cruel because of the extremely poor working conditions that the people are forced to put up with. Furthermore, many corporations, such as Wal-Mart, ban unions that would be able to give a voice to their workers.

Major corporations and its mainstream media are constantly demonizing unions. Even the United States suffers from the denial of worker unions by the corporations. Worker unions are associations of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment. Wal-Mart is well known for its active anti-union stance in North America. Being able to influence and own most media companies, it is hard to be able to publicly debate the notions and ideals that corporations pursue. The ownership of media outlets is becoming increasingly concentrated as mega-mergers take hold, resulting in a reduction of diversity and depth of content that the public can get, while increasing the political and economic power of corporations and advertisers. (McChesney 1999) Another negative aspect of the corporate control of media is that companies see children as an enormous market with incredible purchasing power, which leads to a lot of advertising and marketing targeted directly at them. This can have serious consequences for the children as it teaches them to be consumers from a young age and overly conscious about materialistic things, perhaps even at the expense of human qualities. (Bagdikian 2000) Corporate influence extends beyond manipulation of the general public through the media, corporations also exert a large amount of control over public policy and governments, on international institutions such as the World Trade Organization, as well as international economic and political agreements.

The corporate interests controlling the global economy would like to see all businesses treated on equal terms because of the privileged access these interests have to resources allowing them to out-compete local companies and the short-term costs it would permit them to avoid by ignoring social responsibilities. Therefore, trade agreements, which these global powers have a tremendous influence over, require that domestic companies not be favoured in any way over foreign companies. This aspect of global trade treaties could affect assistance given to small or minority-owned businesses and the ability of governments to choose not to purchase products made in countries with questionable labour, environmental, and human rights records, such as anti-apartheid campaigns against investing in South Africa. (McCann 2002) Thus, corporations have made it nearly impossible for private/family owned businesses to prosper and become