The ‘Big Seven’ companies threatening democracy

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Amazon, Tesla, Meta, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, Vanguard and Glencore: these are the multinational corporations accused of being “underminers of democracy” in the report released on Monday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), a confederation of trade unions representing more than 191 million workers in 169 countries. 

The report highlights the companies’ CO2 emissions, working conditions and anti-union activities, support for authoritarian leaders from Trump to Milei and Modi, spreading far-right propaganda and obstructionism against privacy laws.

The report warns against the attempts by the lobbying arms of these companies to influence global policies being discussed at the U.N. Summit of the Future. According to ITUC director of campaigns and organizing Todd Brogan, these corporations, which in many cases are “more powerful than states” and “have no democratic accountability whatsoever, except for workers organized,” are “playing the long game, and it’s a game about shifting power away from democracy at every level into one where they’re not concerned about the effects on workers – they’re concerned about maximizing their influence and their extractive power and their profit.”

It's no surprise that the list includes one of Elon Musk's companies, Tesla; at the same time, on Monday, he presented Giorgia Meloni with the Atlantic Council's annual Global Citizen award. Also on Monday, another of the seven, ExxonMobil, came under fire from the state of California, whose Attorney General Bonta filed a lawsuit against the company for “deceiving the public … for decades” on plastic recycling, which triggered a pollution crisis due to plastics released into the environment.

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Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/le-7-big-che-minacciano-la-democrazia on 2024-09-24