The Ten Worst Northeast Wisconsin Corporations Of 2004

By Tony Palmeri

January 1, 2005

With 2004 being the most important election year in a generation, candidates for office at all levels were presented with a golden opportunity to put forth and promote corporate reform initiatives. Not surprisingly given the ugly realities of campaign financing and corporate media interest in maintaining the status quo, the opportunity was for the most part missed. At the presidential level, John Kerry's corporate "reform" agenda consisted of more tax breaks for big business in return for a promise to quit outsourcing. Among candidates on the ballot in enough states to obtain an electoral majority, only Ralph Nader and the Greens' David Cobb articulated the need to reign in corporate dominance as THE issue of the 21st century. Yet in the "Anyone But Bush" induced hysteria of 2004, Nader and Cobb were barely heard.

In Wisconsin, we have a "Democratic" governor Jim Doyle who has championed the big business agenda in ways unimaginable even under Republican Tommy Thompson. Had Thompson advocated for and signed the "Job Creation Act" or the "Single Sales Factor" tax formula for big business, Democratic party leaders would have rightfully lambasted him for burying Wisconsin's progressive tradition under a pile of campaign contributions.

Like most of the country, northeast Wisconsin suffers from an over abundance of elected officials and municipal administrators who neither understand nor wish to understand the ways in which corporate power exploits the region's environment and workforce in the interest of the bottom line. None of the corporations mentioned below did anything illegal in 2004 (at least not to my knowledge); the problem with these as with most corporations that make the "worst of" list is what they do legally.

And now the list:

No. 10: It's The Consulting Fees, Stupid. LDR International. Now owned by engineering firm HNTB, LDR International is the outfit that in 2000 was contracted to write a downtown design and development plan for the city of Oshkosh. The Oshkosh Area Community Foundation, the Oshkosh Commercial Development Corporation, and the city of Oshkosh contributed $25,000 each for the plan. End of story, right?

Wrong. In 2004 the Oshkosh Northwestern reported that from mid-2001 to late 2003, LDR had billed the city for more than $219,000. From the Northwestern report:

Without a doubt the architects and engineers employed at places like LDR are dedicated to the cause of urban renewal. But under the guise of including "the people" in discussions of how to redevelop a city, such outfits in reality are "behind the scenes" players more comfortable working with bureaucrats. If "the people" had their way, there's no way LDR would have escaped with $219,000 while the city lost its public pool due to lack of funds to maintain it.

No. 9: A Preemptive "Worst Of" Award: Journal Communications. In October Milwaukee based Journal Communications announced plans to purchase WGBA-TV (channel 26), the NBC affiliate in Green Bay, for $43 million. Journal Communications owns the state's largest circulation daily newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, along with 38 radio stations and 6 television stations in 11 states. The Green Bay/Fox Valley market is the second largest in Wisconsin, meaning that Journal Communications now has access to huge segments of the information seeking public.

Journal Communications did not do anything particularly horrendous in northeast Wisconsin in 2004 (other than be horribly mediocre like most other corporate media in the state). So why give them a "worst of?" Because the company has indicated that it will seek even more expansion in this region. In October, Journal management said it will buy Appleton's WACY if Federal Communications Commission rules are changed to allow ownership of two TV stations in a television market the size of Green Bay/Appleton. Do you think we will be seeing fair (or ANY) coverage of protest against FCC rules changes on Journal Communications networks in 2005?

No. 8: A Civic Wasteland. Cumulus Broadcasting. I've been meaning to put Cumulus on the "worst of" list for a couple of years, but figured that their right wing slant, unimaginative programming, and bottom line approach to broadcasting were so obvious already that to mention them in such a list would serve only to waste space. Perhaps the low point for Cumulus was in 2003, when Dixie Chicks music was banned at all 42 of their country music stations while a pile of the band's CDs were symbolically demolished at a Cumulus sponsored war rally in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Cumulus defended its trashing of the Dixie Chicks as "deference to our listeners" offended by lead singer Natalie Maines' public criticism of president Bush. In northeast Wisconsin in 2004, one must wonder if Cumulus' horrible coverage (or lack thereof) of local political races was in "deference to our listeners" or in contempt of them. I can speak from some personal experience on this: running a highly visible Green Party campaign for Oshkosh's 54th assembly district, I was interviewed only one time by Cumulus' local "news" station (WOSH-AM), and that was for a few sound bites used in a brief story about my entry into the race in April. There was no live interview, little to no coverage of campaign forums, and no opportunities for listeners to call in.

No. 7: Local Halliburton. CR Meyer Construction. When the Elmer Leach Foundation announced last year that it was giving the city of Oshkosh a gift in the form of a band shell to be placed in the downtown Riverside Park, taxpayers never dreamed that the end result would be a multi-million dollar amphitheatre project. Rather than seek to fund the project privately, as has been done with great success in the city of Sheboygan's riverfront development and even in Oshkosh in the case of the renovated Titan-Stadium, five members of the Oshkosh Common Council insisted that public dollars must be used for the amphitheatre project.

The financing of the amphitheatre project has not passed the smell test from the beginning, but in late 2004 the stench became overwhelming when an anonymous donation of $1 million toward building restrooms and concession stands somehow led to the City Council passing a resolution to waive competitive bidding requirements and award a contract to CR Meyer Construction. It is easy to understand why the 5 members of the Common Council, all of whom have shown little regard for taxpayers in their votes on this project from the beginning, would vote to waive bidding requirements. But one has to wonder why CR Meyer would accept such terms. Were/are they not confident of their ability to prevail in the competitive bidding process? Do they have a special relationship with the anonymous donor? What conversations were held between CR Meyer and city officials before the anonymous donation was announced? These and other questions must be raised whenever a governmental body suspends rules that were put in place to protect taxpayers.

Vice-President Cheney's former company Halliburton has been embroiled in controversy in part because it has received no-bid contracts from the US Army Corp of Engineers to perform tasks in Iraq. But at least it can be said in Halliburton's defense that it is one of the only outfits with the technical expertise to handle the complex needs in Iraq. In Oshkosh, we are being asked to accept the idea that somehow only CR Meyer is qualified to handle a contaminated work site and build bathrooms and concession stands consistent in design with the rest of the amphitheatre project. All this while the Executive Editor of the Gannett owned local newspaper refers to critics of the project as "cobblestoners." So we have a no bid contract, an uncritical and cooperative government, and a critic-bashing press: is that not the definition of a backwater Banana Republic?

No. 6: No Shame. Federal Signal Corporation. An all too familiar story: company with deep historic roots to a city sold to an out of town corporation that is "committed" to keeping jobs in that city. The commitment turns out to be a sham and almost 200 people lose their jobs. All this happened to employees of the former Leach Company (an Oshkosh based operation for more than 115 years), betrayed by a corporation (Federal Signal) that assumed control of the company in 2002.

Mike Helf, a 38 year Leach employee, told the Oshkosh Northwestern: "It's a shame what corporate America can do to people now . . . Realistically, who's going to hire a 50-year-old guy who's smart and knows what he's doing, but has done the same job for 30 years?"

No. 5: No $urprise. Aurora Health Care. Before Aurora Health Care opened a 320,000 square foot hospital in Oshkosh in 2003, health care industry watchdogs predicted rising costs for businesses and private consumers. Such a prediction was not difficult to make, as the experience of Aurora in Green Bay and other locations demonstrated the negative effects of their entry into the market. Representatives of the already existing Oshkosh hospital, Mercy Medical Center, also predicted rising costs.

While Mercy Medical Center (run by Affinity Health Care) is hardly a paragon of health care virtue and concern for consumers, the fact of the matter is that the Aurora facility simply was not needed. Competition in health care produces rising costs, and now local businesses, municipal government, and private consumers are essentially paying for what Aurora introduced into the region. Margie Harvey, vice president of human resources at Miles Kimball Co., told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that, "The other hospital [Mercy] has really suffered, and we now are trying to pay for duplicative equipment and staff and building costs when only one hospital is needed."

No. 4: Genuine Sweatshop Article. Oshkosh B'Gosh. It's truly amazing how many visitors to Oshkosh assume that Oshkosh B'Gosh products are still manufactured in the United States. In the interest of the bottom line, B'Gosh long ago left Oshkosh flat, leaving only the corporate suits here--they that claim to love the "tradition" of Oshkosh yet could not even grace the city with some convention business for their 2004 annual meeting. The meeting was held in Minneapolis.

B'Gosh's attempt to market itself as a "family values" driven company is betrayed by the harsh conditions endured by third-world laborers of the company's product line. A report issued in late 2003 by the National Labor Committee detailed the horrors at the Hanchang Textiles plant in El Salvador. The report exposes excessively high production goals: "Each worker had to sew 34 pairs of Oshkosh children's pants a day, while being paid just 19 cents for each pair they sewed. Workers' wages come to less than 9/10ths of one percent of the retail price."

In October B'Gosh opened a new family store in Rancho Cucamonga, California. One has to wonder what the Salvadoran sweatshop workers would think if they could hear CEO Doug Hyde's words to mark the opening: "The heritage of the Oshkosh B'Gosh brand is rooted in family values and the American family spirit. We're proud to continue this legacy through the products we offer, the way we do business, and by giving back to the community."

No. 3: Misfortune #2. Georgia Pacific Corporation. In 2004 the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst released an updated version of its "Misfortune 100" list. The Misfortune 100 are the nation's top polluters as determined by a rigorous set of criteria. According to the PERI website, "The 'Misfortune 100' index is based on air releases of hundreds of toxic chemicals from industrial facilities located across the United States. The rankings take into account not only the quantity of releases, but also the relative toxicity of different chemicals and the number of people at risk." Based on the criteria, the Georgia Pacific Corporation ranked second on the list, topped only by General Electric.

In 2004 Georgia Pacific made little meaningful progress toward reducing toxic emissions, but they did invest $61 million into their Green Bay operation due to what spokesman Russ McCollister called Wisconsin's "improved business climate." McCollister told the Green Bay Press Gazette that "The state's effort to balance its budget without a tax increase, to streamline its regulatory permitting process and to change its energy tax-credit rules all contributed to the company's conclusion that Wisconsin has become a friendlier place to do business." In other words, under Jim The New Democrat Doyle's rollback of the state's environmental laws, Georgia Pacific is free to operate without concern that the Misfortune 100 Index ranking will have any consequences for the company's bottom line.

No. 2: Porkin' Unbelievable. Paper Industry International Hall of Fame, Inc. In November the US Congress passed a 1,690 page Omnibus Spending Package--probably read by few members of Congress who voted on it--that included a provision giving the chairmen of the Appropriations Committees and their staff assistants the authority to access the income tax returns of any American.

The offensive provision was eventually removed, but millions of dollars of pork in the $388 billion bill remained intact. Included was $75,000 for the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton. According to the Hall of Fame website, "The Hall of Fame was founded to identify, honor and enshrine those distinctive individuals worldwide who have contributed in a major way to the development of the paper industry and its technology." Apparently the Hall of Fame has little use for stories of the abuse of mill workers during much of the industry's history or the dumping of PCBs into the Fox River. According to Hall of Fame Chairman George Mueller (retired CEO of Wisconsin Tissue Mills), the Hall honors "the foresight of industry's entrepreneurs and innovators, kindling the imaginations of those destined to shape it's (sic) future."

Are we to believe that the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame, an outfit controlled by and dedicated to some of the wealthiest Wisconsinites, needed $75,000 in taxpayer money to sustain operations? Porkin' unbelievable.

No. 1: How Much Is Enough? The Gannett Corporation. With its 2004 purchase of Brown County Publishing and its flagship daily the Green Bay News Chronicle, Gannett now holds a print media monopoly in northeast Wisconsin. That means the entire region is now saturated with print journalism coming from a company for which underreporting and editorial mediocrity are hallmarks. Arguably the Gannett low point in northeast Wisconsin in 2004 was the Appleton Post-Crescent's attempt to recruit "pro-Bush" letters to the editor. In a May 4th editorial, after explaining that letters to the editor are a way to "take the political and social temperature of the Valley," the paper said:

Recently, though, as the race for president heats up, we've been dealing with this quandary: How can we balance the perspectives and topics of our letters when many of our submissions have been coming only from one side?

We've been getting more letters critical of President Bush than those that support him. We're not sure why, nor do we want to guess. But in today's increasingly polarized political environment, we would prefer our offering to put forward a better sense of balance.

It seems never to have occurred to the editorialists that thousands of lost manufacturing jobs, tax cuts for the rich and huge budget deficits, and an Iraq quagmire might move the Valley's "political and social temperature" against Bush. A week later the newspaper made a lame attempt to argue that May 4th editorial was in part a response to reader concerns that the paper was only publishing letters from one side of the aisle and that "we weren't clear enough in our intent." Not surprisingly, the Post-Crescent ended up endorsing George W. Bush for president.

Sloppy reporting and editorializing aside, the real question for Gannett is the same one posed by Bud Fox to Gordon Gecko in Oliver Stone's corporate greed morality play, Wall St.: How much is enough?

Conclusion: A Dedication To Lou Dobbs

I'd like to dedicate this year's list of northeast Wisconsin's worst corporation to none other than CNN's Lou Dobbs. The veteran business reporter/analyst over the last several years has become--somewhat surprisingly--America's most visible critic of the outsourcing phenomenon. In addition to addressing the topic frequently and critically on his evening program, Dobbs maintains on his webpage an "outsourcing America" list of corporations that engage in the practice. The number of companies with northeast Wisconsin operations that appear on Dobbs' outsourcing list is shocking (go to the link for "List on Companies Exporting Jobs" on Dobbs' site): http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/

Dobbs also informed readers of his site that the same congressional budget bill that gave committee chairs the power to check Americans' tax returns (see Paper Industry International Hall of Fame above) mandates a study of the effects of outsourcing on the American worker. He wrote, "If Congress thinks it can gain something from reading individual tax returns, imagine what it can discover from studying the impact of exporting jobs overseas."

Finally, it is significant that three of the corporations mentioned on the 10 worst list (Journal Communications, Cumulus Broadcasting, Gannett) are representative of corporate media. Concerned primarily with the bottom-line, corporate media fail to serve as watchdogs over big business and government. For every one Lou Dobbs asking serious questions about corporate behavior, there are dozens who remain silent or act as apologists for corporate actions. Proposed changes in FCC media ownership guidelines could make the problem even worse. The only solution is for concerned citizens to support credible independent and alternative media.

For past TonyPalmeri.Com editions of the worst corporations of the year,check the following links:

• http://www.tonypalmeri.com/11worst.htm
• http://www.tonypalmeri.com/worstof2002.htm
• http://www.tonypalmeri.com/worstof2003.htm

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