Nader's Antibusiness Bust

Demonstrations by press release against corporate America

The organizers were remarkably heterogeneous: Ralph Nader and his allies among union leaders, politicians and economists, but also Actor Ed Asner and Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. The cause: taking a poke at U.S. corporations on April 17, "Big Business Day." The place: demonstrations at 150 cities around the country. The charges: from the predictable (pollution, consumer gouging, union busting, governmental corruption) to the obscure (opposing the Equal Rights Amendment, causing high taxes and spoiling New York City's subway system). The reaction: a fairly large yawn.

Big Business Day organizers last week bypassed New York City, the epicenter of corporate America, as too diffuse to be attacked. Instead they trained their guns on a Washington gathering in the Cannon House Office Building. Some moments in the daylong affair were moving. Joanna Hale, 26, representing the Love Canal Homeowners' Association, denounced Hooker Chemical Co. for the chemical waste seepage in Niagara Falls, N.Y., that they say made residents ill. Joyce Bichler, who underwent a hysterectomy at 18 because her mother was given the drug DBS during pregnancy to prevent a miscarriage, declared: "Eli Lilly has given me cancer." She has won a $500,000 damage suit against the drug company.

Most of Big Business Day was more predictable. Nader denounced U.S. corporations as "legal Frankensteins" that usurp human rights; a local labor leader declared a union war on business. In the National Visitor Center Gallery at Union Station, a "Corporate Hall of Shame" was erected for eleven companies, including Exxon, Citicorp and Du Pont.

Nader called last week's activities merely the beginning of a long drive to get Congress to pass the Corporate Democracy Act. Aimed at the U.S.'s 800 largest firms, the proposed bill would require a majority of independent directors on corporate boards, extensive public disclosure by companies of pollutant emissions and on-the-job injuries, and a two-year notice for plant closings.

The response from business was irritation, self-defense and what amusement it could afford. Du Pont Chairman Irving S. Shapiro called Big Business Day "an ideological Woodstock." Mobil Vice President Herb Schmertz said it was "demonstration by press release." The U.S. Chamber of Commerce covered the front of its Washington office with gigantic American flags and probusiness signs. "This is obviously a self-serving day by Ralph Nader and some labor leaders," said President Richard Lesher. The conservative Heritage Foundation declared April 17 "Growth Day."

Name-calling aside, businessmen consider the Nader-backed bill dangerous and unworkable. The two-year notification on plant closings, for example, is unfeasible because any talented employees and much business would be lost between announcement and shutdown. Alexander Trowbridge, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, calls the bill "a mixed bag of well-intentioned motives, faulty law and a flawed understanding of how our economic system actually works." Tibor R. Machan, professor of Marxist economics and business ethics at the University of California in Santa Barbara, charged: "This proposed piece of legislation is the abandonment of due process when it comes to dealing with members of the business community. More and more, people in business are regarded as guilty of something or other without having been found guilty." Sparse crowds attended most of the rallies last week. The bill is given little chance of passage soon. qed

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