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Shareholders drive probe on
Caterpillar’s Israel sales
By Emad Mekay
Washington, DC, Apr 12 (IPS) --- Activists are calling on fellow
shareholders of US heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar to press officials
to probe the sale of company machinery to the Israeli Army, saying it
violates an internal code of conduct and a US ban on sales of products
that target civilians.
Their shareholder resolution says the Israeli Army has used Caterpillar
machinery, including specially-modified D9 and D10 bulldozers, to level
more than 7,000 Palestinian buildings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
since 1967, leaving 50,000 men, women, and children homeless.
Over the past two years alone the Israeli army used Caterpillar equipment
to rip up hundreds of thousands of olive trees as well as orchards of
dates, prunes, lemons, and oranges, causing widespread economic hardship
and environmental degradation in rural areas of Palestine, it adds.
The resolution, however, does not call on Caterpillar to stop selling
bulldozers to the Israeli military but to probe how the machines are
used.
“The shareholders request that the board of directors appoint a
committee of outside directors to issue a report by Oct. 1, 2004,”
says the resolution.
It also argues that the transactions bring Caterpillar negative “economic
and public relations costs, especially in the United States, Europe,
and Arab countries,” for “an evidently small amount of revenue
derived from these sales.”
The resolution throws doubts on “whether Caterpillar’s directors
can reconcile acquiescence” to the Israeli Army’s use of the
equipment for military purposes and against civilians with the company’s
Code of Worldwide Business Conduct, which states that it “accept
the responsibilities of global citizenship.”
The resolution was filed by Caterpillar shareholders belonging to the
Catholic groups Sisters of Loretto and the Ursuline Sisters.
“We believe that [the Israeli actions] are a violation of the Palestinians’
human rights,” said Sister Valerie Heinonen of the Ursuline Sisters
in a statement.
The move is unique and almost unprecedented, according to the Washington-based
Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), an independent firm
that advises shareholders and institutional investors on voting decisions.
“The thing that’s interesting about this resolution is that
we really haven’t seen shareholder proposals dealing with the Mideast
conflict for at least the last two decades,” said Meg Voorhes,
director of the IRRC’s social issues service.
“So this proposal is, kind of, one of a kind. We do not have a
whole lot of precedent to go on.”
The Illinois-based company has responded in a statement ahead of its
Apr. 14 annual meetings that it has no way of controlling the nearly
two million Caterpillar machines and engines at work in most countries
around the world.
“We have neither the legal right nor the means to police individual
use of that equipment. We believe any comments on political conflict
in the region are best left to our governmental leaders, who have the
ability to impact action and advance the peace process,” says the
company statement.
“I think they are absolutely right that Caterpillar is not going
to help resolve the conflict,” said Liat Weingart of the group
Jewish Voice for Peace.
“However, they are fueling the conflict right now by selling weapons
to Israel. So in that way, they are contributing to the cycle of violence.
There’s no question about it. They are profiting from the cycle
of violence.”
Caterpillar’s profits last year rose to $1.1 billion, up from $798
million in 2002. With annual sales of more than $22.8 billion, more
than one-half of which comes from overseas business, the firm has been
reluctant to divulge how much money it makes from its dealings with
Israel.
The company’s stance on its sales to Israel has also earned it
the ire of other peace groups, corporate accountability monitors, Jewish
activists, church groups, and human rights organizations, many of which
back the resolution.
The groups include Jewish Voice for Peace, Rabbis for Human Rights,
the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Stop US Tax Aid to Israel
Now (SUSTAIN), and the New-York based Center for Economic and Social
Rights.
According to Rabbis for Human Rights and the Israeli human rights group
B’Tselem, most Palestinian homes are demolished not for security
reasons but for minor permit violations. Less than five percent of buildings
destroyed are linked, directly or indirectly, with suicide bombers,
they argue.
Activists also complain that Caterpillar bulldozers sent to Israel are
not sold as civilian goods but as military equipment, under the US Foreign
Military Sales Program.
That violates US law, they argue, including the US Arms Export Control
Act, which theoretically prohibits the use of military aid against civilians.
Caterpillar came under fire after its equipment destroyed an entire
neighborhood in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002. Company bulldozers
razed more than 140 houses and severely damaged another 200.
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that a Caterpillar
bulldozer buried a paralyzed man alive in his home during the raid,
despite pleas from the family to stop to let them evacuate him.
The firm came under further public attack when 23-year-old US peace
activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a Caterpillar bulldozer
Mar. 16, 2003. Though the machine’s driver claimed he did not see
her, eyewitnesses say she was wearing a bright orange vest and used
a bullhorn to yell at the driver to stop.
Hundreds of Caterpillar bulldozers and earth movers are now helping
build a gigantic wall — that Israel calls a “security barrier”
— in the West Bank, which will annex large chunks of Palestinian
territory. It is the largest national project in Israel’s history.
“We realize that we need to have some leverage on the corporation
from the inside to let them know that it is just not good business to
sell weapons to the Israeli military,” said Weingart.
“We chose this campaign because it’s an American corporation.
The bulldozers are being bought with American taxpayer funds and there’s
simply no accountability as to who they are being used [by],” she
added.
The Caterpillar meeting coincides with an Apr. 14 visit to the White
House by Israeli Prime
‘I’ll have to work 'till I
die’
By Gustavo González
Santiago, Chile, Apr. 12 (IPS) — "I’ll just
have to work till I die. I have no other option," says Miguel
González, 73, in Chile, just one of the large proportion of
elderly in Latin America who are not covered by the social security
system.
Only two out of five senior citizens in Latin America receive social
security pensions in urban areas, and one out of five in rural areas,
according to a report by José Miguel Guzmán, in charge
of population and development issues in the Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
That forces many elderly to continue working beyond the age at which
their counterparts in developed nations are able to retire, states
the study by the regional United Nations agency based in the Chilean
capital.
Don Miguel, as his customers respectfully and affectionately refer
to him, knows he will have no other choice but to keep working in
his small grocery shop in Santiago.
González said he worked all his life as a shop assistant, without
any formal employment contract, which would have brought him labor
benefits like a pension.
“I never paid into an AFP [one of Chile’s private pension
funds], either. It never occurred to me. It’s just that you don’t
know about these things,’’ he said.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, half of the population over the
age of 60 have no income of their own, according to the ECLAC study,
which says that being old in this region is virtually synonymous with
being poor, since old age occurs in a context of great poverty, persistent
social inequality, and low social security coverage.
Neglect of the elderly is a serious problem, in terms of social, health,
and economic policy, in a region whose demographic profile is changing
fast.
Today, there are 41 million elderly persons, less than eight percent
of the total regional population of nearly 550 million. But that proportion
will rise threefold between 2000 and 2050, when senior citizens will
account for 25 percent of all people in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In 25 years, the elderly will number 98 million, and in 2050, 184
million. By then, there will be more elderly persons than children
in the region, states the ECLAC report.
The aging of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean is
a result of the increase in life expectancy, lower birth rates, and
the growing numbers of young people who are going abroad in search
of better opportunities.
Governments are aware of the challenges they face in this area, but
what prevails now is a lack of initiatives, since less than two percent
of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean include specific targets
and goals for the elderly in their health plans.
“In our societies, a negative image predominates, which associates
old age with passivity, illness, deterioration, being a burden, and
social breakdown,’’ — a worrisome stereotype, warns
the ECLAC report, because it can lead to exclusion and isolation of
the elderly.
That exclusion can also give rise to “the invisibility of the
elderly at the level of public policies, research, and academia.’’
During the 1990s, demand for employment increased among people over
60 due to the lack, or tiny size, of pensions, and to the need to
help support their families, whose incomes had shrunk due to economic
crises in many countries.
ECLAC reports that the elderly have largely found low-quality employment
in the informal economy, earning less than people aged 50 to 59 working
in the same jobs.
Sonia Blanco, 63, who retired three years ago from her job as a librarian
in Chile, draws a pension equivalent to just 160 dollars a month.
The pension of her husband, a retired high school teacher, is also
small.
“Our pensions don’t stretch very far at all. If it weren’t
for the help of our children, who knows where we would be living,’’
Blanco commented.
Between 40 and 65 percent of older adults in the region live with
their children, according to SABE, a cross-national survey on health
and aging carried out in a number of Latin American and Caribbean
cities, whose sponsors include the Pan-American Health Organisation
(PAHO).
The survey found the highest proportions of elderly living with their
families in Mexico City, Santiago, and Havana, and the lowest in Buenos
Aires, Montevideo, and Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados.
The poll also found that a majority of older adults live with spouses
or partners.
Among the elderly, between 70 and 85 percent of men and 55 to 60 percent
of women say they are married or living with a partner. The difference
in proportions is due to the fact that widows outnumber widowers —
a result of the higher life expectancy of women — and because
men tend to seek out new partners after they are widowed, separated,
or divorced.
The proportion of older adults who live completely alone is relatively
low in Latin America, ranging from five to 16 percent — which
not only attests to the strength of family ties in a largely Roman
Catholic region, but also to the fact that few elderly have a large
enough income to survive on their own, even after a lifetime of work.
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