This site will remain as an archive

Please take a look at our new site, we are currently doing research in Palestine (January 2013) and will there should be plenty of new material

Earlier this year B&Q pledged, in correspondence with Palestine solidarity campaigners, not to sell products “sourced from conflict zones and/or occupied territories”. However, when Corporate Watch asked them to clarify whether this meant the company would strike Keter off its list of suppliers, the store responded,

”We are not sourcing from the Barkan site and have received appropriate guarantees from Keter to verify this claim.

“We continue sourcing from Keter whilst engaging with them on the issue of the Barkan factory”Read the full letter from B&Q here

Barkan, attached to the residential settlement of Ariel, was established in 1982 on the land of the Palestinian villages of Haris, Bruqin and Sarta. The industrial zone hosts a disproportionate number of factories that pollute the environment. For example, waste from Barkan runs down the hillside of the Al-Matwi valley, damaging Palestinian farmland. Palestinian labourers are employed in the industrial zone and are paid, in several documented instances, below the minimum wage and are denied the right to unionise.

Corporate Watch has sent the following to B&Q:

Corporate Watch would like to congratulate B&Q for its policy of avoiding goods manufactured in Barkan industrial zone. However, we would like to point out that this policy does not go far enough. By continuing to source from Keter, B&Q is directly contributing to the financial viability of a company which maintains a manufacturing facility on occupied territory, on land forcibly expropriated from several Palestinian villages.

In a letter to campaigners Terry Anne Rowland of B&Q’s Customer Care Team said: “we will work with our suppliers to identify which, if any, products are manufactured in countries associated with conflict/occupation (e.g. Afghanistan/Israel) and seek confirmation that the product has not, at any stage, been made by a company operating in a conflict zone or occupied territories. We will put in place exit strategies for the product and/or supplier where progress to our aim, over a defined period, is not achieved.”

Corporate Watch would like to ask the management of B&Q how long the company plans to continue sourcing from Keter if it refuses to pull out of Barkan. Every Keter Plastic product sold by B&Q supports Israel’s military occupation, which has lasted for over 45 years and which is constantly claiming more and more Palestinian land. For example, on November 30th 2012 the government announced that it would build 3,000 homes for settlers in the E1 area of the occupied West Bank

We would also like to point out that the Co Op, the UK’s fifth largest food retailer, has recently changed its ‘Human Rights and Trade Policy’ and is now committed not to deal with any supplier which operates in illegal Israeli settlements. The Co Op has taken a decision to cease its trade relationship with four companies – Arava, Mehadrin, Ada Fresh and Agrexco – in line with this policy. We would encourage B&Q to adopt a similar position and to cease trading with Keter Plastics.

Regards

Corporate Watch

Related links:

New Corporate Watch book – Targeting Israeli Apartheid: a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Handbook

Occupation Industries: The Israeli industrial zones

External links:

Keter Plastics targeted for complicity in occupation and apartheid (from UK Indymedia)

Working for Shamir Salads in Barkan industrial zone (from Corporate Watch’s Corporate Occupation blog)

Hundreds of demonstrations have been held worldwide in solidarity with Gaza and a national demonstration is planned in London on Saturday 24 November.

Meanwhile, Palestinians have been demonstrating all over the West Bank in solidarity with Gaza. They have been met with brutal repression by the occupying Israeli army. On Saturday, 31-year-old Rushdi Tamimi was shot by an IDF soldier at a protest in the village of Nabi Saleh. He died of his wounds in hospital on Monday around the time news surfaced that Hamdi Mohammad Jawwad Al-Falah, 22, died after being shot four times during a demonstration in the Bir al-Mahjar neighborhood in western Hebron. On Monday 19 November a 20 month old Palestinian baby, Najib Ahmed Najib, died when an Israeli tear gas canister caused a fire in his home in Qalandia refugee camp in the West Bank.

The occupation of Palestinian land by the Israeli state, the siege of Gaza, discriminatory policies against Palestinians within Israel and the ethnic cleansing of communities in the West Bank, Israel and the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan are carried out with the support of Israeli and international corporations. Arms companies sell the Israeli state the weaponry to commit its war crimes, supermarkets worldwide sell goods grown on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinians, and multinational corporations provide services to facilitate the continuing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Many activists in the UK have targeted corporations and organisations complicit in Israeli militarism, apartheid and occupation in response to the attacks over the last week.

Ecostream

In Brighton last Saturday activists locked themselves to the Ecostream store, a shop owned by an Israeli company that has its main manufacturing facility in the West Bank settlement of Mishor Adumim (see here). Later, a hundred strong crowd marched to the store and held a noisy demonstration outside. On Monday, a phone and twitter blockade of the company was held

Barclays

The same day in Wrexham, activists picketed Barclays Bank in protest at its investments in companies supplying weapons to Israel and Israeli companies. Barclays is the only major British bank with significant investments in Israeli companies, including Gilat Satellite Networks, an Israeli hi-tech firm that provides antennae for Israeli military checkpoints (See Targeting Israeli Apartheid, page 291) and in Teva, the largest company on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Barclays invests in several companies that supply arms to the Israeli state, including Smiths, Rolls Royce, Meggitt, Raytheon, BAE, Chemring and Ultra Electronics (See Targeting Israeli Apartheid, page 292) as well as providing market maker services to ITT on the New York Stock Exchange.

G4S

On Tuesday 20 a group of solidarity activists occupied G4S headquarters in protest at the company’s contracts with the Israeli prison service as well as its work providing equipment and services to military checkpoints and maintaining contracts with businesses working in Israel’s settlements (a video is available here). Earlier this year, activists demonstrated outside G4S’ AGM and occupied the roof of G4S HQ in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike. In September, a coalition of groups formed the No to G4Scampaign in opposition to G4S’ complicity in Israeli militarism, as well as its involvement in immigration detention and privatisation of public services (Corporate Watch’s comprehensive company profile on G4S is availablehere).

Batsheva

The ‘Don’t Dance with Israeli Apartheid’ campaign held demonstrations against the Birmingham and London performances of the Israeli state sponsored Batsheva dance troupe at Sadlers Wells on the 13-15 and 19-21 November as part of a coordinated international campaign. Batsheva is promoted and funded by the Israeli state and has accepted contributions from several Israeli companies including Teva Pharmaceuticals and Bank Hapoalim. Hapoalim owns bank branches in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Syrian Golan and provides loans for settlement construction (seeTargeting Israeli Apartheid, page 10-13).

Batsheva also accepts donations from the IDB Group of companies that provide antennae and communications equipment to the Israeli military. Cellcom, part of the IDB group and itself a donor to Batsheva, owns antennae inside Israel’s illegal settlements and provides telecommunications services to the Israeli army (see Targeting Israeli Apartheid, page 58). Further demonstrations are expected at Batsheva’s final UK performances in Plymouth on 23 and 24 November. So far every night of the dance troupe’s UK tour has been disrupted by demonstrators.

BBC

Demonstrations in Brighton and Birmingham have focused on the BBC’s reporting of the attacks on Gaza which has focused on Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and largely down-played the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Prior to a ‘die-in’ on the steps of the BBC’s Birmingham office, Naeem Malik of West Midlands Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “I am amazed at the BBC coverage of the attack on Gaza. The BBC needs to know that it is all about the occupation, the siege, the house demolitions, the checkpoints and the continuous humiliation of the Palestinians for the last six decades and more.”

These actions are in line with the Palestinian call for ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’, made in 2005 in the wake of Israeli war crimes during ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ and the construction of the illegal Israeli apartheid wall:

“We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.”

To find out more about the companies profiting from Israeli state militarism, apartheid and occupation, download ‘Targeting Israeli apartheid: a boycott, divestment and sanctions handbook’ here or buy it here.

The CEO of Soda Club, an Israeli company with a production facility in the settlement industrial zone of Mishor Adumim, has vowed to stop the protests happening outside its UK shop.

Daniel Birnbaum told local paper The Argus today that the firm will take legal action to clear the protesters from in front of their store.

Ecostream, Soda Club’s store in Brighton has faced biweekly pickets outside its shop in Western Road by supporters of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against companies complicit in Israeli apartheid, occupation and militarism. These are accompanied by smaller counter demonstrations by a coalition of Zionists and Christian Zionists handing out material from the British Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) and the US based  ’We Stand With Israel’.

In the interview with The Argus Birnbaum announced the company’ intention to remain in Mishor Adumim, a settlement industrial zone situated between East Jerusalem and Jericho.

Last week the Israeli embassy contacted Sussex Police to discuss their ‘concerns’ about the demonstrations. The Israeli embassy clearly has an interest in promoting this company as, in 2010, Soda Club made the eighth largest Initial Public Offering (IPO) of any Israeli company on the NASDAQ. It has been promoting itself extremely heavily in the UK with advertorials in The Guardian ,The BBC, and an interview with Birnbaum on the Today Programme

The company has divided local politicias with Conservative MP Mike Weatherley condemning the anti-Ecostream demonstrators, while Green MP Caroline Lucas supported the ‘right to protest’ against the company and gave some mealy-mouthed criticism of the company.

On Monday 15th October Corporate Watch will be participating in Justice for Palestine: Brighton and Boycott – Why our city should not be hosting the Israeli state-sponsored dance company (Batsheva) and a shop (Ecostream) that sells goods made in an Israeli settlement. The meeting is at 7.30pm at the Friends Meeting House. Ship Street, Brighton, BN1 1AF.

Israeli company Soda Club, which owns the Sodastream brandname, has opened a new store called Ecostream on Western Road in Brighton.

Sodastream, a carbonated beverage manufacturer is based in the Mishor Adumim settlement industrial zone. Mishor Adumim is an industrial area attached to the residential settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, East of Jerusalem in the Israeli occupied West Bank.

Corporate Watch contacted Steve Bannatyne, who has been employed by Sodastream to open the store in Brighton.

Bannatyne said that the store was a place where people could buy refillable bottles for Sodastream syrups and detergents and would be branching out into food products too. The store stocks a range of Sodastream products.

The eco-concept store, which is owned on a lease, is Sodastream’s only store in the UK. The company chose Brighton because of the strong green movement in the city.

Last month Corporate Watch spoke to a woman who had attended an interview to work at Ecostream but had decided to withdraw her application after she became aware that Sodastream profit from “from the Israeli occupation and human rights abuses”.

Bannatyne said he had passed the concerns on to the company and they had responded but that he felt he was “not qualified to comment on behalf of the business”.

The expansion of Mishor Adumim settlement industrial zone, where the main Sodastream factory is based, is encroaching on the land of the Jahalin bedouin, who are being forcibly relocated to a reservation in Abu Dis, next to the Jerusalem Municipal rubbish dump.

Bannatyne told Corporate Watch that he had been taken on a short visit to Israel by Sodastream where he was taken to two of the company’s factories. He was taken to the company’s Ashkelon factory, inside 1948 Israel, where syrup is manufactured and to the “Mishor” factory which manufactures “machinery”. He said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the conditions at the factories and that he was told that “the workers were paid more than in the neighbouring villages”.

However, Palestinians living in the villages around Mishor Adumim are prevented from building any permanent structure under Israeli military orders. Their tents and huts, and even a primary school at Khan-al-Ahmar, are subject to demolition by the army (more details at http://www.scribd.com/doc/80963609/Amnesty-Briefing-Paper-on-Jahalin-Bedouin-forced-relocation).

These building restrictions prevent the establishment of any Palestinian businesses, meaning that local Palestinians are forced to work in the settlements. Palestinian agriculture is limited by the settlements monopoly on land and the restrictions placed on the grazing of cattle, often leading to the seizure of cattle by the army (see http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/politics/2410-the-occupation-confiscated-cows-in-the-northern-jordan-valley).

Palestinians working for Sodastream in Mishor Adumim are working in the context of the occupation. In January 2012 activists from Stop Sodastream Italy (http://www.bdsitalia.org/index.php/english-menu/280-reply-sodastream) made the following statement in response to claims by the company that its workers were well treated: “the fact remains that, as subjects of an occupation regime, these workers do not enjoy civil rights (including the right of workers to organize) and are under constant threat of having their permits to work in the settlement revoked by the company at any moment.”

“Palestinian workers often have no choice but to work in the settlements, with high unemployment rates that are a direct result of the Israeli occupation. The 2011 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report explicitly links the decline in Palestinian agricultural and industrial sectors and the dire humanitarian conditions with Israeli government policies, in particular the confiscation of land and natural resources, restrictions on movement of people and goods, and isolation from international markets. Only a colonial mindset could claim to provide jobs to the very same people whose land and freedom have been stolen.”

The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions urges a boycott of all Israeli companies until Israel complies with international humanitarian law, recognizes the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, the rights of return of refugees and ends the siege of Gaza and the occupation of all lands occupied in 1967.

Sodastream products are sold in the UK at Robert Dyas, John Lewis, Argos, Comet, Lakeland and some Sainsbury and Asda stores.

For more information on Soda Club see http://corporateoccupation.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/targeting-israeli-apartheid-jan-2012.pdf pages 96-102 and http://www.whoprofits.org/company/sodastream-soda-club-group

We are writing to you regarding your contract with G4S Utility Services, which provides you with meter reading services.

Ethical issues

Your Environmental Policy (http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/about-ecotricity/our-eco-credentials/our-environmental-policy) states that you “take into account ethical and social issues, biodiversity and sustainability when making all strategic and operational decisions.” Many of your 50,000 customers – who are presumably your customers because of such ethical considerations – would not consider your contract with G4S – a company accused of serious human rights abuses, violation of international law and profiting from the suffering of people in the UK and elsewhere in the world – to be taking ethical and social issues into account. Many of them would indeed be disappointed to hear that you describe switching your meter reading agent to G4S as “a positive change”.

Your Environmental Policy further states that you “will not work with organisations directly involved in: factory farming, animal slaughter, animal testing, arms, tobacco, nuclear power, GMO’s or anything else we consider to be unethical, immoral or just plain wrong.” Please find below details of various “unethical, immoral or just plain wrong” activities that G4S is involved in.

Please also note that Good Energy has decided to drop G4S as its meter reading provider over similar issues (see here - http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=4459 for details). Many Good Energy customers had complained to the company expressing their disappointment and threatening to switch to other providers, including Ecotricity. We urge you to follow suit and drop G4S if you do not wish to lose customers over this contract.

Accountability and complicity

It is evident that G4S treats itself as a single entity and has grown and prospered as such. This is also clear in the company’s own marketing and publicity material and its corporate structure, where it treats itself as a coherent whole (see here – http://www.g4s.com/en/Who%20we%20are/Where%20we%20operate/, for example).

As this is the case, the conduct of one division of the company is the conduct of G4S as a whole. If one division is involved in unlawful or unethical activities and profits from such conduct, then the parent company, and therefore all other divisions, must necessarily be implicated in such misconduct as all decisions are made by the same directors and board members and all divisions would benefit from the growth and profits achieved by any particular division.

Indeed, G4S would not have been able to acquire AccuRead in 2008 and rebrand it as G4S Utility Services if it was not for the growth achieved through its other businesses.

Involvement in unethical industries

G4S is primarily a security company. 52% of the company’s revenue comes from providing security services to other private companies and wealthy individuals (what G4S calls “secure solutions – non-government”), and 27% comes from public contracts (“secure solutions – government”).

In addition to manned security, which accounts for over 60% of the company’s “secure solutions” work, G4S provides a range of other “security services”, an increasingly broad definition that now includes security systems (CCTV, etc.), monitoring services, and ‘integrated security services’ for entire sites or estates.

Industry sectors ‘secured’ by G4S include energy (oil, gas and nuclear operations around the world), mining (especially in Africa and Latin America) and aviation (over 100 airports and more than 80 airlines in more than 40 countries worldwide). For a more detailed overview of G4S’ businesses, please see here – http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=337.

G4S’ involvement in these unethical and environmentally destructive industries goes against Ecotricity’s Environmental Policy, in which you claim you will not work with organisations involved in industries “we consider to be unethical, immoral or just plain wrong.” Thus, just as you advise your customers that “it is part of your energy supply agreement with us that you allow us or our appointed agent reasonable access to your property to obtain a meter reading”, your customers have the right to question whether your contract with G4S Utility Services is in breach of your own Environmental Policy, and therefore your contracts with customers.

Profiting from Israeli apartheid

G4S, through its subsidiary G4S Israel (formerly Hashmira), provides services to the Israeli Prison Service, both in the occupied West Bank and in 1948 Israel, where Palestinian political prisoners are held in violation of international law.

Prisons in Israel hold Palestinian detainees who have been arrested in the Occupied Territories and transferred into the 1948 borders of Israel. This transfer is in violation of articles 76, 66 and 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In addition, Israeli prisons hold Palestinian child detainees from the West Bank. Physical violence and torture is commonplace and hundreds of Palestinians are detained without trial. Families of detainees who have West Bank ID cards find it extremely difficult to obtain permission to visit them.

G4S has installed a central command room in Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank. The Ofer compound also houses a trial centre where prisoners are tried under military law. Ofer Prison is located in what the Israeli military refers to as the ‘Seam Zone’, which means access for visiting families is highly restricted.

G4S Israel also provides security equipment to the Israeli police headquarters in the occupied West Bank, and supplies and maintains luggage scanning equipment and full body scanners to several Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank. These checkpoints form a crucial part of the Israeli state’s network of apartheid walls and barriers impeding Palestinians’ freedom of movement.

In addition, G4S provides services to “major commercial customers”, such as supermarket chains, which operate in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. G4S Israel is also a minority shareholder in Shalhavet, which provides security services to residential West Bank settlements. For more details and references on G4S’ operations in Palestine/Israel, please see here – http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=4360.

In April 2012, G4S released a statement which sought to obfuscate and deny complicity in human rights violations in Palestine/Israel. The statement relied on an ‘expert’ report commissioned by G4S itself. However, criticism by Dan Church Aid (DCA) and Amnesty International Denmark has highlighted factual errors and inadequate research in the text and described the report as “shameful” (see here – http://electronicintifada.net/content/security-firm-g4s-partly-withdraws-w-bank/9273).

Again, G4S’ unlawful businesses in Israel, and their contribution to the daily suffering of Palestinians, go against Ecotricity’s Environmental Policy, in which you claim you will not work with organisations involved in “anything else we consider to be unethical, immoral or just plain wrong.”

Profiting from the imprisonment and death of migrants

G4S manages two immigration detention centres in the UK: Tinsley House and Brook House, both located within the grounds of Gatwick airport. Most immigration detainees are asylum seekers who have not committed any criminal offence. Some are undocumented migrants or foreign nationals who have finished a prison sentence and are then deported as a secondary punishment. They are held in prison-like conditions without charge or trial, and with no judicial supervision or time limit.

In addition to these two centres, G4S also runs a new detention centre for families near Crawley, Sussex, called Cedars. The latter has attracted a lot of controversy and protest, particularly against the involvement of the UK’s biggest children charity, Barnardo’s, which campaigners argue is used to legitimise the continued use of detention for children.

G4S has been repeatedly accused of providing poor services in its immigration detention centres. For example, the lack of investment in staff and efficient procedures has often led to detainees’ missing important medical and court appointments. In June 2011, it was revealed that a record 773 complaints were lodged in 2010 against G4S by detainees, including 48 claims of assault. More than half related to Brook House. Three complaints of assault and two of racism were upheld (see here).

In 2010, a report by Medical Justice documented 300 cases of alleged abuse, with the highest rate of ‘incidents’ belonging to G4S. All these incidents involved excessive force, with the most frequent being injuries as a result of dangerous restraint techniques. Another frequent outcome was PTSD. Some of these attacks involved families, and some resulted in injuries to children. Even torture victims, who, according to the UKBA rules themselves, should not be detained in the first place, have reported abuse and mistreatment by G4S guards. This has sometimes led to exacerbating their mental and psychological conditions or creating fresh trauma.

In October 2010, Jimmy Mubenga, a 46-year-old refugee, collapsed and died after three G4S guards used force to ‘restrain’ him during his forcible deportation to Angola, leading to his suffocation and subsequent death. Shortly after his death, G4S lost a bid to renew its detainee escort services contract with the UK Border Agency to Reliance. Last month the Crown Prosecution Service decided that neither the three guards nor G4S will face manslaughter charges due to “conflicting witness accounts”. However, the CPS admitted that there were “shortcomings in the training G4S provided its guards” (see here – http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/17/jimmy-mubenga-guards-no-charges). Four G4S whistleblowers (see here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/08/g4s-deportees-lethal-risk-warning-mubenga) who submitted evidence to the parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee in the aftermath of Mubenga’s death said the company had been warned repeatedly by its staff that potentially lethal force was being used with “disruptive deportees”. The parliamentary report found evidence of “inappropriate use of physical restraint, and the possible use of unauthorised and potentially dangerous restraint techniques.”

Indeed, Mubenga was not the first death following ‘restraint’ by G4S officers. In 2004 a 15-year-old boy died in Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre, which was run by GSL (now part of G4S), following his restraint by custody officers. In January 2008, an aboriginal elder from Western Australia was “cooked to death” while being transported in a G4S van (then GSL) without air conditioning or water. G4S was fined $285,000 and ordered to pay court costs of $11,088 after pleading guilty to failing to ensure the health and safety of Mr Ward.

G4S’ involvement and crimes within the immigration system (see here - http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=341 for more details and references) also go against Ecotricity’s Environmental Policy and its supposed concern with ethical and social issues.

Profiting from prisoners’ labour

The same goes for G4S’ exploitation of prisoners’ labour in the six privatised prisons that the company runs in the UK (see here – http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=340). 400 G4S prisoners are made to work 40 hours a week for as little as £2 a day. At Altcourse prison in Liverpool, G4S works with Norpro, an engineering firm that has converted three former metal workshops into a factory floor using 25 prisoners to produce high-quality office furniture “at an economic price”. The enterprise has apparently been “so successful”, or so cheap, that work previously done in India has been brought back to the UK and done in the prison. At Wolds in East Yorkshire, a digital marketing company called Summit Media, which started inside the prison more than a decade ago, now has a turnover of £30 million.

G4S has recently launched a PR campaign entitled “Working Prisons: Working People” to urge the UK business community to “open its mind to the growth opportunities from being involved in ‘working prisons’.” One of the “benefits to business” listed by G4S is “a committed workforce and low overheads”: “We have a dedicated workforce with a variety of skills which can work around business’ needs with the minimum of bureaucracy.” G4S hopes that ‘working prisons’ will “become the norm” in the future.

For more details and references on G4S’ involvement in prisons, please see here – http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=340.

Abuse of workers

G4S has repeatedly failed to uphold the minimum standards of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) Base Code in its treatment of workers across all its divisions worldwide. A 2008 report by UNI Global Union (see http://www.policing-crowds.org/no_cache/article/select/private-security/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=89&cHash=2505a5e23f501f9755a55ead0b51e538&sword_list[0]=g4s) alleged that G4S used legal loopholes to undermine wages and tenure of employment.

For example, security guards working for G4S India are paid poverty wages, forced to work underpaid overtime and have no job security or employment contracts. G4S security guards in Nepal and South Korea recently went on strike to protest against low levels of pay, while an investigation by Malawi’s Sunday Times newspaper found that wages paid by G4S “raised questions about the survival mechanisms [employees use] to see themselves and their families through each month.” For more examples, see here – http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=339.

This is clearly an abuse of internationally guaranteed workers’ rights and constitutes an unethical practice that Ecotricity should not be associated with.

In addition, G4S is a provider of the coalition government’s controversial Work Programme, which has seen benefit claimants threatened with losing their benefits if they did not accept unpaid work (see here - http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=4358 for details). These unpaid work schemes, which can last for months, seldom lead to paid employment or acquiring useful skills.

On your website, you claim that G4S Utility Services staff are “are all CRB checked and are trained to treat our customers with professionalism and respect.” This is not how many of your customers feel or believe is the case. Recent media reports have revealed that G4S meter readers are being used by the company to secretly spy on pubs to check whether these were showing Sky’s Premier League football matches without a licence (see here – http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/9696731.Sky_pays_gasmen_to_spy_on_pubs/, for example). One worker is quoted saying: “We are told to take off our uniforms, leave our handhelds (meter readers) at home and not to make ourselves known to anyone in the pub. That’s not what I joined up for – it just does not feel right.”

Contractual failures

Though primarily a security company, G4S is taking over more and more public services, including policing, housing and healthcare provision. The company’s involvement in ‘public’ services has earned it intense criticism for numerous examples of cost-cutting, negligence and poor services. Indeed, G4S has repeatedly failed to meet its contractual obligations, with the latest Olympics fiasco, which saw G4S failing to provide enough security for the Games, being but one example.

Drop G4S

In light of all the above, we urge you – on behalf of many of your concerned customers – to drop G4S Utility Services as your meter reading provider. To quote your Environmental Policy (see here http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/about-ecotricity/our-eco-credentials/our-environmental-policy), we urge you to “reduce the impacts of [your] own activities… by encouraging and pursuing behavioural change, from both within [your] organisation and from without.” G4S is not a suitable business partner if Ecotricity is to adhere to its criteria for business partners(see here http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/about-ecotricity/team-eco/our-partners): “We’re proud to be working with, and powering, a whole bunch of companies and organisations who share our values – people who’s work [sic] we believe in, who we assist and who do the same for us.” And as you say, “actions will always speak louder than words.”

Yours sincerely,

Corporate Watch

The call can be read here – http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/blog/2012/08/10/call-to-action-mark-the-verdict-in-the-corrie-civil-case-in-israel-august-28th

Earlier this year TIAA-CREF divested $72 million worth of shares from Caterpillar from its Social Choice Funds Portfolio. The company still holds investments in Caterpillar within its other portfolios.

The Corrie family have asked supporters outside the US to take a stand against house demolitions during August: “Together, we can seize the moment. We can tell Rachel’s story. Most of all, we can cry out with Rachel’s message of equality and human rights and for her call to end home demolitions and the Israeli occupation!”

The family launched a civil suit against the state of Israel over her death. The court, in Haifa, heard evidence in the case in 2010 and is due to reach a verdict on August 28th this year.

Rachel was part of an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) group attempting to stop the D9 bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian home in the Philadelphia Corridor, a strip separating the part of the city of Rafah which falls within Gaza from the Egyptian border. By 2004, Israel had demolished 1,218 houses in the corridor. The corridor was extensively bombed during Israel’s assault on Gaza in January 2009.

A statement posted on the company’s website (and pointed out to customers raising concerns on Facebook, Twitter and so on) said Good Energy will start using Lowri Beck instead of G4S for its meter reading services from 20th August 2012. However, the changes will take a few months to complete as customer accounts have to be “transferred to the new company over a period of time.”

A Good Energy spokesperson told Corporate Watch “the decision to change meter reading company was based on a number of criteria, including feedback from our customers… We’re particularly happy to be working with Lowri Beck as, like us, they are another independent company operating in the UK energy market.”

In 2008, G4S acquired AccuRead, which had been providing meter reading services to Good Energy for many years, and rebranded it as G4S Utility Services. Good Energy’s contract with the latter was a continuation of the previous arrangement.

Following revelations that G4S was providing meter reading services to a number of supposedly ethical energy providers, including Good Energy and Ecotricity, many Good Energy customers complained to the company about this unethical practice, citing allegations of serious human rights abuses by G4S (see this complaint letter, for example).

Good Energy initially responded to these complaints with a standard letter claiming the company will “continually review our options for our metering service needs, however there are real restrictions on smaller suppliers like us.”

The letter also appeared to defend G4S: “For your information, we believe that G4S Utilities take the concerns raised by our customers seriously. We have already raised these concerns with G4S and requested that they send us a copy of their Corporate Social Responsibility report, which they have done. They have also sent a letter to us addressing these concerns in detail which says: ‘We are totally committed to the welfare and safety of those in our care and have won many awards for the quality of that care’.”

Those who called up instead of writing were met with a similar response. According to one customer: “I called them recently to discuss this and waited a week for the promised call back from a manager who could actually tell me what was going on, before chasing them up only to find their phone system was completely down! Eventually got through… although they are making noises about stopping doing business with G4S, they haven’t made any commitment to customers to put in place policies and procedures to make sure that they have a way of dealing with any such issue in the future.”

But as the controversy circulated around the web, more and more Good Energy customers wrote to the company expressing their disappointment and threatening to switch to other providers. Others posted angry messages on social media sites, chat forums and so on. One customer wrote to an anti-nuclear mailing list: “I was shocked to find out that Good Energy used G4S. I guess a lot of stop-new-nuclear people, as well as me, use Good Energy, and that a lot of them would also be shocked.” Another customer tweeted: “@Good_Energy uses G4S for meter readings? Seriously? I’ll be switching the four accounts I have with them to Ecotricity tomorrow then.” And another: “@Good_Energy I support asylum seekers and wouldn’t want @G4S_UK staff checking my @good_energy electricty meter.”

Activists from the growing Stop G4S campaign celebrated the news of Good Energy ditching G4S as “a small victory.” Next step: Ecotricity, another ‘ethical’ energy provider that uses G4S meter reading services.

Both defendants pleaded ‘not guilty’ on the basis that, among other things, the activity they are accused of obstructing/disrupting is unlawful (in reference to G4S’ contract with the Israeli Prison service and services to Israeli settlements and military checkpoints, the use of unlawful restraint techniques in immigration detention centres and so on). Section 68 states that a person commits the offence of aggravated trespass if s/he trespasses on land where persons are engaged in a lawful activity with the intention of intimidating those persons, obstructing or disrupting that activity. The draconian bail conditions that had been imposed by the police (not to trespass anywhere in the UK, not to enter the borough of Crawley, and not to enter any land or building associated with G4S anywhere within the UK) were varied by the court. The first two conditions were removed altogether and the third was limited to the boundaries of the G4S HQ concerned. The court seemed to agree with the defendants that the original condition meant they could not enter or use numerous public and private buildings “associated with G4S” (where the company provides security, for example), from banks, hospitals and stations to prisons and possibly the court building itself. A court hearing date was set for the 3rd and 4th December 2012 at Horsham and Haywards Heath magistrates courts respectively.

Background:

- International campaign against G4S gathers momentum

- Many reasons to stop G4S

G4S provides services to the Israeli Prison Service, both in the occupied West Bank and in 1948 Israel, where Palestinian political prisoners from the Occupied Palestinian Territories are transferred in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Torture, child detention and imprisonment without trial are widespread.

In the UK, G4S runs six private prisons at which 400 prisoners are made to work 40 hours a week for as little as £2 a day. The company also runs three immigration detention centres, where detainees have made repeated claims of abuse and assault by G4S guards. It is also a provider of controversial workfare schemes, and is taking over more and more public services, including policing, housing and healthcare provision. For more information about the company, see Corporate Watch’s G4S company profile.

On the 6th June 2012, over 70 activists, some dressed in prison uniform, staged a protest outside the G4S annual general meeting at the London Stock Exchange. Protesters handed the company’s shareholders attending the meeting an ”alternative annual report”, based on Corporate Watch’s research, which detailed the company’s involvement in human rights abuses around the world. Elsewhere, G4S advertising hoardings were subvertised by activists. One bus stop subvertisement read “G4S Proudly Securing Israeli Apartheid”.

On 19th June, over 100 participants in the Stockholm No Borders Camp held a demonstration against the award of public contracts to G4S and blockaded a G4S depot.

On 2nd July, campaigners from the Boycott Israel Network and No Borders UK occupied the roof of the G4S HQ in Crawley, West Sussex. Two banners were hung from the edge of the building. One read “G4S – Profiting from: Israeli Apartheid, Prison Slavery, Deadly Deportations”. Another dozen protesters gathered on the ground, holding placards in support of the Palestinian hunger strikers, who have called for action against G4S. A previous demonstration had been held at the G4S HQ in Crawley in May.

The two rooftop occupiers demanded to speak to the company’s management to tell them why they were there. The G4S Area Manager, Mike Milligan, tried to appear friendly and ‘understanding’ but said the company was “not willing to talk to them at the moment”. Then the Head of Media Relations, Adam Mynott, came out onto the smoking balcony round the back and did a rather poor job of ‘engaging’ with the protesters.

The protesters expressed their concerns over the company’s unlawful contracts with the Israeli prison service. Mynott pointed to a 2010 report by Hjalte Rasmussen, an ‘expert’ hired by G4S itself to examine the lawfulness of the company’s contracts in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The activists countered that the report had been roundly discredited (see the Palestine section of our G4S company profile). Concerns were also raised about the “dangerous” restraint techniques – as described by parliament and the Home Office itself – used by G4S security guards against migrants in detention and during forcible deportation, which allegedly lead to the death of Jimmy Mubenga in October 2010 (see the Immigration section of our G4S company profile). They asked whether these techniques have been reviewed by the company since then and whether the same techniques will be used by the privitised police forces.

Mr Mynott, previously a BBC foreign correspondent, had little to say apart from some poorly prepared soundbites and the repeated “I’m not aware of this” and “I don’t know”. The two rooftop occupiers were arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass and were released on bail later that night.

One of the bail conditions is “not to enter any land or building associated with G4S anywhere within the United Kingdom,” which, given the rapid expansion of the G4S empire, may include a big proportion of the country, from prisons, hospitals and schools to banks and other private and public facilities where G4S provides security, including the venues of the London Olympics.

Activists in Birmingham plan to picket a West Midlands Police Authority meeting on 12th July. G4S is bidding for a £1.5bn contract to take over Police services in the West Midlands and Surrey.