THE ROGER AWARD

Organized By Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa and GATT Watchdog

12 April 2002

Chief Reporter Under embargo until 8 p.m. Friday April 12th.

CARTER HOLT HARVEY WINNER OF THE ROGER AWARD FOR THE WORST TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATION IN NEW ZEALAND IN 2001

MOBIL: RUNNER-UP

UNITED WATER (& past PAPAKURA DCs): "EGG ON FACE" AWARD

The full Judges' Report will be available (from Saturday 13th) at www.cafca.org.nz

The six finalists for 2001 were: Tranz Rail; Monsanto; Carter Holt Harvey; Mobil; United Water and British American Tobacco (BAT).

The criteria for judging are by assessing the transnational that has the most negative impact in New Zealand in each or all of the following fields:

Unemployment

Monopoly

Profiteering

abuse of workers/conditions

political interference/running an ideological crusade

environmental damage

cultural imperialism

impact on:

tangata whenua

impact on women

health and safety of workers and the public

The judges were: Sukhi Turner, Mayor of Dunedin; Glenn Turner, world famous cricketer and coach (and Sukhi's husband); Prue Hyman, academic and feminist, of Victoria University; and Michael Gilchrist, leading trade unionist, of Wellington.

The judges declared Carter Holt Harvey the 2001 Roger Award winner because of:

its attempts to casualize stevedoring at South Island ports, which led to major industrial strife and regular confrontations between Police and waterfront workers;

its poor safety practices;

industrial disputes in its Kinleith and Tokoroa mills;

an attempt to monopolise the market in logs in order to inflate the price;

environmental damage, such as the use of dioxin in its processing;

and its participation in growing genetically modified pine trees.

"It has unashamedly over many years acted to subdue its workforce and damage their conditions, bringing in scab labour, and destroying the social and economic fabric of small towns dependent on their enterprise". Although outside the qualifying period, the current mass redundancies at Kinleith only reinforce why Carter Holt Harvey is such a worthy winner of the Roger Award.

Mobil was awarded Runner Up for a number of reasons, including holding out against moves to clean up Auckland's polluting diesel. United Water (assisted by past Papakura District Councils) got the special "Egg On Face" Award for its role in "privatizing such an essential commodity".

Murray Horton

for the organizers