Business summit participants exposed

A diverse coalition of poor and working people across the U.S. will actively resist a big-business National Summit which will gather in Detroit June 15-17 at the Renaissance Center, site of General Motors’ world headquarters.

Detroit is the “economic Katrina”—the ground zero—of capitalist devastation, and those gathering at the business summit are responsible for this and other atrocities. Members of the People’s Summit and Tent City say those at the big-business summit are enemies of all poor and working people.

The unrelenting attacks against poor and working people from business summit participants include the foreclosure epidemic; wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere; for-profit health care; anti-union attacks, plant closings, layoffs, and unequal pay for women and people of color; school closings and tuition hikes; lead poisoning and environmental racism; budget cuts and privatization; the super-exploitation of immigrants; and much more.

A short list of the enemies

• Richard H. Anderson, CEO of Delta Airlines. Anderson was executive vice president of UnitedHealth Group and served as president of UnitedHealth’s Commercial Markets Group. He also serves as a director of Cargill Inc. and Medtronic Inc. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union says that their campaign to unionize 20,000 members at Delta has been up against “one of the most expensive and illegal anti-union campaigns in history.” (www.afanet.org)

•  Richard Dauch, CEO of American Axle, has led the onslaught against workers at this auto parts supplier in Hamtramck, Mich. In May the company announced that the majority of work at this plant is being moved out of town and at least 500 permanent layoffs will happen this summer. This is only one year after a bitter three-month strike where American Axle wrested massive concessions from UAW workers at the plant. Dauch is on the board of directors of the National Association of Manufacturers and works closely with the Michigan Manufacturers Association. His book, “Passion for Manufacturing,” will be part of his “Structural Costs Are the Enemy” panel talk at the big-business summit.

•  Big Three auto executives—William Clay Ford Jr. (co-chair of the business summit) and Alan R. Mulally from Ford and Robert L. Nardelli of Chrysler—will be playing leading roles at the summit. They will be discussing how to wrest yet more concessions from the UAW and other workers across the globe.

• John Engler, former Michigan governor and now president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, will be speaking on the same panel as Dauch. Engler is hated by workers and the poor throughout the state for his legacy of racism, welfare gutting, cutbacks and attacks on unions. But that makes him perfect for NAM, founded in 1895, whose goals include low wages, long hours, pollution, child labor, sexism and racism. NAM counterparts—the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—will also be key players at the business summit.

• Finance capitalists and insurance corporations, many of whom have received billion-dollar bailouts and who are responsible for the worldwide foreclosure epidemic, raiding of pensions, and other crimes against poor and working people, will also play prominent roles. These include representatives of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd., Citigroup Inc., Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young LLP and Aetna Inc.

• Dow Chemical, infamous for toxic chemical production, including napalm and Agent Orange used by the U.S. in the Vietnam War, and environmental devastation in India (Bhopal, Nandigram) and other places, will be represented by its CEO Andrew N. Liveris, who is also co-chair of the summit. Liveris serves on the board of directors of Citigroup, the world’s leading financial services company.

• DTE Energy’s CEO Anthony F. Earley Jr. DTE is despised in metro Detroit, particularly by African-American customers, for its monopolistic practices, which include increasingly high rates, shutting off gas and lights, unreasonable payment plans and more.

• Some other corporations participating in the summit include the United Parcel Service, IBM, Microsoft Corp., ConocoPhilips Co. and McGraw-Hill Cos., which owns Standard & Poor’s, McGraw-Hill Education, Business Week and J.D. Power and Associates.