Carter Holt Harvey winner of the Roger Award for the Worst TNC in Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2001

12 April 2002

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 casualise 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 "privatising such an essential commodity".

The full Judges' Report is available at http://www.cafca.org.nz

Murray Horton
for the organisers - Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa and GATT Watchdog

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