Texaco boycott targets bif oil racism

by Tim Wheeler

This article was reprinted from the November 16, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

NEW YORK - Responding to outrage against Texaco's racist job discrimination, the Rev. Jesse Jackson called Tuesday for an immediate boycott of goods and services sold by the giant oil company.

Jackson announced the boycott after he and the Rev. Al Sharpton had lunch with Texaco Chief Executive Officer, Peter Bijur, at the company's headquarters in White Plains, New York.

Jackson said Bijur refused to budge on the issue of job discrimination despite the furor over the release of a tape recording of a 1994 Texaco board meeting in which top executives referred to African American workers as "black jelly beans" who "stick to the bottom of the bag." They made demeaning comments about Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, and Kwaanza, an African American holiday patterned after an African harvest festival.

They went on to discuss shredding documents to conceal Texaco's record of discrimination in hiring and promotions from discovery in a $520 million discrimination lawsuit by the company's 1,400 minority workers. The tape recording was made by Richard A Lundwall, at the time senior coordinator for personnel services. He was later terminated when Texaco downsized. In revenge, he handed the tape over to attorneys representing the minority workers.

"It will be cheaper to settle this suit than to prolong it," Jackson added. "It should have been the first item on his agenda."

Asked by a reporter if the boycott is immediate, Jackson replied, "I hope when you leave here and you'll need gas, you'll see a Texaco station and go right by." Bijur decried the move. "Boycotts are divisive in my view, they cause economic disruption."

William Taylor, president of Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Local 7-507 in Aurora, Illinois endorsed the Texaco boycott. "I've added Texaco to my list of companies not to patronize," he told the World in an interview. "A boycott can be very effective if it is properly organized. When enough people stop buying Texaco products the company will yield." Taylor's local represents hundreds of Amoco and Mobil oil workers while a Texas OCAW local represents many Texaco employees. "There's racism and discrimination in the boardrooms of all of these big corporations," he told the World. "Its the nature of the beast."

Lundwall's tape is now being compared to the videotaped beating of Rodney King by seven Los Angeles police officers in 1991 which forced the issue of police brutality into the public eye. It is a smoking gun that exposes the big lie (spouted by GOP Presidential nominee Bob Dole and other right-wing demagogues in this year's election) that racial discrimination is ended and that the U.S. is a "color-blind" society. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote on Nov. 11, "Even as the Texaco story was making its way around the country, voters in California were approving Proposition 209, a measure aimed at dismantling affirmative action programs. Who needs affirmative action when discrimination is a thing of the past?" he asked sarcastically.

Herbert added, "Racial discrimination is as common as commercials on television. Employment discrimination is so widespread the agencies attempting to deal with it are overwhelmed. Most of it is ignored."

Richard T. Seymour, director of the Employment Discrimination Project of the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, told the World, "The Texaco lawsuit makes the case very strongly that there is a need for continued affirmative action programs. It also shows that corporate executives need instruction in ethics."

If the Texaco executives destroyed documents, Seymour added, "it is obstruction of justice and they should face criminal charges. They should be prosecuted."

In cases in which evidence is destroyed, he added, "the judge has the option of declaring a very strong presumption that Texaco was guilty of discrimination."

Seymour cited the case of Mitsubishi, found guilty of sexual harassment and sex discrimination at its auto assembly plant in Illinois. "The Mitsubishi case was a powerful indicator of the pervasiveness of sex discrimination that went all the way to the top of the corporate structure." The Texaco case, he said, promises to be equally sweeping in exposing the racist practices of a corporate giant with $36 billion in annual revenues and net profits last year of $607 million, up 33 percent from a year earlier.

In a Nov. 5 letter to Bijur, H. Carl McCall, New York State Comptroller wrote: "I am profoundly dismayed by reports of Texaco executives planning to destroy documents relevant to a discrimination lawsuit and racial epithets to describe employees." He added, "I am the sole trustee of the New York State Common Retirement fund. The Fund owns over 1.2 million shares of Texaco with an estimated value of $114 million.

"On behalf of the 880,000 retirees and active members of the Fund, I am greatly concerned that a corporate culture of disrespect and discrimination could have a negative impact on performance and value," said McCall, the first African American elected to state-wide office in New York. He demanded an end to these practices. "I eagerly await your reply," he added.