General Electric

Company Snapshot:

General Electric Co manufactures electrical equipment, lighting products and household appliances. It also owns the broadcasting network FOX. In terms of market capitalization, GE is the world's second largest company and also second in the BrandZ ranking. In the 1960s, aspects of U.S. tax laws and accounting practices led to a rise in the assembly of conglomerates. GE, which was a conglomerate long before the term was coined, is arguably the most successful organization of this type.

Basic information

Ownership status:

Publicly traded

Number of employees worldwide:

315,000

Chief executive officer:

Jeff Immelt

Website:

http://www.ge.com

Tel:

203-373-2211

Corporate accountability

Corporate accountability:

Defense Contracting Fraud: On July 23, 1992, GE pled guilty in federal court to civil and criminal charges of defrauding the Pentagon and agreed to pay $69 million to the U.S. government in fines — one of the largest defense contracting fines ever. The company said in a statement that it took responsibility for the actions of a former marketing employee who, along with an Israeli Air Force General, diverted Pentagon funds to their own bank accounts and to fund Israeli military programs not authorized by the United States. Under the settlement with the Justice Department over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, GE paid $59.5 million in civil fraud claims and $9.5 million in criminal fines.

GE’s civil and criminal transgressions stemming from the Israeli military program are by no means isolated. GE is a repeat offender when it comes to Defense Department fraud. The company has repeatedly violated the False Claims Act — a measure originally proposed by Lincoln to protect federal coffers. When the Project on Government Oversight surveyed defense contractors, it found that General Electric was responsible for 15 instances of fraudulent activity in just a four year period (1990-1999) — more than any other defense contractor.

GE paid $7.1 million to settle a qui tam suit alleging that the company failed to satisfy electrical bonding requirements for its jet engine contracts, thereby creating a safety risk.

GE paid $5.87 million (along with Martin Marietta) to settle a qui tam suit associated with improper sales of radar systems to Egypt.

GE paid fines between 1990 and 1999 ranging from a $20,000 criminal fine to a $24.6 million civil fine for a variety of defense contracting frauds, including: misrepresentation, money laundering, defective pricing (2 incidents), cost mischarging (3 incidents), false claims, product substitution, conspiracy/conversion of classified documents, procurement fraud and mail fraud. GE was convicted on February 3, 1990 in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia of defrauding the government out of $10 million for a battlefield computer system. GE pled guilty on May 19, 1985 to charges of fraud and falsifying 108 claims on a missile contract. GE was convicted of defrauding the Air Force out of $800,000 on the Minuteman Missile Project.

GE was convicted of bribing the Tawian Water Resources Authority.

Labor:

GE’s business model can be considered a global system of management by stress, with the company viewing stress and the fear of job loss as the magic formula for productivity and efficiency.

Retirees say the company has used accounting gimmicks and other means to reduce their pensions.

According to Multinational Monitor magazine, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited GE for at least 858 violations of OSHA rules from 1990 through March 2001. From 1994 to 1999, OSHA cited GE for at least 98 “serious” violations. OSHA issues “serious” citations to companies for conditions posing “a substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result.”

Employment Discrimination. A black worker at GE’s Burkville, Alabama plant filed a suit claiming that General Electric officials fostered a racially hostile environment. GE reached settlements with two ex-GE employees employed at the plant. The workers claimed they were subjected to Ku Klux Klan symbols, swastikas and a hangman’s noose at the plant.

For current information about GE workers, also see the Coordinated Bargaining Committee at GE (a coalition of 13 unions) and the UE for more information.

Environment and product safety:

Persistent concerns about PCB contamination of the Hudson River from two GE manufacturing plants in Hudson Falls and Fort Edward have caused EPA to study the issue on a continuous basis since the site was listed on the nation’s Superfund priority site list in the early 1980s. Finally, on December 6, 2000, after 16 years of studies, proposals and more studies, EPA announced a 5-year plan to dredge 2.65 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment along a 40-mile stretch of the river. The cost of EPA’s proposal to GE: $460 million. The high cost of the cleanup has led company officials to mount one of the biggest public relations campaigns ever waged around a toxic waste site. Although EPA and the company signed a Record of Decision agreement in 2002 and numerous cleanup agreements after that, remediation is still not scheduled to begin until at least 2009. (For more information also see Clean Up GE)

Until reaching an agreement with EPA, GE denied the problem, sometimes with outright distortions of the truth. At an April 22, 1998 shareholder meeting, GE CEO Jack Welch claimed: “PCBs do not pose adverse health risks.” Testifying in Albany on July 9, 1998, EPA Administrator Carol Browner stated: “GE tells us this contamination is not a problem. GE would have people of the Hudson River believe, and I quote: ‘living in a PCB-laden area is not dangerous.’ But the science tells us the opposite is true ... And concern about PCBs goes beyond cancer ... The science has spoken: PCBs are a serious threat...”

PCBs from GE have also contaminated the Housatonic River in Connecticut, as well as in or near the Coosa River Basin in Georgia (traced to GE's Rome, Georgia plant).

On March 26, 1998, General Electric agreed to pay a $92,000 fine for previous violations of environmental reporting requirements for toxic releases at its silicone manufacturing plant in Waterford, New York, according to EPA’s regional office. In addition, GE agreed to spend about $112,000 to upgrade local emergency response capabilities in surrounding communities. Between 1991 and 1996, EPA cited GE for 23 violations when toxic releases were un- or underreported. Chemicals involved include dimethyl sulfate, chlorine, 1, 1, 1, -trichloroethane, ammonia, and toluene.

On March 13, 1992, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a $20,000 fine against General Electric for violations of regulations at the fuel fabrication plant in Wilmington, North Carolina. On May 29, 1991, GE personnel accidentally moved about 320 pounds of uranium to a waste treatment tank. The danger of the mistake was that the size and shape of the waste container caused unsafe concentrations of uranium, which could have led to a nuclear accident. The NRC dispatched a special incident investigation team the same day and an inspection began two days later. The NRC found that the mistake was the result of lax safety controls.

According to documents obtained by Public Citizen under the Freedom of Information Act, GE-designed nuclear reactors around the world have a design flaw that make it virtually certain (90 percent) that in the event of a meltdown, radiation would be released directly into the environment and into surrounding communities, leaving the public without any protection. The NRC acknowledges that the reactor containment structure in GE-built nuclear power plants does not work, but they licensed the reactors anyway. (Also, a dozen or more GE-designed boiling water reactors in the United States and abroad have evidence of cracking in the reactor core shroud — a metal cylinder surrounding the reactor’s radioactive fuel rods.)

Human rights:

In 1995, a Presidential Advisory Commission revealed details of GE’s human experiments with nuclear radiation. GE ran the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland, Washington as part of the U.S. weapons program. Beginning in 1949, General Electric deliberately released radioactive material to see how far downwind it would travel. One cloud drifted 400 miles, all the way down to the California-Oregon border, carrying perhaps thousands of times more radiation than that emitted at Three Mile Island.

In 1986, Representative Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, held hearings in which it was disclosed that the United States and General Electric had conducted experiments on hundreds of United States citizens who became “nuclear calibration devices for experimenters run amok.” According to Markey: “Too many of these experiments used human subjects that were captive audiences or populations ... considered ‘expendable’ ... the elderly, prisoners and hospital patients who might not have retained their full faculties for informed consent.”

One of GE’s most gruesome experiments — disclosed in the Markey hearings — was performed on inmates at a prison in Walla Walla, Washington, near Hanford. Starting in 1963, 64 prisoners had their scrotums and testes irradiated to determine the effects of radiation on human reproductive organs. Although the inmates were warned about the possibility of sterility and radiation burns, the forms said nothing about the risk of testicular cancer. Markey’s committee heard allegations that, at the time of the experiments, General Electric violated both civil and criminal laws.

Anti-competetive, consumer protection and tax practices:

GE was among four companies that ended up paying New York City over $4 million in 1982 to settle a lawsuit charging that wiring and cables in 754 subway cars were defective.

In 1992 GE agreed to pay $165,000 to settle a suit brought by 11 state attorneys general alleging the company deceptively advertised its lightbulbs. According to the state AGs, the ads promised consumers the same amount of light for less energy, but in fact the lightbulbs simply delivered less wattage.

GE Capital was ordered to pay $100 million for unfair debt collection practices as part of a 1999 class-action lawsuit settlement. The suit alleged that GE solicited agreements from bankrupt creditors to pay their credit card agreements without notifying bankruptcy courts of the agreements.

GE recalled 3.1 million dishwashers beginning in 1999, stating that a side switch could melt and ignite, presenting a fire hazard.

In April 2001, New York State AG Eliot Spitzer won a ruling in state court that, in connection with the dishwasher recall, GE falsely told consumers the problem could not be repaired, prodding customers with partial rebates to buy new GE dishwashers.

A November 1998 Time magazine profile of GE concluded that “[t]here is no starker example of the phenomenon of corporate welfare and vanishing jobs than General Electric Co.”

For examples of facility-specific GE tax-abatements up to 2000 see "GE Tax Abatement Ripoffs" published by Multinational Monitor.

Financial information

Detailed financial information

Stock ticker symbol:

GE

Fortune 500 position:

11

Total revenue:

$163.391 billion

Fiscal year:

2005

Net Income:

$20.829 billion

Fiscal year:

2005

Location

Headquarters

3135 Easton Turnpike

Fairfield, CT, 06828

United States