Corporate Watch is looking for a freelance communications worker. We are proud of the research and training we do – so we want it to reach new and wider audiences. We’re looking for someone to help us develop a new outreach strategy, and to start to put it into practice on our “Wreckers of the Earth” project.

about the job …

Initially we’re looking for two to three days a week (negotiable), for six weeks, working remotely. Pay is £12 per hour – the same we pay all our freelance contributors, and slightly more than we pay ourselves as co-op members. Start date: flexible, but the sooner the better! Application deadline: 15 August. This is the first time we’ve trialled having a dedicated comms worker: if it proves successful, we may look to make a longer-term arrangement.

about us

Corporate Watch is a research group that helps people stand up against corporations and capitalism. We investigate exploitative bosses, landlords and property developers, companies profiting from prisons, deportation flights, animal exploitation and more, as well as the mega-corporations devastating our planet – and the wider systems of power and profit they work within. We provide dedicated research and training for grassroots campaigners. We are structured as a workers’ co-operative. Please read our website to find out more about what we do.

what we’re looking for

Our motto is the Utah Phillips quote: “The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.” Based on this idea, the ‘Wreckers of the Earth’ project maps the London-based companies destroying the earth for profit, which we hope will be used by grassroots campaign groups. The original release of the project was scuppered by the pandemic, so now we’re looking to relaunch it with maximum impact.

You will work closely with our researchers on both the project relaunch and setting up a wider communications strategy. We are keen to reach a broad range of people, so real-world outreach is just as important as strategic use of social media. The work may therefore involve: identifying and collaborating with relevant campaign groups; using websites and social media platforms; getting stories out to independent and mainstream media; using audiovisual tools such as podcasts, videos, animations, memes … and more. We’re keen to hear your ideas!

key skills, experience and qualities:

– Evidence of successful communications work for grassroots campaigns or other social projects.

– Support for our objectives and principles as an anti-capitalist co-operative. Understanding of how we differ from an NGO or company.

– Able to write in a clear, readable and engaging way.

– Skilled in the effective use of multimedia tools and/or social media platforms.

– Open-mindedness, creativity, drive, and confidence in this field of work.

You do not need to have any formal qualifications. We welcome applications from (ex-)prisoners and those with criminal records.

how to apply

Please read our website to fully understand what we do. Send us a CV and cover email (contact details here) by 15 August telling us why you’re interested in the work and what relevant experience you have. Please provide links to examples of relevant work you have done.

The post Seeking freelance communications worker – help us spread the word! appeared first on Corporate Watch.

In late March 2020, Dignity Plc were on the wrong end of a string of angry messages from members of the public who had received advertising leaflets through their letterboxes. The leaflets read “Save money and protect your loved ones with a Dignity Funeral Plan”. At the very top of the page a brightly coloured offer boasted a “£100 off Discount ends 30 April”.

As the UK headed into coronavirus lockdown, the timing could not have been worse. One user commented: “@Dignity_UK you despicable beasts. Mass posting flyers through doors on the first day of lockdown is abhorrent and you should be ashamed!!!!” Another highlighted the emotional impact on local residents: “#badmarketing you couldn’t make it up […] It’s really upset some elderly residents”. Several people bemoaned ‘profiteering from misery’, accusing Dignity of “callous commercialism” and stating: “Absolutely disgusted […]. We are in lockdown and this is posted to our house and to pensioners’ bungalows! Putting people’s lives at risk for profiteering! Sickening practices.”

Dignity was put on the back foot immediately, issuing repeat apologies and promising to stop all marketing activity, as citizens from far and wide lambasted their advertising strategy. One user contributed their photograph of the funeral leaflet to a separate thread – “compiling a list of people to avoid after we return to normal. The c**ts list!” – a thread kicked off with Virgin tycoon Richard Branson, Mike Ashley of Sports Direct, Wetherspoons owner Tim Martin and celebrity chef Rick Stein, each included for their appalling treatment of staff during the economic downturn.

Who are Dignity Plc?

Let’s roll back 12 months. Following a mild winter, in May 2019 Dignity expressed concerns that a shortfall in projected death rates in the first quarter of 2019 was hurting their underlying profits by nearly £7m. Deaths were down 12% for the period, leaving the firm hoping things would “improve” in the second half of the year. Using language many people might not readily or comfortably associate with death and dying, they accepted:

“Operating performance in the first quarter was below the board’s expectations as a result of the significantly lower than expected number of deaths. Funeral market share and average income were in line with the board’s expectations.”

As the world continues to make sense of the Covid-19 crisis, it has brought attention to a whole range of commodity networks, supply chains, and labour processes that usually go unseen or are taken-for-granted. We are often better able to see how things work when they stop working. Or, in the case of Dignity’s mistimed marketing, when business as usual is out of tune with the mood music of the day.

So, what, or who, is Dignity? Dignity Plc, to be more precise, is the UK’s largest “single” funeral provider. It is currently the only publicly listed UK funeral provider on the stock market, with reported annual turnovers of £324m and £316m in 2017 and 2018 respectively.

Dignity has over 350 subsidiary companies within its somewhat dizzying corporate structure. Many have names such as ‘Dignity Services’, ‘Dignity Limited’, ‘Dignity Finance Holdings Limited’, ‘Dignity Finance plc’, ‘Dignity Holdings No.2 Limited’, ‘Dignity Holdings No.3 Limited’, etc., but most are funeral directors that Dignity has bought out, retaining their original trading names such as ‘G.M. Charlesworth & Son Limited’ or ‘F.E.J. Green & Sons Limited’, in a bid to keep the family-run traditional high street feel. Many such funeral directors have premises in several locations, meaning Dignity control over 700 individual funeral branches – with plans for further expansion.

Crematoria ownership represents significant capital accumulation for the corporate group too. By June 2018, there were 293 crematoria in the UK — 183 operated by local State authorities and 110 by private companies. Of these private companies, Dignity is again the largest operator with 46 crematoria. And these expanding operations mean Dignity has been building up a considerable real estate portfolio, ‘driven by the need to meet shareholder and investor expectations in terms of profit and growth’.

As with many other publicly listed companies, Dignity’s listed shareholders include many of the big investment funds that own most of the world’s capital – the likes of Standard Life, Aviva, Barclays and Blackrock.

But Dignity plc’s largest current shareholder, with 26% ownership, is a smaller specialist UK investment manager called Phoenix Asset Partners. Based in Barnes, West London, Phoenix is headed by founding partner Gary Channon, who had his “investing epiphany” after reading US billionaire investment guru Warren Buffet.

Channon’s claim to be the Warren Buffet of Barnes is boosted in a glowing recommendation from the Financial Times’ Investors Chronicle magazine, which says Phoenix’s UK investment fund has “smashed the total return of the FTSE All-Share since its launch in May 1998.” Channon’s strategy is to buy chunks of a small number of UK listed companies he believes are going cheap – “good companies that can be bought for less than half their so-called ‘intrinsic value’ due to short-term problems.”

Gary Channon, the Warren Buffet of Barnes

Dignity’s troubles

Unfortunately for Phoenix, Dignity hasn’t yet made the expected turnaround – according to Investors Chronicle, the company has been a “major drag” on Phoenix’s overall performance. With many other shareholders pulling out, the market value of the company has collapsed – Dignity’s share price had fallen to a quarter of its peak 2016 level by 2019.

Again, one of the main reasons Dignity had given for its declining profits before the pandemic was a falling death rate. On top of that, the company has faced increasing competition, including what the Evening Standard described as a “price war” with its main rival, Cooperative Funerals. This has pushed the company to start cutting prices on its cheaper funeral products.

Then there is the fact that Dignity is saddled with heavy debts. At the end of 2019, the company owed £542 million to the bond market. This, plus its other liabilities, were actually worth more than its assets, which is never a sign of financial health. Dignity borrowed heavily to fund its buyouts of local funeral directors and crematoria, and to climb to the top of the industry. This strategy worked out so long as prices and profits kept rising – but makes the company vulnerable if the market turns.

Finally, there is a big unknown that may have spooked investors: two ongoing regulatory investigations into the funeral industry.

In March 2019, off the back of a preliminary consultation in November 2018, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced it would be launching ‘an in-depth market investigation into the funerals sector’. This will investigate the soaring cost of funerals over more than a decade, and current ways of operating by business providers of these services. Then in June 2019, in light of accusations of ‘high pressure’ and ‘bullying tactics’, the UK Treasury announced plans to seek to regulate funeral service providers through the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

The results of both investigations were due for completion and release in late 2020, but have been delayed for the time being due to the Covid19 pandemic.

Clive Wiley, chairman of the board

The high cost of dying

As Dignity and its shareholders complain about price cuts and dropping profits, we need to put those complaints against a longer-term backdrop. Prices and profits in the funeral trade soared for more a decade from the early 2000s until the late 2010s. The average cost of a funeral is now many times higher than it was 20 years ago, and this cost has largely been driven, and pocketed by, funeral companies.

In March 2019, the CMA published a detailed “Funerals Market Study” as part of “phase one” of its investigation. This set out some key points, including that:

“Over the past 14 years, the price of the essential elements of a funeral is estimated to have grown by 6% annually, twice the inflation rate over this period.” (p.6)

The study further concluded that:

“for a considerable number of years the largest firms of funeral directors have implemented consistently large annual price increases, without reference to underlying operating cost pressures.” (p.6)

Since 2002, Dignity maintained a company policy of increasing their prices by 7% annually (p.99-100). One reason the companies have been able to get away with this relates to the nature of their product. According to the CMA study (p.100), only 8% of bereaved families “shop around” for alternatives.

For the companies, this long boom of rising prices has meant extremely high profit margins. The CMA study compared the profits of Dignity and other big UK operators with equivalent companies in Europe, the US, Canada and Australia, for the four years between 2014 and 2017. It found that profit margins (before deductions) in these regions were between 19-26% on average. Some were much lower. For example, Ahorn AG in Germany and the Park Lawn Corporation in Canada were 6-13%. In contrast:

“Dignity’s profit margins have been 36-38% in all years, so more than 10% higher than international benchmarks. [..] Dignity’s margin appears to have been significantly higher than both international benchmarks and larger UK companies in the funerals sector.” (p.123)

But while funeral profits were being driven up to finance the asset growth and accumulating debts described above, many of the households paying for them were facing the violent impacts of austerity. Basic average funeral costs are now over £4,000, or more than £9,000 when professional fees and discretionary extras such as memorials, flowers, and catering costs are considered – compared to around £1,900 in the early 2000s. For many, the inability to pay these rising costs means the growth of personal debt and funeral poverty. This trend is one example of a much broader serious problem in society today – the transference of corporate debts into personal bank accounts.

As the CMA study notes (pages 20-21), total funeral expenditure varies very little by average household income: households earning over £100,000 per year do not pay 10 times more than households on less than £10,000. In 2017, the total expenditure of a family in the lowest 10% of the population by income was £11,050. This means that a “basic” funeral could cost nearly 40% of the total year’s budget – higher than total spends for food, energy and clothing combined (at 26%).

In short, this morphing of the market hits working-class families, exacerbating income inequality and compounding existing poverty in the UK.

Dignity have responded to this problem, in their own way, by promoting a range of budget alternatives through their sister brand Simplicity Cremations – again, readers may have noticed their avid marketing campaigns. Simplicity provides direct cremations without the added extras associated with an expensive “send off”. Like other Dignity products, they also offer pre-need payment plans – a major point for regulatory scrutiny at the heart of recent investigations.

Despite these efforts, and being able to stake their claim as the largest provider, Dignity are lurching from one crisis to another. Their CEO Mike McCollum recently left the company with immediate effect and their profits have actually fallen during the pandemic as they are unable to sell the full range of service extras that some of these profits rely on. After almost two decades of extortionate price increasing – “a core part of Dignity’s strategy for a considerable period of time” (CMA study cited above, p.99) – the inherent contradictions of exponential growth and driving capital accumulation alongside debt accumulation look like they are finally taking their toll. This period has also served as a painful reminder to so many mourners that what they miss most at the funerals of their loved ones is not the expensive funeral service add-ons, but their family and friends.

Need for systemic change

Soon after Dignity received the above barrage of criticism we outlined at the start of this article, the UK government introduced the Coronavirus Act 2020. Nestled among a raft of emergency changes to existing legislation are a series of “temporary” changes to the funeral industry, which will continue to “have a significant impact on what happens to the dead and how funerals are conducted in the coming weeks and months”.

As well as family-only funerals with limited attendance, this includes a more flexible approach to registering deaths, scrapping inquests for suspected Covid-19 deaths, and multi-organisation provision for transporting and storing growing numbers of bodies which would otherwise overwhelm existing mortuaries. While these are emergency measures, which must subject to ongoing scrutiny, they do nothing to address long-standing issues within the industry including poor working conditions and inadequate protection for workers.

Similarly, we can ask whether the CMA and FCA investigations will even begin to satisfactorily address all the issues of cost, profit, competition and exploitation that shape the industry. At best, these investigations aim to ensure the industry is ‘fair’ under the rules of the market itself – there is no hint of any significant or radical challenge to the way funerals are marketised, financialised and provided.

The funeral industry is a peculiar space that provides a vital frontline service every single day. Without serious systemic change, there will be no end to the vulgarity in profiting from death that people now recognise more acutely. While not at all downplaying the seriousness of the Covid-19 crisis, we want to raise broader questions about unfettered corporate freedoms to profit from … well, strictly anything, including death, at all times, both in the midst of a global pandemic and beyond.

The post “You despicable beasts”: Dignity Funerals and commodified death in the spotlight appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Click here to read parts one, two and three.

This article tells the story of the Abu Zor family, who lost three family members after the Israeli military fired on their neighbourhood from a drone and F-16. Their story shows that Israel’s practice of firing a warning shot from a drone before destroying homes does not prevent deaths of people not involved in fighting. The family want action from solidarity campaigners against the companies manufacturing the weapons that were used to target them.

Corporate Watch interviewed the Abu Zor family at their ruined home in the Zeitoun district of Gaza City. Their house had been destroyed in an Israeli F16 attack on 19th November 2012. The bombing came at 3am in the morning during the Israeli attack known as ‘Operation Pillar of Cloud’, which killed 255 Palestinians in eight days. According to the Gaza based Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights 201 out of 255 of these people were killed by attacks from Israeli drones. When we met them in December 2013 they were still in the process of rebuilding their home.

As we speak to Hamad and Mohammed Abu Zor, their children gather to listen to the conversation. We learn that many of these children lost their mothers in the attack. We are encouraged to look at their scars and feel the soft patches in their skulls where they were crushed when the house’s roof caved in on them, as if the family need to impress the reality of what happened on us. For these young children, as for many people in Gaza,  being involved in telling the story of how they saw their loved ones killed has become a normal occurrence. A duty to make people aware of the real story of what happened to them.

Roof-knocking

Before the attack the Israeli army had fired on the neighbourhood with a drone, supposedly to warn people to leave the area. This practice of firing a warning shot from a drone has become known as ‘roof-knocking’. In reality, roof-knocking is not really a way to protect life, but simply a way for Israeli commanders to avoid accountability by claiming that they did all they could to warn civilians.

In fact these ‘roof knockings’ are an added danger to those beneath the bombs and are not effective as a warning. In the Abu Zor family’s case it had fatal consequences.

The ‘warning’

Mohammed Abu Zor told us, “I was sleeping when the attack happened, when I fell asleep I could hear the sound of the rockets hitting the houses and the noise of the drones, I only slept for 10 minutes.

“I woke when the rocket hit. I heard my family scream, the house shook. I went upstairs to check on my brother’s flat. I found it difficult to go inside because of all the smoke. I couldn’t see anything.”

Hamad Abu Zor told us, “my brother’s home is next door, I was sleeping, my wife woke me up and said there was crying and screaming in the house next door. I went to check. When I got to the house of my brother he said they were attacked by a drone. They were leaving, I said: “don’t go to a stranger, come and stay with me”.

One person had been injured by the drone. A four and a half year old child called Mohammed Iyad.

“Everyone came to my house, all 26 of my brother’s family. There were 37 people here in total with me and my brother’s family.”

The second attack

“Five minutes later the Azzam family, who lived next door to us, was targeted by an Israeli F16. We learnt later that they had been targeted because some of the family were part of the Qassam brigades [the military wing of Hamas].

“We could hear the noise of the F16 after we heard the strike. Then the power went off and the house collapsed. I couldn’t see anything, all my family were shouting for me to get help, I found my wife under the rubble”.

Three people were killed, two young women and the same child who had been injured five minutes before, the whole family was injured, 14 of them badly. The house was completely destroyed, along with many of the neighbouring houses on the street.

Mohammed tells us he went back to his house the next day: “the hole in the roof from the rocket was 5cm, then the floor below was 120cm, and the third one was 50cm, the remains of the rocket had penetrated into the ground and the walls were damaged on the ground floor”.

A family made homeless

The house where Mohammed lived, which had been targeted by the drone, cost $15,000 to repair and left the family homeless for three months. Hamad’s house cost $75,000 to rebuild and they were homeless for eight months. The costs were partially covered by the United Nations Development Programme and the Palestinian government, but the rest was footed by the family. No compensation was received from Israel. To watch videos of the family sorting through the wreckage of their wrecked home after the attack click here and here.

We asked the family what they thought about the companies manufacturing drones used by the Israeli army. According to Hamad, “these companies are committing a crime by supplying weapons to Israel. What had these kids done? They should be closed down or prevented from selling weapons to Israel”.

A female family member who wanted to remain anonymous said, “These weapons are being tested in Gaza on us. If they brought tanks to fight us they would lose but instead they bring warplanes. These kids now do not have a mother, if their father is sick, who will care for them, we do not need just words.

“There is a big profit in it for Israel to market these drones. They want to be the strongest and selling these weapons helps them to do that. Other countries should not buy weapons from Israel. Israel wants war all over the world. We want these factories to be destroyed completely.”

The companies behind Israel’s drone strikes 

The battlefields of Israel’s militarism and occupation have proved effective testing grounds for new types of weaponry. Israel’s constant state of warfare has ensured a reliable marketplace for Israeli arms manufacturers. According to Drone Wars UK, surveillance drones were first used in Egypt in the lead up to the Yom Kippur War. The first recorded use of an Israeli drone to help piloted warplanes bomb targets (target acquisition) was in 1982 in the run up to the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon. According to the Al Mezan centre for Human Rights, the first recorded use of an armed drone by Israel was in 2004. The experience gleaned during years of military repression has made Israel the largest exporter of drone technology in the world. Israeli arms companies have sold drones to over 50 countries.

Israel’s market leaders in drone technology are Elbit, a private Israeli company based in Haifa. Elbit have partnered with French company Thales to manufacture the Watchkeeper drone for the UK military. A list of the Watchkeeper programme’s subcontractors can be found here.

Increasing deaths caused by drone strikes

The number of deaths (as a proportion of total deaths) caused by drone strikes has been increasing. The Gaza based Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights provided Corporate Watch with these shocking figures for the years 2000-2012:

Take Action

In September 2014, Glasgow Palestine Action occupied the roof of Thales’ factory in Glasgow in protest against its involvement in the Watchkeeper programm.

Thales’ UK locations can be viewed here.

A coalition of protesters have been organising protests outside Elbit’s manufacturing facility in Shenstone, Staffordshire. In July this year, during the Israeli attack on Gaza, a group of activists occupied the Elbit factory there for two days, forcing the factory to shut down its business until police removed them from the roof. A demonstration is planned at the factory in Shenstone on Friday 17th October.

Elbit’s UK locations can be viewed here.

In 2007 Elbit bought UK company Ferranti Technologies, based in Oldham, Manchester.

Testing of the Watchkeeper

The Watchkeeper is being tested at Parc Aberporth facility in Wales. Miitary testing is being carried out in Wiltshire at Boscombe Down. Campaigners in Wales have been protesting for years against the flying of drones at Parc Aberporth.

Two-way arms embargo

In 2011 a group of grassroots Palestinian groups called for a two-way arms embargo. This means that the call demands an embargo on arms sales to Israel and on purchases of weapons from Israeli companies until Israel abides by international humanitarian law. The Palestinian Boycott National Committee wrote at the time: “A comprehensive military embargo on Israel is long overdue. It would form a crucial step towards ending Israel’s unlawful and criminal use of force against the Palestinian people and other peoples and states in the region and would constitute an effective, non-violent measure to pressure Israel to comply with its obligations under international law.”

The campaign recognises that buying arms from Israeli companies fuels Israeli militarism and strengthens the occupation and siege. In the UK, there is a call from solidarity groups including War On Want for campaigners to pressure their representatives to support a two-way embargo: end all contracts with Elbit Systems and Elbit subsidiaries; end all arms trade with Israel; and suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement and all EU research funding for Israel’s arms companies.

Target the shareholders

The Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions demands action to persuade the investors in companies complicit in Israeli militarism to divest their shares. Barclays PLC is the named owner of over 50, 000 shares in Elbit Systems.

During the most recent Israeli attack on Gaza, in which 2,168 Palestinians were killed, campaigners held demonstrations and occupations of Barclays’ bank branches all over the UK, including in London, Brighton, Manchester and Wrexham. An Avaaz petition calling on Barclays to divest gained nearly 2 million signatures. Russell Brand even weighed in. On 6 September 2014 campaigners in Wales held an occupation of a Barclays branch in Newport in solidarity with Gaza. Several people glued themselves to furniture inside the bank.

In the face of these growing protests against its shares in Elbit, Barclays has claimed that it only holds these shares “on behalf of clients and to hedge exposure against customer facing transactions”. This explanation doesn’t get Barclays off the hook. The practice of ‘hedging’ is still a form of investment and in agreeing to purchase the shares in Elbit on the behalf of its customers the bank is ignoring the war crimes being carried out against people like the Abu Zor family using Elbit’s equipment. Barclays have the power to divest and refuse to purchase shares for their clients in unethical companies like Elbit. There is a need for further concerted action to persuade Barclays to change their position and to have nothing to do with shares in Elbit.

The post Gaza life beneath the drones: Part Four appeared first on Corporate Watch.