When General Electric Co.’s executives and shareholders gather this Wednesday in the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center, an outgrowth of the Occupy Wall Street movement plans to have 1,500 protestors there to greet them.
Calling itself 99 Percent Power, a coalition of unions, liberal political and social organizations have banded together to target 32 corporations during this earnings season to protest various elements of a socio-economic system that they see as unfair. Their goal is to have more than 100,000 people participate in actions this spring and summer.
The new wave of protests is aimed at corporate leadership and investors in those companies after last year, in which protesters under the Occupy Wall Street banner, encamped in cities across the country to rally for economic justice and a host of other causes linked, they said, by the top 1 percent of income earners’ influence in politics.
GE has landed on the list of targeted corporations for exploiting a variety of tax loopholes and write offs on its way to posting one of the lowest corporate tax rates –effectively less than 8 percent — in the nation in 2010.
“We want GE to pay its fair share,” said Shani Smith, of StandUp Chicago and one of the people planning to participate in the protest in Detroit on Wednesday.
Smith, during a conference call hosted by the group on Monday, called GE one of the nation’s worst tax dodgers and then told the story of her 70-year-old mother who had to re-enter the work force and who still pays taxes.
GE has been defending itself and continued to do so Monday on this tax issue, which has been haunting it for a few years now.
The New York Times reported in March of 2011, that the Fairfield corporation had an effective tax rate of zero in 2010. But GE, according to a Bloomberg review of its U.S. Securities and Exchange filings, paid $2.67 billion in income taxes around the globe.
“GE paid $1 billion in federal, state and local taxes in the U.S. for 2010,” said Andrew Williams, a GE corporate spokesman. “GE’s tax rate for 2010 was low because we lost $32 billion in our financial business during the global financial crisis. That tax rate increased to 29 percent in 2011 as our financial business has recovered.”
Williams, said in an email after the 99 Percent Power conference, said GE supports tax reform for a U.S. tax system that is complex, out-of-date and uncompetitive.
The U.S. tax system is complex, out-of-date and uncompetitive.
The 99 Percent Power organizers said they did not anticipate arrests but will be protesting inside and outside most of the meetings they’ve targeted. Besides GE, Wells Fargo Financial, Bank of America and 3M are targets of the group’s actions.
Besides navigating a protest, GE shareholders are expected to vote on 16 board-nominated directors, approve an auditor, executive pay incentives and face four shareholder proposals, including one to make the chairman an independent director.
The directors of GE make about $250,000 in total compensation a year in cash and stock. Last year, Avon CEO Andrea Jung, was the least popular director as shareholders gave her the fewest votes of those it elected, while Alan G. Lafley, the former P&G CEO was the most popular.
