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The Chamber’s Small Business Sham

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This week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will host its annual Small Business Summitin Washington, DC. The stated purpose of the three day event is to provide small businesses with tools and strategies “to successfully compete in today’s rapidly changing business environment.” While this sounds well and good, the Chamber unsurprisingly fails (yet again) to mention that its role as “the voice of small business” is really just a sham.

The Summit agenda consists of a multitude of panels, including “How to Get Your Company Thinking Like a Startup,” “Your State’s Lawsuit Climate and How It Affects Small Businesses,” and “How and Why Your Business Grows (or Doesn’t).” Sure, these panels  sound innocent enough to someone who isn’t well-versed on the Chamber, but in reality—they hide the many  times the Chamber has lobbied to stack the deck against small businesses. We’ve taken the liberty of renaming and reframing the Summit panels so that they are more honest about the Chamber’s relationship with small business:

Litigating Against Small Business for Beginners: Chamber vs. Main Street

Looking to keep consumers out of court? Hoping to sue a mom-and-pop shop? This panel is for you!

While the Chamber may claim to be the voice of small businesses in Washington, when it comes to litigation, it can be consistently relied upon to favor the huge corporations that fund it. Whether it’s arguing for reduced access to the courts, opposing stricter supervision of Wall Street banks designed to reduce the risk of future financial crises, fighting for Big Oil against emissions controls, or supporting Big Pharma’s schemes to keep drug prices sky high, the Chamber always comes down on the side of its deep-pocketed Big Business patrons, ignoring the impact on small businesses. In fact, in a report earlier this year, Chamber Watch found that the Chamber files a brief roughly every other day of the work week, and in almost 60 percent of cases, the Chamber supported at least one Fortune 500 company. In comparison, it supported a domestic small business only 7 percent of the time. In fact, it supported a foreign multinational twice as often as it did a domestic small business. Companies the Chamber litigated on behalf of included State Farm, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Allstate, Berkshire Hathaway, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, AIG, and JP Morgan Chase, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, BP, PPL, and Shell, to name a few.

Regulations help Small Business? Deny Deny Deny 101

Have you heard the term “red tape” but aren’t sure how to work it into every day conversation? Stop by this lecture to hear from Chamber experts on their experience in denying that regulations actually help rather than hurt small businesses. This panel will equip you with all the tools you need to ignore the statistics that show small businesses support regulation and steer the conversation elsewhere. Did someone say red tape?

The Chamber has a long history of opposing regulations under the guise of being a voice for small business. From the overtime rule, to the Clean Water Rule  to the Clean Power Plan, to the open internet rules (have we made our point?) it has yet to meet a regulation it didn’t want rolled back.  According to a poll by Small Business Majority, 86 percent of small business owners agree some regulation of business is necessary for a modern economy, and 93 percent of them agree their business can live with some regulation if it is fair, manageable and reasonable. What’s more, 78 percent of small employers agree regulations are important in protecting small businesses from unfair competition and to level the playing field with big business. Another 79 percent of small business owners support having clean air and water in their community in order to keep their family, employees and customers healthy, and 61 percent support standards that move the country towards energy efficiency and clean energy.

Net Non-Neutrality: Even We Know We’re Wrong on This One

Are you an AT&T or Comcast employee who accidentally wandered into this Summit? You’re in the right place now!

The Chamber has conceded that the vast majority of Americans, support net neutrality. In fact, even smaller internet service providers (ISPs,) part of the small business community that the Chamber loves to claim to represent, support net neutrality regulations because they prevent larger competitors from gaining an unfair advantage. Proponents of net neutrality argue that by ensuring equal treatment of all internet content, companies compete on a level playing field and consumers are able to access whatever content they want without issue. Meanwhile, the  Chamber and other opponents argue that net neutrality regulations limit incentives for ISPs to improve their networks. These critics argue that without charging companies to guarantee access to content, ISPs won’t have the money necessary to make these investments. In reality, investment in internet infrastructure has not decreased as a result of net neutrality regulations. That leaves only one constituency in favor of deregulation: giant telecom companies.

With its anti-small business record so clear, why does the Chamber still keep up its yearly sham? Apparently the “Big Business Summit” just doesn’t have the same ring…

Chamber Watch is a project of Public Citizen. If you’d like to learn more about the Chamber, you can always visit us on www.chamberofcommercewatch.org or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

City of Seattle Stands Up for Uber Drivers’ Rights, Is Sued by U.S. Chamber

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By Rick Claypool, Research Director for Public Citizen’s President’s Office

Local elected officials across the U.S. are facing fierce opposition when the interests of their constituents come in conflict with the demands of ride-hailing corporations like Uber and Lyft.

In cities like Austin, Texas, and Boston, Mass., much of the conflict stems from efforts to require rideshare drivers and taxi drivers to follow the same background check requirements, especially fingerprinting. Since the deadly shootings by an Uber driver in Kalamazoo, Mich., these conflicts have sharpened. In New York City, the conflict is over traffic.

In Seattle, Wash., the point of contention is an ordinance passed unanimously by the city council in December last year recognizing drivers’ right to organize and form a union. Uber – a corporation with an estimated value of $50-70 billion – is engaging in aggressive tactics to stop drivers from forming a union.

Now the always chivalrous U.S. Chamber of Commerce has rushed in to assist this corporation in distress by suing the city of Seattle. The Chamber’s lawsuit seeks to block the ordinance from implementation and a declaration of the ordnance as unlawful, hence voiding any possible enforcement.

As an act of sabotage against local democracy by the biggest bully working on Big Business’ behalf in Washinton, D.C., it’s stunning. As an act of hypocrisy – considering the Chamber’s claims to represent the interests of small businesses – it’s absolutely breathtaking.

Ride-hailing companies, insist on classifying drivers as “independent contractors,” not employees. It’s a policy Uber has defended repeatedly before judges and regulators. It will have ample opportunity to keep making its case. Last year, it lost before the California Labor Commission – and it now faces a class action lawsuit from drivers seeking reclassification as employees.

Uber touts the “freedom” and “flexibility” it provides its drivers – who it calls “partners” – with significant exceptions, such as the company’s authority to set rates and “deactivate” (i.e., fire) drivers.

So Uber clearly prefers some freedoms to others. In Seattle, instead of embracing a policy such as the one passed by democratically elected lawmakers, which gives the drivers the right to choose whether to organize or not, the corporation would prefer that their “independent contractors” not have a choice.

The Chamber, meanwhile, is no stranger to lobbying against the interests of workers under the banner of “freedom.” What’s interesting in this instance is that Uber and the Chamber argue that the workers in question are independent contractors. If so, that makes them the smallest of small businesses. The Chamber lawsuit is based on the notion that these small businesses are impermissibly joining together to bargain with the giant company Uber.

If the drivers are independent contractors, the Chamber and Uber’s argument asserts that they should be in competition with each other, not working together to secure a better deal for themselves.

If the Chamber truly believes these drivers are independent contractors, than this is an instance of the Chamber taking action directly against the interests of the smallest of small businesses and on behalf of Uber, a multibillion-dollar goliath that one would expect to be able to fight its own battles.

The lawsuit makes it all too clear where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Uber stand when the perceived interests of powerful corporations are pitted against workers, small businesses and local governments. And it provides a case study of how Corporate America responds when faced with democratic action that prioritizes the freedom and wellbeing of real people over unchecked greed.

Despite the Chamber’s small business PR efforts, the Chamber siding with Big Business should not surprise anyone. After all, most of the Chamber’s funding comes from a handful of large corporations that have much more in common with Uber than its drivers.

Every day when news pundits discuss the election, they say the public is angry. With conflicts such as this between profits and people playing out across the country, no one should be wondering why.

Google Becoming One of the Most Technologically Invasive and Politically Powerful Companies

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Most of us use Google products on a daily basis and are familiar with the company’s powerful email and Internet search services. But these days, there is a lot more to Google’s technological operations — and they come with myriad new ways to collect our information. Now the company that used Street View cars to collect unsuspecting people’s information, and received the Federal Trade Commission’s largest civil penalty ever for misleadingly tracking Safari users, is reaching new levels of political power.

A new Public Citizen report, “Mission Creep-y,” explores Google’s accruing power, both in terms of personal data collection, and federal and state government influence, raising the question of whether it could become too powerful to be held accountable.

Key findings about Google’s growing political power:

  • Over the first three quarters of 2014, Google ranked first among all corporations in lobbying spending, according to OpenSecrets.org, and is on pace to spend $18.2 million on federal lobbying this year. In fact, it has spent $1 million more on lobbying than PhRMA, the powerful trade association of the pharmaceutical industry.
  • Since 2012, no company has spent more money on federal lobbying than Google.
  • Of 102 lobbyists the company has hired or retained in 2014, 81 previously held government jobs. Meanwhile, a steady stream of Google employees has been appointed to high-ranking government jobs – an indication of the company’s growing influence in national affairs.
  • Google’s political action committee (PAC) spent $1.61 million this year, according to Federal Election Commission records. That surpasses, for the first time, PAC expenditures by Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs.
  • Google funds about 140 trade associations and other nonprofits across the ideological spectrum – including some working in issue areas relevant to Google’s practices on privacy, political spending, antitrust and more.

Key findings about Google’s information gathering:

  • Along with its ongoing development of revolutionary new technologies such as Google Glass and self-driving cars, Google spent more money on acquisitions than Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Facebook, Amazon and Yahoo combined in 2012 and 2013. New technologies acquired by Google allow it to collect information from the air, inside the home, people’s bodies, and more.
  • Next to Google, according to privacy experts, only the NSA may have more information about more people. Google’s mass collection of information makes it a treasure trove for agencies such as the NSA — to which it is legally bound to satisfy most information requests — and to hackers and rogue employees.
  • Google has come under scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission on several occasions, including racking up the commission’s largest civil penalty ever, $22.5 million, in a settlement over Google bypassing Safari browser settings to track users.
  • A recent survey by Survata found that Americans are more concerned about Google’s information-collection practices than those of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

For a company so interested in knowing more about its consumers, Google isn’t very transparent in its methods of gaining political influence. A recent Center for Political Accountability-Zicklin Center report about companies’ political spending transparency showed Google lagging behind many of its biggest technology-sector peers. The company does not meet transparency standards set by fellow technology companies, such as disclosing how much money it gives to outside groups that spend money in elections, using transparent corporate oversight to make political spending decisions, or divulging information about its state lobbying spending.

Even the company’s shareholders have called for it to be more transparent. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt publicly acknowledged this shareholder opinion in May, and said in October that he did not know the status of efforts to follow up on those concerns, but that “we certainly promised.”

Though Google recently withdrew from the American Legislative Exchange Council (better known by its acronym ALEC) because it said the conservative think tank inhibited action on climate change, the report notes that Google continues to provide unknown amounts of funding to major dark money groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“Google has essentially responded to concerns about its practices by saying, ‘Just trust us,’” said Taylor Lincoln, research director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “But Google is gaining so much power that regulators may find it difficult to act if it turns out the public’s trust has been misplaced.”

Sign the petition calling on Google to improve its political spending practices by dropping its membership in the dark money behemoth the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.