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キーコーヒーは29日、管理職を除く全社員の約1000人を対象に未払い賃金計約23億円を支払うと発表した。2005年9月からの2年間、時間外賃金なしのサービス残業をしていたことが判明したため。これに伴い07年9月中間期の連結最終損益は9億8500万円の赤字（前年同期は6億3700万円の黒字）になる。
労働基準監督署から9月26日に時間外労働管理に関する是正勧告を受け、勤務状況の実態を調査していた。「管理の不徹底が原因」（広報）という。サービス残業は正社員のみでパートではなかった。対象時間は延べ115万時間弱。
22日、社長直轄の労務改善委員会（委員長＝新川雄司専務）を組織した。労働環境と労務管理手法を見直し再発防止に取り組むという。(11:33)
S.F. nonprofit a lean, green, fighting machine
Rainforest Action Network hits corporations where it hurts for the good of the environmentJim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, December 17, 2004
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Wearing toque blanche chef hats, a brigade of Rainforest Action Network activists converged at lunchtime on a summer day on the sidewalk in front of the headquarters of Wells Fargo bank and began to stoke their barbecues.
Before long, the chefs were handing out grilled tofu dogs to passers-by, all the while grilling bank workers with sticky questions about investment practices.
Others offered leaflets to bank customers or held banners that accused the San Francisco-based lender of funding projects that increase global warming. No arrests were made at the protest barbecue or two encores in July and August.
"More and more people are finding that we can challenge corporate America to change its behavior," said Michael Brune, executive director of RAN, "and that seems to be one of the biggest reasons for our continued success."
For nearly 20 years, the San Francisco nonprofit has operated on the razor's edge of environmental policy. The group uses grassroots organizing, product boycotts, paid advertisements, street theater, protests and humor to nudge the business practices of the nation's leading companies.
This year, Rainforest Action Network pressured two of the world's biggest banks -- Citigroup and Bank of America -- to adopt environmental and human rights policies. It's now trying to muscle Ford Motor Co. into making fuel- efficient vehicles and to persuade logging giant Weyerhaeuser Co. to stop clear-cutting virgin forests.
Posters at the group's offices in the Financial District denounce America's addiction to oil and accuse leading banks of financing projects that destroy ancient forests and threaten indigenous tribes. Framed photographs show activists being arrested.
With its black panther logo, the group has an aggressive style and its activists wear their arrest records like badges of honor. They have scaled office towers to hang provocative banners and blockaded the gates of timber companies. This fall, they staged protests at Ford dealerships in the Castro district, Oakland and San Rafael.
These environmental agitators are also under attack by conservatives, who accuse them of using strong-arm tactics including harassment and smear campaigns.
Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has authorized an investigation into RAN's activities and whether it has violated its tax-exempt status.
The committee issued a subpoena to RAN last year for records related to its civil-disobedience actions in the past 10 years. The nonprofit complied with the subpoena, but blacked-out the names of volunteers to protect their free-speech rights. Congressional investigators have indicated that they might subpoena RAN leaders to testify next year on Capitol Hill.
"I think some of the more radical elements of Congress are trying to make an example of us," said Brune, who previously worked for Greenpeace. "They're trying to intimidate and silence their most radical critics."
Some conservatives say that "market campaigns" by groups such as RAN and Greenpeace violate the Internal Revenue Service rules for 501(c)(3) nonprofits, which cover many charitable, educational and religious organizations. The tax code forbids such groups from certain forms of partisan political campaigning.
RAN's tax-exempt status has come under fire before. In 2001, Boise Cascade executives joined industry-supported critics in denouncing the group's pressure tactics. Frontiers of Freedom, a conservative group headed by former Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.), filed a complaint with the IRS, asking the agency to take away RAN's tax-exempt status. About the same time, the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise set up a Web site that branded RAN as "lawless and dangerous."
In a similar vein, James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, branded RAN and other environmental groups that opposed the $3.5 billion Chad-Cameroon petroleum pipeline project as "the Berkeley Mafia."
Last year, after a four-year grassroots market campaign and eight months of negotiations, Boise Cascade became the largest American forest-products company to pledge to eliminate the logging and purchase of wood products from endangered forests.
Brune, whose activist career includes a dozen arrests for such things as trespassing and disorderly conduct, defends his organization's use of civil disobedience. He points out that nonviolent protest has shaped U.S. history, from the Boston Tea Party and the Underground Railroad to the woman's suffrage, child labor, civil rights and gay rights movements.
"It's a way of stating your moral principles," he said. "We use it as a tactic to compel leaders to take action. The choices we make today will directly affect the quality of life for our kids and grandkids."
His group does not espouse violence or property destruction.
Rainforest Action Network was formed in 1985 by RandyHayes and Mike Roselle, a founder of the Earth First environmental group.
"Over the past two decades, we've been trying to figure out how to keep upping the ante," said Hayes, who is president of RAN's board of directors, but no longer oversees its daily operations. From the start, the environmental group organized legions of college students and focused on the conduct of U.S. companies abroad. Its first major campaign was a boycott of Burger King, which resulted in the fast-food chain canceling $35 million in beef contracts with Costa Rican landowners who had turned rain forests into pasture.
In the mid-1990s, RAN targeted Home Depot, the world's largest wood retailer. Activists demonstrated at 600 Home Depot stores and, with the aid of cooperative employees, rigged intercoms to announce such things as, "Old- growth wood for sale on aisle No. 3." After 18 months, the retailer decided to get old-growth wood off its shelves. Soon after, several other home- improvement chains agreed not to sell old growth.
Recent protests at Trader Joe's stores resulted in the retailer's decision to cancel its contract to buy grocery bags from Weyerhaeuser.
"We're asking people to suspend their business with Weyerhaeuser until the company adopts a comprehensive policy to protect endangered forests, which are the Earth's last storehouses for biodiversity," said Brant Olson, director of RAN's old-growth campaign.
Weyerhaeuser spokesman Paul Barnum called RAN "a challenging organization to work with, but our goal is to continue to meet and ultimately reach a resolution. ... The extreme rhetoric makes it difficult to have a constructive dialogue, but we will work through it."
In a written statement, Wells Fargo described meetings between RAN representatives and bank senior vice president and deputy general counsel Marci Rubin this way:
"We're a nationwide company and in thousands of communities across the country so naturally we're in discussions on any given day with many dozens of community organizations and interest groups. We ask these organizations lots of questions about a variety of issues and concerns and we rely on their market knowledge and expertise to help us improve the quality of our products and services. This is not only the right thing to do, it's just good business. Our meetings with representatives of Rainforest Action Network were consistent with this companywide market-by-market community outreach process. Our policies require that our own operations and those of our corporate customers comply with all federal and state regulations that apply to their business, including environmental laws."
Wells Fargo called off its talks with RAN when the sidewalk barbecue protests began.
Rainforest Action Network has 27 employees. Forty percent of its $2.5 million operating budget comes from foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; 35 percent is from individual donors who give large amounts of money; and 25 percent consists of smaller donations from 15,000 members.
"Because of technology, we're able to show the ecological and social costs of poor environmental leadership in real time," Brune said. "Now, we can find out about what's going on as it happens, document it with video cameras, put it up on our Web site and broadcast it ... I don't think large corporations can survive without cleaning up their performance."
Jennifer Krill, director of RAN's zero-emissions campaign, says the best way for America to reduce global warming and its dependence on foreign oil is for U.S. automakers to manufacture clean cars. For the past five years in a row, Ford has ranked last among the world's top six automakers in EPA fuel- efficiency standards.
"We're talking about an industry that's addicted to business as usual, with selling gas-guzzling cars, trucks and SUVs," Krill said. "It's a simple failure to innovate. When Bill Ford Jr. talks about the environment, he seems very convincing. But we don't see the rhetoric matching what's coming off the assembly line."
RAN wants Ford's fleet of vehicles to achieve an average fuel efficiency of 50 miles per gallon by 2010, and zero emissions by 2020.
"We're not asking for science fiction," Krill said. "We're asking an industry to implement technology that already exists, that's already developed. If it takes public pressure for Ford to realize that it needs to take action today, not 20 years from now, then we're ready to bring public pressure."
Ford spokeswoman Caroline Brown called these targets unreasonable and questioned the environmental group's tactics.
"If any automaker had a silver bullet that could get us to 50 miles per gallon by 2010, of course we would use it immediately, because it would be a competitive advantage," Brown said. "A constructive dialogue is going to be better than some kind of scare tactic. We don't need newspaper ads or pickets at the dealerships to push the company along. We're a very socially responsible company."
In recent years, private banks have led the financing of major projects overseas, funding oil drilling and logging in the Amazon rain forest and other fragile ecosystems.
"One of the reasons we decided to focus on this sector of the financial community is that it had been operating in almost complete anonymity," said Ilyse Hogue, who directs the group's global finance campaign. "Public image is critical to corporations in a highly competitive market."
After a four-year campaign, RAN convinced Citigroup -- the world's largest bank -- in January to adopt a lending policy designed to help protect endangered forests and ecosystems.
Citigroup's new policies were the result of an aggressive campaign. In April 2003, RAN unveiled a series of TV ads featuring Hollywood celebrities tearing up their Citibank credit cards and urging others to do the same. A full-page ad in the New York Times accused Citigroup of financing destructive projects. Activists draped a huge banner criticizing the bank across from its corporate headquarters.
After securing Citigroup's vow to alter its lending practices, activists targeted other U.S. banks.
In May, Bank of America announced that it will set new industry standards to protect forests and reduce greenhouse gases that are linked to global warming and climate change. The bank is working with the World Resources Institute in Washington to map the world's largest tracts of contiguous forests, which would allow those areas to be preserved.
RAN activists are now trying to persuade J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo to adopt similar guidelines.
"I have found very few evil people in wandering the corridors of Wall Street. But I have found people who are reluctant to educate themselves about the issues that are going to be front and center," Hogue said. "I have found people who are terribly insulated from the direct effects of their decisions to loan billions of dollars to an oil project deep in the heart of the Amazon on tribal land, which results not only in endangering those indigenous communities but also destroying multiple species and amputating the lungs of our planet."
Why should big companies listen to a small nonprofit?
"People want to feel good about America's leading corporations," Brune said. "Whether it's feeling good about the company you work for, live next to, or buy products from, there's a strong desire to have businesses act like responsible citizens."
E-mail Jim Doyle at jdoyle@sfchronicle.com.
