negotiation

Charles Kernaghan: Originally Wal Mart and Kathy Lee Gifford had said, "Why should we believe you that children work in this factory?" What we didn't tell them was that Wendy Dias, in the centre of the picture, was on a plane to the United States. This is Wendy Dias. She comes to the United States. She's unstoppable.

News announcer: Congress heard testimony today from children who testified they were exploited by sweatshops overseas.

Charles Kernaghan: Kathy Lee Gifford apologised to Wendy. It was the most amazing thing I'd seen. This powerful celebrity leans over and says, "Wendy, please believe me, I didn't know these conditions existed. And now that I do, I'm going to work with you. I'm going to work with these other people and it'll never happen again." And that night we signed an agreement with Kathy Lee Gifford.

Kathie Lee Gifford: I thought it would be a relatively easy process, and it isn't. As for every question I have there seem to be five questions that come back at me.

Charles Kernaghan: As far as Wal Mart goes and Kathy Lee, pretty much everything returned to sweatshop conditions but because this was fought out on television for weeks, this incident with Kathy Lee Gifford actually took the sweatshop issue to every single part of the country. And so, frankly, after that, there's hardly a single person in this country who doesn't know about child labour or sweatshops or starvation wages.

Title Card: Several years after the Wal Mart controversy, Kathy Lee handbags were still being made in China by workers paid three cents per hour.

Title Card: Under pressure from the National Labor Committee, Gap Inc. allowed independent monitoring of its El Salvador factories, becoming the first transnational corporation to do so anywhere.

Elaine Bernard: So what we need to do is to look at the very roots of the legal form that created this beast, and we need to think who can hold them accountable.

Noam Chomsky: They're not graven in stone. They can be dismantled. And, in fact, most states have laws, which require that they be dismantled.

Jim Lafferty: For too long now giant corporations have been allowed to undermine democracy here in the United States and all over the world. But today the National Lawyer's Guild and 29 other groups and individuals are fighting back. We are calling upon State Attorney General, Dan Lungren, to comply with California law and to revoke to the corporate charter of the Union Oil Company of California for its repeated and grevious offences.

Robert Benson: This is a statute that is well known. It has been used. It can be used. What this will mean is the dissolution of the Union Oil Company of California, the sale of its assets under careful court orders to others who will carry on in the public interest.

Jim Lafferty: From its complicity in unspeakable human rights violations overseas against women, gays, labourers and indigenous peoples, to its efforts to subvert U.S. foreign policy and deceive the courts, the public and its own stockholders, Unocal is emblematic of corporate abuse and corporate power run amok.

Don Xui Xziang: Extending a business deal with the Burma army is immoral. Unocal cannot do business in Burma without supporting that hopeless regime.

Title Card: The Attorney General of California refused to revoke the corporate charter of Unocal but did acknowledge his office had the power to do so.