Teamsters Induct Worst of the Worst into CEO Hall of Shame
CEOs are getting so greedy they’re launching themselves into space. Good riddance.
By Alec Monnie and Evan Torma
Greed in America has been turbocharged by a cabal of CEOs and corporate executives completely disconnected from the lives of everyday people. These out-of-touch elites use the wealth they extract off the backs of American workers to pay for a level of extravagance that’s hard to fathom.
Despite their enormous wealth, these corporate stooges can’t stop demanding more. More concessions. More control. More money in their overstuffed pockets. They are assaulting collective bargaining rights, trying to replace good careers with nonunion gig work, and widening the divide between the people who do the work and the executives who profit from it.
It’s time to name and shame the most notorious offenders. Here are the worst of the worst of inductees in the Teamsters CEO Hall of Shame:
Everyone knows the saying that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Republic Services CEO Jon Vander Ark took it too literally.
Since taking over as CEO of Republic Services, Vander Ark has stopped at nothing to plunder more money from his workers. He wasted $50 million in just three months trying and failing to break a Teamsters strike. He has let a Missouri landfill sitting next to nuclear waste burn for years on end. And he has jammed tens of millions of dollars into his pockets while subjecting devoted sanitation workers to dangerous conditions.
The Teamsters Union represents thousands of Republic Services workers across North America. We are fighting back against Vander Ark’s aggression. And we’re kicking his ass. Union workers will keep winning — no matter how many times Vander Ark decides to blow shareholder money trying to stop us.
UPS hired Carol Tomé for one reason: to undermine workers. They saw the damage she caused as a lead henchwoman for one of the most anti-union corporations in America — Home Depot — and they wanted her to bring her ostrich-skinned handbag of dirty tricks to the package giant’s headquarters in Atlanta.
Tomé’s time atop UPS has been marked by egregious failures of leadership. She blew hundreds of thousands of dollars on high-paid outside union busters during negotiations for the historic 2023 UPS Teamsters National Master Agreement. She has desperately tried to weasel her way out of the commitments she made in that contract. And in the process, she has repeatedly shamed herself in the eyes of the hundreds of thousands of hardworking rank-and-file UPSers who make the company a multibillion-dollar delivery institution.
Tomé ranks high on the list of the worst executives in UPS history. But she’s likely not worried about that. Everything is going according to plan so long as she gets to keep feeding from the trough while tending to her sprawling 650-acre country estate.
Amazon’s insane production quotas have made it the worst offender of any employer in causing workplace injuries and chaotic turnover. Amazon is worth more than $2 trillion, but its workers are paying the price for the company’s greed. Many are paid so little they are forced to rely on public assistance or struggle with housing and food insecurity. In addition to spending more than any other American employer on union busters and compromised politicians, Amazon is so anti-union that its suing to have the National Labor Relations Board deemed unconstitutional.
Alongside a truly deadly labor record, the company aggressively avoids paying taxes, its monopolistic practices are damaging the entire American economy, and its surveillance apparatus threatens the very concept of privacy as we know it.
None of this seems to bother Bezos, who basks in extravagance built on the exploitation of the masses. A few of his recent receipts include $500 million for a yacht, $75 million for a smaller yacht to support the big boy, $80 million for a private jet, $56 million for his latest wedding, and $42 million on a clock. Yep, just a big ol’ clock.
Bezos is also infamously preoccupied with multibillion-dollar vanity rocket launches that keep ending in explosive failures.
The third-richest dude in the world isn’t just the most nefarious and greedy businessman of our lifetimes — he’s a tumor jeopardizing the life of dignified labor in this country.