The Multinational Monitor

December 2001 - VOLUME 22 - NUMBER 12

T H E    L A W R E N C E    S U M M E R S    M E M O R I A L   A W A R D

THE LAWRENCE SUMMERS MEMORIAL AWARD*


The December 2001 Lawrence Summers Memorial Award* goes to Burger King.


In October, the Associated Press reported that “about a dozen Burger King marketing department workers burned their feet last week when they walked over white-hot coals at a meeting intended to promote bonding.” More than 100 Burger King employees participated in the exercise.


One worker required hospital treatment. “Some workers used wheelchairs when they went to the airport to leave for another company retreat,” according to the report. The workers signed a waiver before walking across the coals.


"The majority of the people get through it without a nick or a blister," Robert Kallen,
owner of the Achievement Group, which ran the event, told the Associated Press.


Source: Associated Press, “Workers Bond, Then Are Treated,” The New York Times, October 8,2001.

*In a 1991 internal memorandum, then-World Bank economist Lawrence Summers argued for the transfer of waste and dirty industries from industrialized to developing countries. "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?" wrote Summers, who went on to serve as Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration. "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. ... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low [sic] compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City." Summers later said the memo was meant to be ironic.