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Company Press Release:President of



Subject: Company Press Release:President of Oil Workers' Union Tells Unocal `Outside' Board Members to Take Stand Against Burma's Dictatorship

Thursday July 10 1:42 PM EDT 

Company Press Release

Source: Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers

President of Oil Workers' Union Tells Unocal `Outside'
Board Members to Take Stand Against Burma's
Dictatorship

Unocal Board Members from Amgen, Mattel, Northwestern University and
University of Michigan to Start Feeling Pressure

LAKEWOOD, Colo., July 10 /PRNewswire/ -- In letters written to four non-
management or
outside board members of Unocal Corp., Robert Wages, president of the
90,000-member Oil,
Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union (OCAW), calls on them to
``take a public
stand against Unocal's presence in Burma and to work with other outside
board members to bring
about a change in Unocal's policy.'' He added in the letters that ``anything
short of Unocal pulling
out of Burma should prompt you to resign from Unocal's board.'' 

According to OCAW Special Projects Director Joe Drexler, ``The letters were
written to specific
Unocal board members who are particularly vulnerable to being associated
with slave and forced
child labor, heroin trafficking, brutal political suppression, murder and
rape of the civilian
population, and other crimes in Burma.'' 

In a letter to Kevin W. Sharer, president of Amgen Inc., based in Thousand
Oaks, Calif., Wages
said that Sharer, as president of a company ``engaged primarily in the
development and sales of
products to sustain life,'' should ensure that Unocal's activities are
carried out in a manner that
recognizes ``the sanctity of human life'' and that Amgen's image will be
damaged by being linked
through Unocal to drug money-laundering and the illegal sale of drugs. 

Wages also wrote John Amerman, chairman of Mattel Inc., headquartered along
with Unocal in El
Segundo, Calif., to remind him that as a major producer of children's toys
he should make sure
that Unocal's policies will not harm children, 

Wages' letter to Donald Jacobs, dean of J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of
Management at
Northwestern University, cites Jacobs' role as an educator and notes his
``special responsibility to
ensure that Unocal's activities are carried out ethically and to set an
example to your students.''
The letter further states that Jacobs' association with Unocal will ``taint
your professional
reputation and that of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management.'' A
similar letter was written
to Marina Whitman, Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at
the University of
Michigan. 

Wages in his letters also reminded the Unocal board members that ``the
precedent set at
Nuremberg means that corporate officers can be held responsible for crimes
against humanity.'' He
refers in the letter to Burma as ``the concentration camp known as
Myanmar,'' the name given to
Burma by the military dictatorship. 

``We fully expect that these directors and their companies and institutions
will become targets of
the campaign to force Unocal out of Burma until democracy is restored,''
said Drexler. ``We are
giving them a chance to speak out independently of Unocal management and
against the
company's involvement in Burma.'' 

Wages has been one of the most outspoken critics of oil company and
multinational corporate
support for Burma's military dictatorship and is leading the charge among
U.S. labor leaders in
calling on the Clinton Administration to impose economic sanctions on Burma.
He has repeatedly
criticized oil companies for downsizing U.S. operations and selling assets
to raise capital for
investments in countries governed by ruthless dictatorships. The downsizings
and sales of assets to
so-called low-cost oil refiners, according to Wages, has not only cost U.S.
workers good-paying
jobs but has also severely compromised worker and community safety. 

Unocal and French-owned Total SA are partners in the Yadana pipeline
project, which is the
single largest source of outside investment in Burma today. According to the
U.S. State
Department, Burma's military dictatorship derives its major revenue from the
sale and production
of heroin, much of which ends up on U.S. streets. 


SOURCE: Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers
Contact: Joe Drexler of Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Intl. Union AFL- CIO,
303-987-2229