What Working Mother magazine won’t tell you: Abbott
October 1, 2007 | Advertising,Ethics,Family,Journalism,Media,Media literacy,Parenting,PR,Working Mother
- Corporate career information touting Working Mother recognition
- Press release
- Corporate PR
- Working Mother
- In the “news” (byline)
- Advertising with Working Mother Media: October 2007 issue, p. 13 (full page), p. 28 (full page), p. 29 (1/3-page), p. 151 (full page)
Show me the $$$
Abbott spent $2,260,000 for lobbying in 2006, $880,000 of which went to outside lobbying firms. The rest was spent on in-house lobbyists. Abbott gave $566,474 to federal candidates in the 2005/2006 election period through its political action committee.
Chairman and CEO Miles White has given $94,940 to political candidates and political action committees since 2000. Of that, $10,000 went to the New American Leadership Fund, $5,000 to the Keep Our Mission PAC, which gave $1,090,828 to candidates and other PACs in the last election cycle, and $500 to the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, which gave $123,343 in 2006 to federal candidates.
Who benefits?
Abbott, which recorded $22.5 billion in sales in 2006, has 65,000 employees in more than 100 facilities around the world, including offices in Norway and Sweden. Working Mother “loves” the family leave Abbott offers American employees:
Salaried mothers get six weeks of paid and six weeks unpaid maternity leave. Hourly employees get six weeks of partially paid and six weeks unpaid maternity leave. Fathers can take two weeks of paid paternity leave.
Abbott employees who live in Norway or Sweden get at least a year of paid family leave (mothers and fathers must share the leave) with the option of extending it to two or even three years at reduced pay.
Abbott had 150 employees (of 65,000 total) participate in lactation support for its Mothers at Work program, which “helps our employees manage their breastfeeding schedule at while at work” with lactation consultants, lactation rooms, a “breastfeeding kit” and online information. The kit says Abbott has partnered with Working Mother magazine to “raise awareness” and “encourage implementation of workplace lactation programs.”
What do they say when they speak for working mothers?
Abbott also has teamed up with Working Mother and its Moms in Action blog, Corporate Voices for Working Families and the International Formula Council, an international association of manufacturers and marketers of infant formula (individual members are not listed), to speak for working mothers in the public-policy arena. For example:
… some states are considering proposals to restrict the information new mothers receive about infant feeding options.
That’s where the formula council, which collaborates with Abbott and Working Mother, comes in. An Abbott publication called “Ensuring Optimal Infant Nutrition: A Shared Responsibility,” says that “92 percent of mothers approve of the distribution of infant formula samples,” according to an August 2002 survey conducted by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates with Wirthlin Worldwide. It doesn’t, however, provide details of the survey. How many mothers participated in the survey? Ten? Twenty? One hundred? It’s hard to say. The survey is not available online.
If you’d like to hear what they say on behalf of working mothers, they will hold a teleconference on public policy and advocacy on Nov. 15.
They mean business
Think making the “100 best” list is just a nice pat on the back? Think again. Not only do companies send out press releases about it, promote it to prospective employees and display it in their annual reports, they testify before Congress about it.
A representative of Corporate Voices for Working Families said this before the House Committee on Education and Labor Workforce Protections Subcommittee on June 21, 2007:
Our commitment to a culture of flexibility and to helping working families has not gone unnoticed. KPMG has earned a spot on Working Mother Media’s List of 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers ten times; we have made the Companies that Care Honor Roll four times, and this past year, Fortune Magazine named KPMG one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2007. — Barbara Wankoff, KPMG (Corporate Voices for Working Families partner***)
Lactation support around the world
In July 2006, the Philippines Department of Health issued regulations to ban the marketing of infant formula for babies younger than 2. The World Health Organization estimates 16,000 babies a year die in the Philippines because of a decline in breastfeeding. Filipino mothers even say their pediatricians prescribe infant formula for their babies. The Pharmaceutical and Health Care Association of the Philippines (“100 best” members include Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Schering-Plough and Wyeth) sued the government to stop the new rules. The Philippines Supreme Court would not issue an injunction to stop the new rules from going into effect. The the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote to the president in August, complaining about the rule and issuing a threat:
If regulations are susceptible to amendment without due process, a country’s reputation as a stable and viable destination for investment is at risk. — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a letter to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, August 2006
Four days later, the Supreme Court issued an injunction against the new rules.
In February 2007, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Jean Ziegler issued a statement by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, saying infant-formula advertisements in the Philippines ” … manipulate data emanating from the U.N. specialized agencies, such as WHO and UNICEF,” as well as the Philippine Health Department, “with the sole purpose to protect the milk companies’ huge profits, regardless of the best interest of Filipino mothers and children.”
As late as June 2007, both sides were still in court. The World Health Organization and UNICEF issued a statement in August 2007, condemning misleading advertisements. (Abbott’s infant formulas include Alimentum Advance, Isomil, Similac 2, Similac Advance and other Similac products.)
Abbott recorded in its 2006 annual report “pediatric nutritionals” in the United States of $1,128,000,000 in 2006, $1,097,000,000 in 2005 and $1,146,000,000 in 2004. International sales were $899,000 in 2006, $698,000 in 2005 and $598,000 in 2004.
The decrease in sales of U.S. pediatric nutritionals in 2005 was primarily due to overall infant nutritionals non-WIC category decline and competitive share loss. International Pediatric Nutritionals sales increases were due primarily to volume growth in developing countries.
Gross profit margins were 56.3 percent of net sales in 2006.
In the U.S., states receive price rebates from manufacturers of infant formula under the federally subsidized Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children. There are also rebate programs for pharmaceutical products. These rebate programs continue to have a negative effect on the gross profit margins of the Nutritional and Pharmaceutical Products segments. In addition, pricing pressures unfavorably impacted the gross profit margins for the Nutritional Products segment in 2006, 2005 and 2004.
Healing the world
Abbott’s product Kaletra is a vital drug for treatment of HIV/AIDS, but the company charges inflated prices for the drug in many developing countries.
From Abbott’s 2006 annual report:
Increased sales volume of HUMIRA and increased volume and price for Kaletra and Depakote favorably impacted U.S. Specialty sales.
Abbott recorded U.S. Specialty (pharmaceutical) sales of $3,505,000,000 in 2006, U.S. Primary Care sales of $2,505,000,000 in 2006 and international pharmaceutical sales of $5,157,000,000 in 2006.
In April 2007, an organization called USA for Innovation (its Web site started in April and went down in August) started a public-relations campaign against Thailand, sending out press releases, placing full-page advertisements in The Wall Street Journal, The Nation (editorial statement on the ad) and the Bangkok Post. Everyone, transcribing press releases, quoted USA for Innovation and its spokesperson, but nobody seemed to know anything about the organization. Nobody asked. Turns out it’s a 501(c)4 non-profit organization, run by Ken Adelman as president/director, Nancie Marzulla (president of Defenders of Property Rights; more info here) as secretary/director and Abner Mason (founder of the AIDS Repsonsibility Project) as treasurer/director, whose main interest is protecting intellectual property rights. Among other things, Adelman is a senior counselor to Edelman PR firm.
Former President Bill Clinton announced in May 2007 that his foundation negotiated price cuts for AIDS drugs and endorsed Thailand and Brazil’s decisions to American pharmaceutical company patents, saying their prices were exorbitant.
Abbott has been almost alone in its hard-line position here over what I consider to be a life and death matter. — Former President Bill Clinton, May 2007
::::::::Psst! Bill, your wife has taken $58,100 since 2002 from the pharmaceutical industry. She’s taken $146,000 so far in the 2008 presidential campaign. Speaking of presidential campaigns, you took $71,500 from the pharmaceutical industry in 1996. But, hey. I guess you’re all about Oprah and Giving these days, right?::::::::
Abbott planned to introduce new antibiotic, painkiller, high-blood-pressure and AIDS drugs to Thailand, but it withdrew them in retaliation for Thailand’s decision to break patents and buy cheaper generic drugs for patients. Abbott has since reached agreements with Thailand and Brazil to sell its drugs for $1,000 a year per patient.
…
***In addition to Abbott and KPMG, other “100 best” Corporate Voices for Working Families partners include:
Accenture
Allstate Insurance Company
AstraZeneca
Bank of America
Booz Allen Hamilton
CitiGroup
Deloitte & Touche, LLP
Discovery Communications
Eli Lilly Company
Ernst & Young
GlaxoSmithKline
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
HP
IBM
Johnson & Johnson
JP Morgan Chase
Lehman Brothers
Marriott International, Inc.
MassMutual
Merck & Company, Inc.
Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.
Morgan Stanley
Phoenix Companies
PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.
Texas Instruments
Wachovia
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Whoa. This is an amazing piece of work. Thank you.
December 28th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
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