- [Nicole] Hey everyone, welcome back. So this last module now is about risks and resistance. Aims of this section are to introduce the importance of researching historical and current resistance to a company to get a basic understanding of the many risks a company faces, and to understand how you as a group, as a campaign, as a project, might be able to use this vulnerabilities to your advantage. 

So, yeah, I think that any research that Corporate Watch does, any article we write, like we really think it's important to kind of platform and profile like current resistance. So you might want to ask yourself, is anyone campaigning against the company now? Like it's really useful to identify any campaigns, you know, where they are, who's involved. The other thing is like talking to them, you know, they're likely to be experts on the company's behaviour. Like lots of people know inside out the people that they're, you know, fighting on a daily basis, for example. And a really good question to ask is how is the company concerned by current campaigns? You know, are they getting quite disrupted by them? Are they kind of nervous about the amount of resistance they're receiving? Or maybe they're seemingly not. Maybe they are, you know, seemingly impenetrable. But yeah, it's a really good idea to get a handle on kind of current resistance. 

It's also really useful to look at the history of past resistance. So have there been any campaigns against company in the past? What happened with them? Were they effective? And ultimately like what can be learned from them? So I've been involved in a few projects around like prisoner support and before we started one particular group, we surveyed like different groups that had already done prisoner support for a long time to get their kind of opinions and their insight and their experiences to see what they thought they did, you know, right or did wrong. And, you know, overwhelmingly, all of them were saying that they felt like prisoner families were, you know, the most kind of potential option 'cause they didn't believe like the general public would support abolitionist ideas or want to do prisoner support. And obviously, you know, like those values have shifted over time. So don't always, you know, necessarily take everything someone says as gospel, especially if people are particularly burnt out or they've kind of been through the mill with a lot of repression. But it is really useful to talk to people about what they've learned and to, you know, to kind of survey what's been effective. 

Okay. So yeah, so one example is the anti-fracking movement. So by the time that fracking was kind of introduced as a threat in the UK, other communities had already been like resisting fracking, in the US and in Australia, particularly. So organisers in the UK would kind of learn from those campaigns. I actually interviewed some people myself from different projects across Australia who developed this model of like frack-free communities. And that was like really useful in kind of, you know, seeing what tactics had worked. Obviously, we're in a very different cultural like context, but, you know, I think it's really important to learn from, you know, kind of other resistance. And likewise, for communities that maybe it's the first time that they're like resisting a drilling rig or resisting a planning application, they want to be able to kind of survey and see what other resistance there is, see if there's any other campaigns they can visit, any other community groups they can talk to so they can learn from their experiences. So, you know, they can kind of like collapse time and like hack it, you know, and be more effective, you know, in a kind of faster way because they're learning from the months or years of experience of other organisers. All right, so Corporate Watch from our DIY guide, we've got a couple of resources here. We've got a little directory of campaigns, community groups, and unions. It's a little bit out of date, but there's some good links in there. And we've also got a list of non-corporate media and research resources that are worth checking out. 

So this next part of the lesson, I'm going to be looking at kind of risks to companies and identifying company vulnerabilities. So it's worth saying that companies, very commonly, publish their own risk assessments, especially, firms that are, you know, publicly listed companies with lots of shareholders around the world. So in the course resources section, I've included a link to Rio Tinto's annual report from 2019. And I'm going to kind of refer to it as an example. But yeah, I think these kind of risk assessment reports are really useful to gain an understanding of a company's vulnerabilities. Like no one really will be more aware than the company itself as to what, you know, what the risks are to it. So, in the risk in the kind of risk impact and trend assessment section, they've got this very helpful little diagram. And you can see they've kind of displayed to their risks as moderate impact out here, high impact, and then very high impact. So we're going to look at these kinds of risks that they've been talking about and, you know, they've got here like increasing and decreasing and unchanged. So maybe some things like community and other key stakeholder risks have increased other the risks and become more high-impact and they might be talking about a campaign, for example. 

Okay, so this is just talking about Rio Tinto. I've pulled this directly from their report and I've summarised it. But these kinds of risks, I think they're a really great example of the risks that many, many companies will experience. So even if the company you're researching hasn't got its own massive annual report with loads of information about this stuff, I think this can still be useful in giving you an understanding of some of the risks that companies face. So yes, for Rio Tinto, this is their kind of market risks or economic risks. So their commodity prices vary. So, you know, the prices for the metals they're mining might vary, exchange rates vary, you know, they're working across multiple different locations and different currencies. Geopolitical issues, reduction in cashflow. So that could limit profitability and shareholder returns. Economic slowdowns in different countries. And policy decisions can all influence market risks. Some of the strategic risks they might experience are divestment. So obviously with, you know, there's loads of different campaigns now that are quite divestment orientated, trying to encourage various financial institutions to not have money in a climate change causing companies, including groups like Rio Tinto. Or it might be that they just lose an institutional investor because they are just not that profitable anymore, for example. So this is a bit wordy, but I'll explain it in a second. Liabilities for the past acts or emissions of assets it has acquired that were unforeseen or greater than anticipated at the time of acquisition. 

So basically, this is kind of like things kind of, like in terms of like liabilities for the past acts it's like, you know, something that's happened in the past they may be kind of accountable for or responsible for, have some debt over and that's kind of potentially unforeseen or it's greater than anticipated. So their costs have gone up and they're not going to be able to cover their debts, for example. Maybe they've had some kind of lawsuit, and they've got an unforeseen cost in terms of a fine or something like that. And they've got here complex multi-year execution plans are affected by cost, safety, law, and regulation. So, you know, as organisers, like a lot of projects can seem really untouchable. Like you have no idea how you're going to stop like a certain thing, like fracking or stop, you know, stop prisons from being built or stop, you know, the government deporting people or whatever, but like, you know, all of their plans are longer term, generally, and they're complex, right? They have lots of different players involved and their costs kind of often spiral out of control especially with state-run projects. 

And, you know, one example, for example, with prison expansion was they'd kind of hedge their bets of being able to pay for their new prison expansion programme by selling several prisons in inner city areas. So they try to sell Holloway, which they have done successfully now. But that process was blocked for really long time by campaigners, by community groups, as part of a reclaimed Holloway coalition. And so that had a kind of knock on effect on other prisons being built or not being able to be built because the government had to, you know, raid the treasury for more money for their projects, which kind of has delayed the whole thing by a number of years. So yeah, these projects are, you know, are generally very complex and long term. And so intervening at like just one moment in time could, you know, have a kind of domino effect on other areas of the project management. Safety, so maybe someone, maybe someone like dies or there's accidents at work, which again, could cost a lot of fines for the company or could change, you know, they might lose their permit for example. Law and regulations. So, you know, maybe after a lot of pressure from people, a government might, you know, turn the tables on something or introduce some sort of climate change legislation. That means that a company can't do the same thing anymore or they have to use certain air filters or bring in something else that like puts a limit to their, you know, to their profits. And these are all kind of risks that companies experience all the time. So strategic risks continued. This is a nice fracking pad here, I think. So yeah, relationships with stakeholders, they've put as a big risk. Government or community. So again, you know, this is like coming out from Rio Tinto's reports, but Rio Tinto, you know, they experience a lot of resistance around the world. People are organising against their mines in Serbia in South America, in Australia. And all of those local projects, you know, their relationship with communities are really hanging in the balance, right, between people just like all out resisting them to, you know, the government protecting them. 

You know, there's just like so many layers of different kind of like power dynamics. And you think, because you're just doing like some small little grassroots campaign that you can't make a difference. But you know, these most global companies that you think have billions of pounds worth in investment and, you know, groups can still be a threat to them. So inaccurate commercial assumptions. Any delays can impact a project in multiple ways. This was what significantly impacted the fracking industry was just like the consistent protest camps and the slowing down of planning applications, the slowing down of trucks moving into sites, like it was just delay, delay, delay that made, you know, things completely unviable. Joint ventures inherently carry risks. So if a company is working with another company, then that's like some kind of risk for them because you know, the other company might, you know, might like run out of money or have some sort of controversy or lose its government permit or anything else. So it's like another area of instability. Yeah, partners can cause adverse impacts for a project, a company's reputation, or cause unexpected financial liability. So financial risks, our company might have the inability to raise sufficient funds for their kind of planned spending. There might be consequences from like unsuccessful mergers or acquisitions of other companies that might be economic downturn. For example, with the pandemic, very unprecedented level of like economic disruption, globally. They might have inadequate access to liquidity. So they just can't get their hands on the cash they need, or just can't kind of balance the books with everything that they're doing. Financial decision making mistakes. So they might take on too much debt. 

And, you know, we've seen that with lots of companies in the UK, just, you know, giants that we didn't think would fall that they did, you know, because of just the consequences of their financial decision-making. Resources risks. So again, this is like a Rio Tinto example, but it does kind of affect most companies that are trading like physical items. So, you know, not being able to discover viable orebodies, them not being economically viable, and maybe having a shorter duration than expected. These are all kind of very like tangible risks to something like a mining company. Environmental and safety risks. So hazardous working environments. Maybe you remember from the health and safety executive section that like lots of people, you know, lots of companies are faced with huge fines if someone, you know, dies in their working environment. You know, obviously, so there should be. But it does pose a risk to companies. They could cause illness or injury to employees. It could damage the environment, disrupt the community. There could be threats to personal security, you know, especially companies doing like incredibly exploitative stuff in other countries where there's like more conflict. And instability potentially. You know, they're at risk of, you know, military action or, you know, violence in other ways. Catastrophic events. So hopefully not Armageddon and asteroids, but who knows. Long-term damage may also harm the company's financial performance and licence to operate. And also as, you know, impacts of climate change like the physical impacts, you know, from increased adverse weather events but also regulatory impacts. So governments bringing in legislation around climate change. some of the political and social risks. So, you know, especially if a company is multinational, they're exposed to this really wide range of like different economic, political environments. Like different laws and regulations in different countries. There might be operational delays due to resistance, which I've mentioned already. 

And again, like I love reading company reports because you can really see sometimes the impact of resistance in slowing a company down or like, you know, completely making it unviable for them to continue with something, you know, leading them to like abandon certain projects. Changes in legal frameworks and taxation. Any sort of, you know, allegation or formal investigation that could affect their share price. That kind of reputational damage, like we underestimate it. But you know, if a company like, you know, tumbles on the stock market, that's like really doing damage to someone. So, you know, it's a real risk for companies. Criminal prosecution of the company or individuals, reputational damage, expropriation, okay. So yeah, so I guess I want to kind of finish this lesson with just people feeling a bit inspired of like, we have like so much more power than we realise. And you know, all of these companies, like that was just the context for Rio Tinto. Like every company is going to have its own vulnerabilities. So my question is like, how vulnerable do you think companies are? And what risks can campaigns and resistance pose to them? And ultimately, like how does organised resistance threatened power structures? You know, like Corporate Watch talks a lot about capitalism, in it's kind of broader context in terms of the state, in terms of climate change, in terms of everything else. And you know, we'd like to give a platform to groups that are, you know, organising in different ways to resist these conditions and to fight back against corporate power. 

And I hope through this course, that you've been able to, you know, see that companies aren't like completely like all powerful organisations that have millions and billions at their, you know, disposal and they can do whatever they want. Like some of that is true, for sure. And other times actually, you know, by asking the right questions, we can see how vulnerable some of these companies are and how many different factors are at play in kind of influencing their survival and your, you know, your goal might not be to completely destroy a company. It might just be to get them to stop doing something or to do something else. Maybe you're trying to win a wage rise. Maybe you're trying to close down a detention centre, like maybe you're trying to stop fracking in your local area. Like whatever you're doing, don't underestimate the power of figuring out that company's weak spot, figuring out its risks, its vulnerabilities, and how you, as an organised group of people, can take action to, you know, get their Achilles' heel. Anyway, I hope that's been interesting and thanks so much for kind of staying on this journey 'til now. If you're still working on your company profile template, please take a look at these questions and do a kind of risk assessment for the company. Think about, you know, what risks it's threatened by. Think about the conditions it's operating in, the kind of broader societal economic issues. 

And yeah, try and survey the resistance as well. Who's already organised against them now or historically? Like which groups are kind of actively against them? What can you learn from them? And yeah, please add that, all of that to your company profile, into your mind map. And hopefully by now, by this stage of the course, you've got a pretty comprehensive understanding of this company that you've been profiling every step of the way. So thanks for staying with me 'til now. The last module of the course is just going to be a conclusion. I'm going to share a bit about how you can share your research with Corporate Watch, potentially publish with us. And yeah, so much appreciation for you for being here and you know, taking this time to invest in yourself and invest in these skills to support your groups and your movements and yeah, to learn these skills to fight back against capitalism and corporate power.