Lobbying Group Scrubs Page Listing Corporate Backers After Mother Jones Article

But the internet never forgets.


In late 2013, major corporations such as Walmart, Nordstrom, Lowe’s, Macy’s, and Safeway began bankrolling the Association for Responsible Alternatives to Workers’ Compensation (ARAWC), a group that pushes legislation aimed at making it harder for workers hurt on the job to access lost wages and medical care.

But you wouldn’t know it by looking at ARAWC’s website. Sometime after Thursday, when Mother Jones published an article naming the major corporations financing ARAWC, the lobbying group removed a page from its site that listed its current members. Mother Jones recovered a version of the page that was cached earlier this month:

ARAWC's corporate backers

ARAWC’s “Current Members” page: Click to enlarge. Yahoo Cache

According to ARAWC’s membership application, full and founding members pay $25,000 a year to join. Sponsoring members, such as Whole Foods and the Great American Insurance Company, pay $10,000 a year.

We’ve asked a spokesman for ARAWC why the group removed its “current members” page and will update this post with any response.

Update March 30, 6:20 p.m. EDT: A spokesman for ARAWC wrote the following in an email: “The Current Members page on the ARAWC website was previously scheduled to be taken down, because it did not reflect our current membership. It is not a big issue like some are making it into. Many lobbying organizations do not list their members at all. I expect the page to be re-posted at a later date.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate