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TechnoratiBig Business Prepares For A Less Friendly Washington
WASHINGTON - After years of playing offense, big business is getting ready for the less familiar role of playing defense following President-elect Barack Obama's victory and legislative gains by other Democrats.
![[]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/bigcorporateflag1106.gif "bigcorporateflag1106.gif")
Corporate America enjoyed favorable
treatment under the Bush administration for almost eight years and for
most of the era of Republican control of Congress from 1995 to 2007.
Now unions may gain a stronger hand, and business is bracing for greater financial regulation, worker-friendly policies and an emphasis on social spending.
From a guarded view on trade to expanded collective-bargaining rights, there's a new wind blowing through the Capitol and big business groups are bracing for a storm.
One reason they're sure to find a less sympathetic ear is that members of groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent big bucks trying to defeat Democrats in congressional races.
Instead, Democrats expanded their numbers in both chambers. That left these groups on Wednesday trying to put a bright face on results that gave Democrats at least five more Senate seats and 18 new members of the House of Representatives.
"There are many areas of potential cooperation," John Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan and now the president of the manufacturers' group, said in an optimistic morning-after news conference.
Greg Casey, president of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, offered: "It's an opportunity for the American people to ask for competence in government."
Business lobbies can take solace in one important development: Democrats appear to have failed to win enough Senate seats to reach the 60-vote margin needed to cut off debate and force votes on controversial legislation.
This numbers game is important because unions have their eye on rapid passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which was supported by Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden. The legislation would end seven decades of secret balloting during union drives and instead allow organizers to collect signatures from a majority of workers to form a union. This process is called "card check."
"We're very optimistic about an Obama presidency. The Employee Free Choice Act is our number one legislative priority for next year and we are going to be pushing very hard," said Thea Lee, the chief economist for the AFL-CIO. "It was the centerpiece of our electoral efforts . . . we are very confident that it will happen."
Less than 24 hours after the election, both unions and big business were busy identifying who they'd be pressuring if the issue goes to a vote early next year. Many House members voted for it earlier this year, knowing that it wouldn't pass the Senate.
Now, with a president who won't veto the pro-union legislation, more Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in disarray, it's a different ballgame.
"Next time out its not going to be considered a 'free vote' by anybody, so that's a changing dynamic," said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of government affairs for the Chamber of Commerce. "I am still positive that we can defeat it."
Manufacturers fear an early vote on the question.
"This is not the time and certainly not the issue to build a relationship," Engler said, suggesting that Obama and Democrats will need big business to help turn around the economy. He identified Virginia's Democratic senator-elect, Mark Warner, a pro-business centrist, as a Democrat he'll be lobbying to block the card-check measure.
While recognizing that unions will have a voice in the White House for the first time in many years, the Chamber's Josten wasn't worried that he won't be heard.
"I had to fight for two years with the Republican majority in Congress on immigration (reform) . . . the majority of people we were fighting were Republicans," he said. He also recalled that the business group also fought a losing battle against complicated new accounting rules after energy giant Enron's collapse.
With the jobless rate expected to rise above 7 percent before Obama takes office and the economy expected to contract sharply over the 10 weeks until inauguration, Josten thinks that reversing the economic slump will trump any activist agenda.
"It's the economy, the economy and the economy," he said. "Obama is a smart guy and he knows his policies depend on the economy growing."
45 Comments so far
Show AllChange? Surprise,surprise! I'm not!
Obama, the people he talking to so far are Clintonistas. So, except much of same as you got with the Clinton admistration if these are his choices.
Remember NFTA and what it as done to bluecollar jobs in this country..
Remember the repeal of Glass/Steagal? That was pushed hard by Rubin.
Volcker raised interest rates to 21% and wrecked ravoc on the middleclass and the poor,while the wealthy got richer.
Elites must be laughing at the masses as usual.. Pulled it off again, the old bait and switch..
I hope big business has good reason for this fear. The economic "clusterf^&*k to the Poor House" as Jon Stewart on the Daily Show calls it, will combined with those "community organizers" force the issue to equalize the disparity of wealth in his country in an Obama administration that is unwilling to make these changes on its own.
Start with Wal-Mart.
How many labor experts, labor historians, union leaders, consumer advocates, etc. were called to participate in Obama's transition team? And did anyone read today's headlines on Google News: Emanuel Rahm was on the board of directors while the Freddie Mac scandals were going on.
Sure glad I didn't buy into the hope-springs-eternal meme that CD was pushing a couple weeks ago -- and cave in to the Dems. I'm afraid you're all going to be woefully disappointed. The country should have voted Nader or some other independent or third party.
I'm predicting that the Obama economic and foreign policy will be just as bad as anything Bush cooked up for the simple reason that the Obama's campaign was heavily vetted by corporate interests, the corporate media, and the neocons seem to have realized they wrecked the branding of the Rethugs and migrated over to the Dems. The rules of the game haven't changed. As Nader indicated, to be a leader you need to be a transformational figure, to be willing to confront power. Obama seems only to have been subverted by it.
TwelvePack;
You are predicting Obama will be as bad as Bush, Huh?
Nader, who you advocate for, is invested in Raytheon who makes cluster bombs via his extensive holdings in Fidelity-Magellan. General Dynamics too.
But he is most heavily invested in Cisco Systems who Naomi Klein says works "hand in glove' with mainland China spying on it's own people. This makes Ralph scum by definition.
Follow the money, not the bling.
I know Ralph Nader by 'the companies he keeps,' his union-busting of his own employees, and his heroic crusade against COLORED TOILET PAPER at the height of the Viet-Nam War, as the smell of burning flesh encircled the globe-colored TP was his righteous cause. What a man.
Obama-Yes.
Unions were great before they were cut off at the knees.
However they also helped price American Labor out of the world market; when semi/non skilled folks make $25.00 an hour, have full benefits and a total retirement package, it costs a Co. about Fifty an hour to employ them.
So now all that work is done in India and China for U.S. Co.'s.
The answer would be an economic model that worked within our borders.
If this country is rich, how can so many be poor?
Answer; the wealth is sitting in overseas bank accounts and behind locked and guarded gates here.
This article is a little too rose-colored in my view. Rahm Israel Emanuel is pro free trade and pro neoliberal capitalism and he's an insider whose advice Obama has been taking for a while. There's a decent article about him on ZNet. Check it out:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19389
There are (at least) two sides to every story. For another side to the Rahm Emanuel story, check out http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield.
"It is not true that it's one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over." Edna St. Vincent Millay
We need to get our collective heads out of mega-business, and focus, not on mega-millions, but what our domestic needs are. We have wasted our assets on the idea of mega-bucks. The spectacle of a presidential candidate's claim to fame being that he made 400 million bucks is a disgrace. It is not civilization when a family must have two full-time incomes to raise a family. Nor when health care is so dear that it's availability dictates so much.
We have plenty to do. Organizing the actual doing of it, rather than the allocation of profits from the doing, is what is needed. Manufacturers want to manufacture, workers want to work, students want to learn. The incentive lies in our mutual benefit, not from profit itself. Businesses which are "bracing" have a bad attitude. We need not maintain a posture of control and power, vying with one another for some imaginary deferential status; we need to believe in each other, respect each others' worth and work for one anothers' well-being. Greed is not a social incentive. Greed is anti-social, isn't it.
We have a new president who has brought hope to the whole world. Let's lower our sights. Instead of building the Great City and being a Super Power, let's trade our extravagance for a good old-fashioned dinner of beans, bread and salad once a week, spend more time with loved-ones (practice makes perfect, we become what we regularly do), and get the hell out of this conspicuous consumption, 5,000 pound landyacht driven thing we're calling civilization but ain't. Let's not rule the world, let's get our house in order.
Grappa
First thing they can do is repeal Taft/Hartly act.
i think the discussions about "labor/management" relationships or "business and capital" as opposed to "worker" has suffered for generations in being shackled to the reaganite , milton friedmanite, ayn rand and acolyte alan greenspan ideology of "free market is the answer to everything because the SELF_INTEREST of individuals in the aggregate becomes the invisible hand of the market that regulates itself and makes the appropriate corrections towards a well-ordered society".
against that, i think, stood a remark - and the actions and decisions on policies of controlling the free market from excesses by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said:
“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics” .
i think it bears remembering, especially, by the new adminstration, because if nothing else teaches that FDR was probably on the right track, after a similar implosion following the same kind of "ideology" of robber baron capitalism that led to the "great depression" - the recent and ongoing financial and economic collapse ought to REPEAT that lesson.
i think it is in fact another example that the predictions of Karl Marx were INDEED correct...in that laissez-faire capitalism inherently leads to waves of collapse BETWEEN BUBBLES of prosperity , with each wave becoming greater and more widespread then before , until the entire ideology exhausts itself.....
and of course in our own day of technologies which include massive abilities for self-destruction , and poisoning the planet to the point of no return (which would eventually make discussions about "the right economics" MOOT) - in the MEANTIME that these waves of collapse in the capitalist laissez-faire system continue to produce untold suffering while it BUILD YET ANOTHER "bubble of prosperity" before the NEXT , even greater wave of collapse....and perhaps even a point when the planet itself groans and when there is no room anymore for the "systems" to run to - the CONSEQUENCES of this laissez-faire economics brings out the planet's OWN VENGEANCE upon all of us...and no "wealth creating" , according to the principles and ideas of "growing the economy" (another trap of capitalism's "ever expanding growth") will amount to much -- except for a hill of beans .
we are , in our civilization , become ":bean counters" - monetizing everything the planet has given us, and what we are capable of, as our way of creating "value" for ourselves and about ourselves and our different societies....
and we call this an "organizing principle" == but it all means squat to a planet that will , if we continue this way, trapped in our "economic expansion" ideology today, one day make it all worthless - and not worth the lives we spend trying to "enrich" ourselves like this.
we continue like this, we don't really deserve being here.
Hall sez: "Corporate America enjoyed favorable treatment under the Bush administration for almost eight years and for most of the era of Republican control of Congress from 1995 to 2007."
***
???????????????
Corporate America has enjoyed an unbroken run of favorable treatment since the day St. Ronnie lurched onto the scene. And it should, since it bought the U.S. government and turned it into a wholly owned subsidiary.
This article speaks truth. Over the past 10 years, employers I've worked for have gotten less and less compassionate, reduced benefits for employees, and done their best to maximize profits at our expense.
Hopefully Obama holds their feet to the fire. We need unionization, and we need worker-friendly policies in this government. If Barack is half the man everyone thinks he is, he will pass so much pro-union and pro-worker legislation that corporate heads start spinning.
Awesome.
Americans are slow learners. Even in the midst of an economic crisis and near bankruptcy the cry is for more borrowing, more spending. It's as if the failure of capitalism hasn't happened, isn't happening.
Capitalism doesn't work! Get it? It's time for a rethink. The glory days of endless greed based on endless credit are over.
Capitalism is like a frisky horse: it must be strongly controlled or it will bolt and break its rider's neck. So will socialism.
We need to amalgamate the best aspects of both, carefully control them for the common good.
It's not that difficult.
www.dangerouscreation.com
The economic problems facing America may be much larger than currently understood. If so, then remaking the economy will be more likely than fixing it. Economists measure well being in "things." The new economics will find it necessary to measure "social well being," as opposed to just things. Those economists whose minds cannot wrap around the idea of measuring well being, will be exposed as ideological misfits. We have turned a page in history where "creativity" is now the currency of change and well being. The old twentieth century beliefs in centralization of power and wealth are dead and buried deeply. A modern nation cannot function by restricting creativity, i.e. wealth, to the few. Creative talent dedicated to the common good is the path forward. Greed is on it's deathbed.
Sioux Rose
STONE: Interesting, astute analysis.
Stone -- you also pointed out another fundamental truth, i think. i read recently that in some asian "emerging economies" - they are trying to move towards a greater emphasis on "SOCIAL WELL BEING" and "HAPPINESS" - principle in the way the economy is managed, having seen the debacles visited by generations of modern day "capitalism" and "free market" ideas. a lot of it, i think, has at least as much to do with PHILOSOPHY as with the actual "system" of economics.
card check will have little effect until the incentives for businesses to move overseas are removed and in fact penalties are put in place for them doing so.
Lobo Gris
Lobo Gris
Excellent point.
I don't care about jobs migrating overseas in itself, but the root of the problem is that when we enact policies to protect workers here, they simply find countries without those policies so they can continue to exploit workers. We're not exporting jobs so much as we're exporting problems and oppression.
"but the root of the problem is that when we enact policies to protect workers here, they simply find countries without those policies so they can continue to exploit workers"
That is not entirely true though. A case in point is the outsourcing of jobs to India, for instance. The Indian economy was practically on life-support for many years but Indian workers had far more rights than a lot of us, which translated to job security and such. However, American corporations managed to eviscerate the rights of workers in India by working assiduously with Indian politicians and changing decades old 'workers rights' laws and implanting a very American 'hire and fire' system that wreaks havoc on the lives of ordinary Indians. Outsourcing accounts for less than 10% of the Indian economy but the change in policies affects everyone.
Lobo Gris -- you are PRECISELY correct. that's why FAIR labor and market standards and agreements are so important. but the USA has been against that in reality, as dictated by the US Chamber of Commerce. after all -- since the global financial and trade system IS patterned after the prescriptions of the world's superpower once it emerged as the "dictatress of the world" (words are by James Madison in his warnings 2 hundred years ago) - it is not difficult to see that "cheap labor" in other countries that had not yet CAUGHT UP with the US and western economic SYSTEMS imposed on the world in the last 200 years , HAS BEEN CENTRAL to the way of "doing business" by the USA and western countries. WITHOUT IT - the accumulation of "the world's wealth" TO the coffers of the west would NEVER have been the case because they would THEN have to "compete" in FAIR terms.
but that has never been the case.
as a US general -- i think it was OMAR BRADLY? - a very highly respected general in the 60's - said:
"it was never about democracy or freedom and justice....the TRUE purpose of the US military is to make the world SAFE for exploitation BY US BUSINESS....i was its enforcer".
and THAT includes MAINTAINING low, cheap labor standards elsewhere where countries are too weak and have not been in a position under being colonies of western countries to BECOME equal partners in trade , so that US business can DICTATE the rules of the game...and as that bradly (at least as far as i remember reading, it could be another general - maybe General Smedly Butler) -- said:
"our country has been very successful in gathering the wealth and resources of the planet for less than 5 percent of the world's population".
how else can that be made possible if not by "enforcing" cheap labor, low wages, "opening up domestic markets" so US corporations can come in and own entire countries -- and if "diplomacy" doesn't work -- why --
that IS why there is a US military.covert and overt - ready to make "the world safe for US BUSINESS" exploits.
all people have to know is :
Saddam Hussein the dictator since the 1980's was a "freedom loving" FRIEND when he was USEFUL to US BUSINESS....
when he TURNED his back - he was a HITLER LIKE MONSTER....
understand THAT dichotomy -- and you understand what the "US WAY of Doing business" is REALLY all about...whether it is DOMESTIC over americans themselves from their own "employers" and institutions -- OR foreign.
In the production market, supply has the active role and the demand the passive role. In the labor market, demand has the active role and supply the passive role. Business occupies the active role in both markets and the public the passive role, demonstrating that the market is not a democratic institution. To promote democracy in our economy, the government should actively promote unionization – both consumer unions to demand fair pricing, high quality, and green production policies, and labor unions to demand fair wages, working hours, and labor conditions. If we are not to have “socialism,” this is the least the public ought to be entitled to.
you are absolutely correct....ClassAct.
we all know this as FACT in just about everyday working lives. ONCE we enter the "work" space - "democracy" disappears and bows to "organization" and its attendant system of beaurocracy - always of course understood, AND accepted socially and culturaly, as "natural and necessary" for "efficiency".
but the REAL question few if anyone are bothered to ask AND answer -- and within the context of the organization, ALLOWED to ask or think or answer or propose is:
FOR WHOM is the "efficiency" FOR?
the only answer is, after all has been stripped of the "market forces" argument - is PROFIT for the HIGHER, MANAGEMENT, INVESTOR, OWNER class...and the worker and labor field is there in order to SERVE that "higher" but "unspoken" purpose.
however that purpose is PROMOTED to the larger society as something "for the good of all"..when in reality - the WORK of ALL is made to serve the "good of the ruling class"...which of course comes in the SYSTEMIC organization of "managers, supervisors..." and every "higher level" serves the purpose of those above them - until we find:
the TRUE powers at the very very top holding all the cards and strings.
that's why the "accepted" wisdom of "market forces" is REALLY a COVER philosophy promoted by the ruling , moneyed, CAPITAL class - to PERSUADE the majority of people (who then imagine they might "one day be rich if only i work very hard and support the system") AWAY from realizing and POLITICALLY acting UPON the reality that the majority is really being used as CHATTEL in order to support the lives and lust for more "authority" and profit and power by the "ruling" classes (whether as managers or supervisors or actual capital holders) - who are of course the modern versions of PHARAOHS and KINGS and QUEENS and wanna-bes.
in reality -- they are THERE in those positions -- NOT because of "market forces" and NOT because they are "smarter" or "more meritorious" through "harder work" -- but because they system is RIGGED to make a few take advantage of THAT system - in order to be SUPPORTED and UPLIFTED by the accumulated wealth RESULTING from the collective labor of the many below them.
REMOVE that system and they will fall and have to WORK in hard labor - JUST LIKE those they placed below them through that system. in order to REALLY earn their gazillions of money. and then everyone will find out NO ONE gets to be rich JUST by "hard work" alone as the capitalists and free marketers love to say .....in the sense of these kings of industry make.
they only arrive there and stay there BECAUSE the system of "free market" IS REALLY a RIGGED system making it possible for a few to gather "wealth" from the MANY unto themselves.
even Warren Buffet admits THAT!
Tell it like it is - big business enjoyed preferential treatment under the Clinton administration as well - and from what I have seen, will probably continue to receive preferential treatment under the Obama administration.
None of the people being discussed for cabinet positions are corporate reformers...
you could, unfortunately, be right, although there's probably at least a SMALL hopeful sign for labor's side.
the problem is more endemic, long-standing, and larger than just the election of Obama in the apparent historical ways:
THE PROBLEM -- remains - what Ralph Nader really said:
CORPORATISM. until THAT is come to terms with by the USA and the global "social and economic" order - regardless of political theories and cultural histories and differences and nuances --
it is ALWAYS going to be about what Warren Buffet admitted:
CLASS WAR. and CLASS war is NEVEr waged or instigated BY the working class...it is ALWAYS instigated BY the power and moneyed class....because of the nature of POWER and maintainance of it towards the accumulation of wealth and resources and their control and management BY the ruling classes -- which today , most intensely, deeply and broadly embedded in the "american culture" -- takes the form of CORPORATISM.
imo -- the IDEA and INVENTION of corporate as a "person" should NEVER have been birthed. and that's where madison, lincoln, etc...as well as their early counterparts in england ...made a monstrous mistake -- by creating or causing to create the conditions in which a FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER was given "life" more powerful and important than an actual human being's.
Obama and all presidents - really are prisoners of this. the hope of course is that they can at least chip at a few things for the sake of the rest of the public and the world.
---------
and excerpt from a column in NY Times by Kristof (not that neocon bastard KristOL) - says it well:
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: November 6, 2008
Barack Obama’s election may be a political milestone, ending an era in which Republicans succeeded at winning votes from the working poor to cut taxes for billionaires.
this is true by the way:
the so-called "secret voting" system of decades worth - is really a system that businesses (those 50 employees and over) - take advantage of. what it DOES is:
because the election process takes time and 3 steps at least: 1)card sign to get the majority which of course requires campaigning without interfering with work hours
2) an election - where majority has to be found
3) a count AND a CHALLENGE by the employeer if they can find others that "changed minds" ....
every step of the way - in between those days of election and challenge, and the sign-ups...the employeers then useall their "Owner rights" - of the facility, the location, the hours, etc - with backup from police presence - to do a number of things:
1) they will deny unions or representatives or organizers to be IN the vicinity - even if the workers had , by majority, SIGNED cards for their willingness to be union members....
2) what THIS does is - since it becomes a near -impossibility for organizers to MEET workers (people have lives, they have to eat, go home, work, probably have few breaks, which the employers then use for "other purposes" inside the facilities to keep workers from meeting outside with organizers...) - it allows the employers to effectively IMPRISON workers to their "working time"...knowing workers have precious little time BETWEEN work and home .
3) they'll of course deny requests from organizers to give out fliers and meetings in the facility to make it easier for workers to get EDUCATED about what it's all about..
4) they'll use THAT advantage to ALSO HOLD workers "within the working hours" - in "meetings" in which they'll bring their big honchos ,lawyers even, to talk -- including of course the intimidation it brings , the feeling of being pressured to just keep quiet and not ask questions -- and in which they'll talk in very friendly "we are a family" terms WHY "we don't really NEED" a union here....
they'll hold parties, lunches will be extra-nice, stuff like that......
they're CLEVEr, i tell you. but WORKER RIGHTS and DECENT WAGES -- nor even their CUSTOMERS' best interests ARE NOT what they are all about...what they are all about is PRESERVING their profit bottom lines , keeping their management class perks, and maintaining and even increasing UNQUESTIONED power and authority over workers.
of this -- you can be ABSOLUTELY SURE.
it's in the DNA of the nature of the "beast".
More Subtle & Effective: Businesses make it clear who they want their employees to vote for by leaving campaign material around, buttons on the manager's lapels and blouses, and the underlings fall in line.
But Idiocy Be Damned, I Voted For Obama, and he is My President.
Big Business, like middle-aged men, cannot look down and see their penises. After 8 years of George Wanker Bush, Big Business cannot look down and see their feet or even the sidewalk. They are not merely fat but obese. Labor, on the other hand, looks like the survivor of a Nazi death camp. But like they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Here's hoping the Democrats take an aluminum baseball bat, swing it as hard as they can and repeatedly pound the gut of Big Business while giving some food to that nearly invisible guy over there in the dirty, striped pajamas.
=============
THat's a humourously BRILLIANT way of putting it!! i've had to take part a few years back in getting SEIU1199 to my workplace ...and sat through 2 - TWO years - of negotiations between the union and the employers as they tried to drag the whole thing . clearly: their tactic and strategy was to make it so EXHAUSTING for the workers , from all the waiting on results, that in the meantime the employERS waged another campaign in the work place to not just intimidate workers (fear of losing jobs , getting written up, etc.) but also "indirectly" persuade them (by means of "mandatory meetings" to which the union was not allowed to attend and to feel the "pressure" from fellow workers who were not union-friendly themselves) - to eventually "write in" a removal of union plans. in the end of course the union was entered....albeit with a LESS-THAN-OPTIMAL contract , considering the circumstances , political atmosphere under the conservatives, the skewering of even the LABOR BOARD towards business (i learned this first hand).
it's unbelievable how WEAK Labor's position really has become in the USA. EVEN with union contracts, business STILL has many things that are in their favor over workers. this , i can speak of from personal experience.
the employer actually planed in from florida a highly experienced "union buster" lawyer (i can only imagine he was part of those that worked for the bush ground forces during the Florida 2000 election) - who threw everything at us....using all kinds of legal mumbo-jumbo to tie down discussions without moving an inch. i remember once, as a worker's representative, screaming at him, and telling him:
"you're giving us these legal mumbo-jumbo because you think workers are dumb....but you're not really offering anything...and your tactic is wasting time and effort and money from both sides....you -- all of you, management, investors, whoever you are...you should go home tonight, sit in front of your big plasma tv's, give a toast with your white wines -- and gloat at how good you all are at enriching yourselves at OUR expense....you have NO SHAME at all".
at which - they walked out...just simply walked out. lol.
anyway - as proceedings went. SEIU started to bus in union memebers from other vicinities, following police requirements of course, picketed outside for weeks, and the place started to get nervous about the neighbhorhood noticing that they weren't paying good salaries...
one of the things, i learned, businesses FEAR the most , is PUBLIC EXPOSURE of what they do ...it's "bad for business". but they NEVER stop trying to get around contracts or twisting even THOSE to have a new-found advantage over every single worker....that's the strategy. this -- i am certain now from my experience.
oh -- and they happen to be , clearly, from every sign of how they behave, what I sometimes joke to friends about, is "BUSH COUNTRY" in a nutshell. really good at giving a "smiley" , "friendly", "respecting" face, behind which is a REALLY mean, nasty, exploiting , "cover my own ass" character....just nasty....ewe!!
Good story!! Hope to see more like it in the future. Another exposure that gets them scared is to demand to see the books, including what the execs and managers make. You would be surprised how high it can be in so-called non-profits.
Best wishes to you and yours.
Joe
""you're giving us these legal mumbo-jumbo because you think workers are dumb....but you're not really offering anything...and your tactic is wasting time and effort and money from both sides....you -- all of you, management, investors, whoever you are...you should go home tonight, sit in front of your big plasma tv's, give a toast with your white wines -- and gloat at how good you all are at enriching yourselves at OUR expense....you have NO SHAME at all".
at which - they walked out...just simply walked out. lol."
Way to go, teddy!! :^ )
President-elect Obama could signal a shift away from big bucks elections and reach out to McCain supporters at the same time. Encourage Sen. Feingold and McCain to introduce meaningful campaign finance reform.
Reducing the campaign season to 6 months would be a welcome change also.
"Reducing the campaign season to 6 months would be a welcome change also."
Please God!
The funny thing is, most small businesses (less than 50 employees) do not have to treat their employees fairly - they are exempt from the rules/laws that large corporations must abide by. It would be nice to have DEMOCRACY in all business.
I can dream!
If small businesses are the largest employers, why is progress measured in terms of the rise and fall of big business monopolies that kill small businesses?
This has to do with our ingrained false belief that we can get rich and retire by gambling in the Wall Street Casino.
If we get rich by making others poor, then the opposite is true.
The poor can get richer by making the rich poorer.
"...suggesting that Obama and Democrats will need big business to help turn around the economy."
What I find even more amusing is the implied threat - that "big business" won't help turn around the economy if they don't get what they want. And a tanking economy will be good for "big business" how again?
And, if "big business" actually could "help turn around the economy," then what the f**k are they waiting for?
Demand = wages.
To stimulate the economy, increase unionization and raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
Enforce a minimum wage of $12.00 an hour and cash flows through the economy. Just not straight upwards, ergo the resistance.
No Woman, No Cry.
Since the election I've heard it said several times that this new democrat president and congress should strive to take a more conservative appproach in what they do, and refrain from giving in to liberalism. The term "democrat president" of course said it was a conservative saying it.
We need to make sure our voices are heard loud and clear after Obama is in office.
Big Business, like middle-aged men, cannot look down and see their penises. After 8 years of George Wanker Bush, Big Business cannot look down and see their feet or even the sidewalk. They are not merely fat but obese. Labor, on the other hand, looks like the survivor of a Nazi death camp. But like they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Here's hoping the Democrats take an aluminum baseball bat, swing it as hard as they can and repeatedly pound the gut of Big Business while giving some food to that nearly invisible guy over there in the dirty, striped pajamas.
Dude, you got a great way with words.
To the evisceration of the corporation.
To the Death Knell of Profit margins
meaning more than Human Life.
To
Faith, Hope and Love.
M.S., can you post a lot please?
Is having 1,000 Israeli Lobbyists bribing and hustling our elected politicians, right there in the Halls of Congress really legal?
No Woman, No Cry.
Unfortunately, unlike the death camps, the "liberators" will probably be content to give the inmates a clean pair of striped pajamas, an ounce of meat and send them right back into the armament factory.
Help reduce the deficit - TAX CHURCHES!
"Now unions may gain a stronger hand, and business is bracing for greater financial regulation, worker-friendly policies and an emphasis on social spending."
I find it amusing that this writer believes there is a great deal of seperation between big business and unions. But hopefully this "financial regulation, worker-friendly policies and an emphasis on social spending." will come to pass in spite of both of them.
I agree with the sentiment you express TM. I do agree with unions. Afterall, There's nothing standing between the brutal, uncaring bosses and the workers (who also have to contend with law and order governments that see them as criminals) except unions. Unfortunately, Too often unions look like the enemy. The people need to get their governments and their unions back. We have a crisis of democracy on our hands that the recent American election spectacle doesn't change one iota.
Unions were toast when the Trilateral Commission started recruiting union leaders as members after they were formed in 1973. Globalization efforts then accelerated the transfer of manufacturing and jobs overseas, helped along by double digit interest rates orchestrated by Obamas financial adviser Volcker, which made expansion in the US impossible, and the strong dollar policy and tax incentives opened the flood gates.