RK ARCHIVE - The Double Standard of Class Warfare

Journeying down memory lane, the recent uproar over the $210 million Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli took home with him is still fresh in our minds. While ordinary Americans and shareholders reacted with unanimous outrage, you would have been hard pressed to hear hardly a word of this from the rest of corporate America.
And no wonder why. Like Bon Nardelli, most every American CEO is reaping millions of dollars in compensation thanks to the generous pay packages these people negotiated with the firm employing them. The last thing any of them would want is not just a debate about out of control CEO salaries, but a discussion of the double standard they enjoy at the expense of the rest of America.

This double standard rests on the fact that the same CEOs who enjoy the fruits of their lucrative employment contracts represent the same business interests that will shut the door on their employees receiving the choice to negotiate contracts that would help support a decent standard of living.

Yes, the same people who worship and promote the tenants of the religion of the free market are the same people who seem to have no problem with interfering its natural progression with contracts of their own.

Not only are these agreements hypocritical, but they fail to reflect the performance or lack thereof, of their participants.

It's nice to see that Corporate America supports negotiated employment contracts, like the ones that used to exist at places like Delphi, before bankruptcy rendered them null and void.

What kind of contracts are these anti-worker CEOs negotiating with their anti-union contract boards? Some pretty great deals, if you ask me. As a matter of fact, since taxes on the rich are oh so high, each CEO gets the chance to have their tax burden carried by their own employer.

Leona Helmsley once said that "only the little people taxes." I guess just getting paid a decent wage with some decent benefits isn't even good for the "little people."

What I even perhaps a bit more disgusting is who I found on the list below which displays 11 companies who authorized a total of $865 million in pay to CEOs who oversaw a loss of $640 billion in shareholder value.

Of these 11 companies, Home Depot, Verizon, and Wal-Mart have ranked amongst some of the most vehement anti-worker corporations today. . .

Why is it, that some of the most anti-worker employers today who rank amongst some of America's most powerful corporations, respond to poor CEO leadership with strong employment contracts but fight like dogs to keep workers from the chance to negotiate a contract?

Unfortunately, corporate leaders will not do what is right for their company or their industry but only what they see as their short term self interest. That self-interest many times flies in the face of the best interest of their communities, their employees, consumers and the public at large. That is why we need to see the

If the CEOs of America's largest corporation not only believe in negotiated contracts for themselves, then most certainly, there is no reason to opposed the same for the 58 million workers in this country who would form a union at work if they could do so.
That is why the Employee Free Choice Act is so important, so that there is a fair playing field for people who want to choose the path of a negotiated agreement with their employer. Every 23 minutes, a worker is fired or disciplined for trying to form a union.

When workers even do win an election through the National labor Relations Board, employers find it easier to hold up the process with frivilous motions and outrageous demands while slowly, the pro-union workers are replaced as the rest of the workforce finally is worn down and gives up on forming a union. A case in point is provided by American Rights At Work:

If you haven't done so, please contact your Member of Congress and urge them to pass this bill. There is no reason for CEOs, fat off their multi-million dollar employment contracts, to be denying their employees the right to have a negotiated contract.

Comments

Terrific, hard-hitting post, PaulVa (Catzmaw - 1/31/2007 10:11:23 AM)

This whole issue is a pet peeve of mine. The abuses and excesses of some unions in the 60s and 70s (e.g., Teamsters) have been used as excuses since Reagan's time to systematically weaken and almost eradicate unions. The NLRB has no teeth and no apparent incentive to pursue obvious cases of union bashing and employee intimidation. Our government is dominated by business interests who have sold a bill of goods to the American public, asserting that unions decrease prosperity, which means their prosperity will be threatened because the companies will be "forced" to relocate elsewhere. What about the decriminalization of illegal aliens during the Reagan years, which opened the door to the flood of cheap immigrant labor to undercut the negotiating capability of unions? What I don't understand is why stockholders of the companies who are bestowing huge golden parachutes on their CEOs are not organizing themselves and besieging the annual meetings with demands for board accountability.