Welcome to the Bull's Eye
In today's America the management class
has torn up the social contract
By William Lucy
What is it about rich people? They never seem to be able to get enough. A few months ago, John R. Walter got a $5 million bonus just for agreeing to become president of AT&T. Plus options on 560,000 shares. Plus another $7 million bonus if he hangs in there for five years. Plus a big, fat paycheck.
Last year Walter’s boss at AT&T, Robert E. Allen, had to make do on $6 million. Big salaries were part of their reward for firing 75,000 American workers and exporting thousands of their jobs.
Over at Disney Studios, the head mouse, Michael Eisner, stacked up hundreds of millions of dollars within a few years. That wasn’t enough.
Now he’s cut himself a deal that will net him close to $1 billion over the next decade. Disney! It’s as American as rock and roll, but these days Mickey, Minnie and the gang are drawn overseas by cut-rate cartoonists.
Want to see more excess in the executive suite? Visit the AFL-CIO’s Web site for a list of some of the exorbitant compensation packages given to corporate bosses.
So, you ask, What does any of this have to do with me? Well, if you ever wonder why you can’t seem to get ahead, why your benefits are shrinking, why private companies are taking over public services, why you can’t afford to send the kids to college, it’s time to start connecting the dots.
Whether you see it or not, Corporate America has spent hundreds of millions in the political arena to buy control of the game. Today the rich are racing each other to see who gets the biggest pile of money and, because your wages and benefits hurt their profits, you’re in the bull’s-eye.
Management has always tried to squeeze as much as it can out of workers, but since the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan declared open season on unions and workers’ rights, management has progressed from sniping at targets of opportunity to an outright war on labor. Look at the record.
A U.S. Supreme Court stacked by business ruled that employers can sue workers who complain about conditions (1983); that employers can break union contracts by declaring bankruptcy (1984); that unions can’t discipline members who scab during a strike (1985); that after a strike employers can give scabs job preference.
Stacked lower courts have ruled that employers can stop unions from distributing information in the workplace (1993); that most registered nurses aren’t protected by labor laws (1994); that the President can’t stop federal contracting with strike-breaking companies (1996).
Big money scored big in the 1994 elections. By 1995 the radical Right had introduced anti-labor legislation in 43 state legislatures. They proposed right-to-work laws, eliminating union security, privatization, lowering the prevailing wage, barring collective bargaining for public workers, and reducing unemployment compensation.
And then there’s the U.S. Congress. Here’s a taste of the bills Gingrich and his bunch have introduced: to weaken the Fair Labor Standards Act; to cut funding for the National Labor Relations Board; to weaken Occupational Safety and Health enforcement; to cut job training and retraining; to establish a National Right-to-Work law; to kill the Davis-Bacon (prevailing wage) Act; to re-open the door to company unions; to hamper unions’ ability to organize members and collect and spend dues; to encourage the further export of U.S. jobs; to encourage privatization; to set up the massive displacement of public workers by people on workfare.
Whether you work in the public or private sectors, in today’s America the management class has torn up the social contract. It has dumped job security, abandoned pension plans, reduced health coverage, exported millions of jobs, and is using foreign workers, welfare recipients and even prisoners instead of the people whose labors and loyalty created America’s unparalleled wealth.
Sisters and Brothers, pay attention to what’s happening — and why. America’s workers are being taken for a ride. Today, more than ever, eternal vigilance is the price of our political and economic freedom.
