By John J. Sweeney
The nonstop eruption of scandals in the Bush administration and congressional leadership is getting tremendous media attention. But there’s a wave of related scandals that should be inspiring as much disgust: Corporations assisted by well-rewarded politicians are systematically eliminating justice for workers and destroying America’s middle class.
The administration and its allies on Capitol Hill have worked diligently to liberate corporations from the tyranny of responsibility. With their help, working families are getting squeezed by a corporate agenda that includes:
Squeezing workers to remove employer health care responsibility. Massachusetts’ new health care mandate actually forces uninsured middle-class workers to purchase health care coverage or face higher taxes and fines. It’s being lauded as the answer to the health care coverage crisis, but it’s really a brazen move to absolve employers of their responsibilities and shift the burden of health care costs onto workers. The Massachusetts plan requires employers that don’t provide health coverage to pay a skimpy $295 a year per employee into a health care fund—and Gov. Mitt Romney, thinking about making a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, may court business supporters by reducing or eliminating that fee. President George W. Bush is still pushing his wrong-headed individual Health Savings Accounts, which would cost consumers more and provide less health care, and the Bush Part D drug coverage disaster actually prohibits negotiating with drug companies for lower costs. In the states, corporations are bank-rolling fights to stop Fair Share Health Care legislation, which would require large employers to spend a minimal amount on employee health care or pay into a health care fund.
Squeezing retirement security. Troubled companies—and even perfectly healthy companies—are dumping pension obligations left and right. But their CEOs will retire in total comfort. The AFL-CIO’s 2006 Executive PayWatch uncovered boondoggles like this: IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano kicked off a plan to freeze the pensions of the company’s 329,000 employees by 2008—while racking up a guaranteed retirement package worth $4 million annually and total 2005 compensation of nearly $24 million. Meanwhile, President Bush and the financial industry continue to dream of privatizing Social Security.
Squeezing port security efforts. Retail behemoth Wal-Mart’s Washington, D.C., lobbyist, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), has systematically undermined America's security by working to defeat or weaken rules to make America’s seaports and supply chains safe from terrorist attacks. RILA works hard to protect Wal-Mart’s $11-plus billion annual profits from the costs of making America safer.
Squeezing unions. Bankruptcy is becoming a contract-busting tool for airlines and other industries. In fact, it’s looking like the start of a very ugly trend: file for bankruptcy protection, abandon the union contracts that protect workers—along with their defined-benefit pension plans and retiree health benefits—and later emerge from bankruptcy with fewer obligations and weakened unions. Corporate interests also are operating in several states to back paycheck deception and right to work for less measures—both of which are designed to silence workers’ voice in politics and destroy unions.
Squeezing basic workers’ rights. Seldom has politics showed a viler side than during the debate on immigration reform, with moves to make it a crime to provide survival help for undocumented workers and their families and attempts to create a low-wage labor pool easily exploited by ruthless employers. In states and especially at the federal level, such business and industry groups as RILA are doing what it takes to block increases in the appallingly inadequate minimum wage.
Keep a close eye on your members of Congress (check the AFL-CIO Voting Record), your governor and state legislators to see whose side they are on—the side of working families or of corporate greed. November 2006 is closer than they think.
