Working families are the real victims of the greed gripping American business. We pay with our jobs and our retirement security when corrupt corporate insiders are allowed to pillage the companies we’ve built. We are also shareholders and we lose when our savings aren’t invested for the highest long-run return and managed to support authentic corporate accountability. We demand:

I.   PUT WORKERS FIRST.
Workers who lose their jobs should have first claim on the assets of companies destroyed by corporate misconduct—for severance claims as well as unpaid wages, benefits and pension and 401(k) contributions. The ill-gotten gains of corrupt corporate insiders must be seized and returned to the victims of corporate abuse. Corporations must assume their share of responsibility for the retirement security of the workers who build the companies. Guaranteed defined benefit pension plans must be restored. Workers’ savings plans, including 401-Ks, should not be irresponsibly loaded up with company stock. Workers should elect trustees of their retirement funds.

II.    HOLD CEOS ACCOUNTABLE.
Stock options have corrupted America’s corporate leaders and do not serve the long-term interests of shareholders or companies. Where options are used they should be expensed and indexed to company performance. Better still, executives should receive shares instead of options so they bear risks of their work as well as reap the rewards. CEOs should be prohibited from selling any options or shares they receive during their tenure with the corporation. Offshore tax havens should be outlawed. Shareholders should have full democratic rights in determining who leads our companies. CEOs should no longer have access to company funds to run candidates for their boards while worker funds have to spend their own money to elect independent directors. Company boards must be independent and diverse if they are to be accountable to shareholders.  Giant mutual funds should disclose how they vote their proxies and stop supporting cozy corporate boards and rubber-stamping insider abuses.

III.  PUT INTEGRITY BACK INTO CORPORATIONS AND THE CAPITAL MARKETS.
Conflicts of interest among accountants and financial analysts, the aiders and abettors of corrupt corporate insiders, must be eliminated. The accounting reform legislation enacted by Congress is a strong start, but Congress should also prohibit Wall Street analysts from being involved in any way in the investment banking side of their firms. And civil immunity for the aiders and abettors or securities fraud must be eliminated; the accountants, lawyers and bankers who draw up fraudulent documents must pay for the damage they do. A national commission must be established to study regulation and oversight of investment and commercial banks and the concentration of financial power in the wake of the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act.

IV.  END CORPORATE CORRUPTION OF POLITICS.
Undue corporate power and influence must be eliminated from our political system and from our government by moving to public financing of election campaigns. Only when government is accountable to the American people can the reforms needed to assure real corporate accountability be enacted.

Rebuilding authentic corporate accountability and restoring integrity to America’s capital markets requires the cooperation of every major American economic and political institution.

We call on individual companies to improve their governance by selecting conscientious CEOs and compensating them in a way that builds strong companies and long-term value for shareholders. Companies need to reform their boards to assure they are diverse, independent and accountable to shareholders and the company. And they need to recognize the rights of shareholders and be responsible to employees, customers, suppliers and their communities—all of which are essential for company success.

We call on leaders of the accounting and financial services industries, the gatekeepers of America’s capital markets, to establish new and higher standards and to eliminate the conflicts of interest that undermine their ability to protect investors as well as workers and retirees.

We call on the stock exchanges to institute a single new set of listing requirements to assure the American people that the corporations whose shares they trade are organized and governed in a way that justifies the confidence of the American people.

And we call on America’s elected leaders—the Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the President—to build on the much-needed accounting reform legislation and enact real reforms which our government alone can provide.

Only when our nation’s corporations are fully accountable will confidence in American business be restored. America’s unions, representing workers as employees and shareholders as well as citizens, is prepared to do our part.