Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace

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One in Four Americans Compare Their Workplace to a Dictatorship
Posted by Meg White, BuzzFlash on July 23, 2008 at 8:23 AM.

According to a Workplace Democracy Association/Zogby Interactive survey, 25 percent of Americans compares their workplace to a dictatorship. In the most comprehensive study of the phenomenon to date, the poll also found that adopting more egalitarian processes might be the solution.

"Companies that want to boost employee engagement levels must adopt democratic and innovative practices in the way the entire company is managed," said Workplace Democracy Association President Asher Adelman. "Executives should be sharing information with all employees about the company's ongoing performance and goals, and employees should be empowered with greater discretion and decision-making abilities."

According to Zogby, "The survey also found that less than half of working Americans -- 46% -- said their workplace promotes creative or inventive ideas, while barely half -- 51% -- said their co-workers often feel motivated or are mostly motivated at work."

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Offshoring, Downsizing, Rightsizing: Job Losses Hitting Women Hard
Posted by Todd Tucker, Eyes on Trade on July 22, 2008 at 6:34 PM.

Offshoring, downsizing, rightsizing ... mention these words, and the image that pops in most people's heads is a hefty Midwestern man grumbling about his economic problems and then voting Republican.

But Lou Uchitelle has a piece today entitled "Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy" that shows this view to be fatally flawed:

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut ...

Hard times in manufacturing certainly sidelined Tootie Samson of Baxter, Iowa. Nine months after she lost her job on a factory assembly line, Ms. Samson, 48, is still not working. She could be. Jobs that pay $8 or $9 an hour are easy enough to land, she says. But like the men with whom she worked at the Maytag washing machine factory, now closed, near her home, she resists going back to work at less than half her old wage ...

The Joint Economic Committee study cites the growing statistical evidence that women are leaving the work force "on par with men," and the potentially disastrous consequences for families.

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Pay-to-Play: Karl Rove Taking Lead on George W. Bush Presidential Library
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 22, 2008 at 1:50 PM.

Bush crony Stephen Payne was caught on tape offering access to Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice in exchange for donations to the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

True to the president's legacy, the Bush Library will be a $500 million partisan institute housed by Southern Methodist University and administered with tax dollars, but accountable only to the library foundation.

The library is to be the Mother of All Think Tanks. It will reward the truly loyal Bushies with cushy jobs burnishing the legacy of George W. Bush.

Readers will not be shocked to learn that the project is being spearheaded by none other than Karl Rove.

Will Nobody Weep for Halliburton?
Posted by Jill Hussein C., Brilliant at Breakfast on July 22, 2008 at 6:44 AM.

High oil prices mean record sales for the company paying Dick Cheney's pension, but spinning off KBR means lower profit:

Halliburton Co., the world's second- largest oilfield-services provider, said net income dropped 67 percent after the sale of the company's stake in engineering unit KBR inflated 2007 earnings.

Second-quarter profit fell to $507 million, or 55 cents a share, from $1.53 billion, or $1.62, a year earlier, Houston- based Halliburton said today in a statement. Excluding such items as the KBR gain, a legal settlement and a failed takeover bid, per-share profit rose to 68 cents from 63 cents, matching the average of 22 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Halliburton jettisoned KBR last year, tightening its focus on oilfield work as surging crude prices spurred demand for exploration and production services. The company opened a Middle East headquarters in Dubai and added technology centers in Russia and Asia to expand its presence overseas, where services providers are benefiting as producers ratchet up oil spending.

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Racial Discrimination Alive and Well in Finance Biz
Posted by Kathy G, The G-Spot on July 21, 2008 at 7:10 AM.

Responding to this post, a Certain Someone writes:

Credit is one of those weird areas where there is a lot of belief in discrimination, but as far as I can tell, not all that much evidence.

[. . .]

Yes, I've seen the research arguing that people in black communities get worse loan terms than their credit score suggests. As far as I can tell, this research failed to control for some pretty major factors, like assets. . .

[. . .]

Most of the aggregate research I've seen fails to reject the null hypothesis that there is no discrimination in loan markets . . .

Would that that were true. But actually, the bulk of the academic literature on this subject suggests that there is a significant degree of racial discrimination in loan and credit markets.

To be fair, it's not easy to determine the extent to which discrimination occurs. The available datasets are incomplete. Researchers don't necessarily know which variables the lenders and creditors are looking at when considering credit or loan applications, or how those variables are weighted.

Nevertheless, researchers have been able to get their hands on some unusually rich datasets, which they've examined using the most plausible specifications as to the lending criteria.

There are basically two types of credit discrimination that occur: discrimination based on the race of the applicant, and discrimination based on the racial composition of the neighborhood where the applicant resides (the latter type of discrimination is known as "redlining").

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Rudy Giuliani: Making Friends in the Epicenters of Gangster Capitalism
Posted by Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog on July 21, 2008 at 5:09 AM.

Yesterday we learned that Mr. Noun Plus Verb Plus 9/11 isn't quite dead politically:

Rudy Giuliani is launching a new fund-raising committee to dole out cash to New York GOP candidates -- a move that could help him collect political chits as he weighs a run for governor, The Post has learned.

...Sources close to Giuliani said the state fund-raising venture is simply "him keeping his options open" for his future. But several sources say the former mayor is eyeing a gubernatorial run in 2010....

Today we learn that he's not exactly accompanying this return to politics with a deeper focus on effective political governance:

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Why Do Free Markets Hate Our Troops?
Posted by Jill Hussein C., Brilliant at Breakfast on July 20, 2008 at 7:51 AM.

For over two decades, we've heard that privatization is the way to go; that the private sector does everything better than the government ever can. This belief has persisted despite the success of federal programs like Head Start, and yes, even Social Security and Medicare.

Even after WorldCom, Enron, Countrywide, and now the IndyMac bank failure, the myth of corporate competence always being superior to that of government persists. And even though Republicans have given lip service to being supportive of, even worshipful of, the military, they've done what they can to outsource that too.

But how is it possible to defend the profit motive when it bumps up against endangering the very troops that they've been using as political props for the last seven years?

Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.

During just one six-month period -- August 2006 through January 2007 -- at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military's largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.

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The Bad Boss Contest: Could Your Boss Be the Winner?
Posted by Tula Conell, Firedoglake on July 18, 2008 at 7:00 AM.

Imagine you're at work and you get a call that your mother died. Then imagine your boss saying you might as well stay at the office the rest of the day--there's nothing you can do because she's dead anyway.

Even worse: That true scenario from Amy in Florida is just one of the many workplace horror stories piling in for this year's My Bad Boss Contest. Now in its third year, the contest for the nation's worst boss, sponsored by the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America, provides a frightening look at the demons on the other side of the cubicle.

The contest runs through Aug. 19 and offers suffering employees a chance to win the first prize, a week's free stay at a condo in one of more than 50 countries, plus $1,000 toward airfare and other travel/trip expenses. Second prize is a week's free stay at a condo in one of more than 50 countries and $500 toward airfare or other travel/trip expenses.

(You can read stories here as they come in, and vote for those you think are particularly egregious.)

Every year, it seems impossible employers and supervisors could get any worse.

But every year, the bad bosses keep coming back.

In fact, a survey conducted for Working America estimates that some 15 million of us work for bad bosses. In the Lake Research Partners survey, 10 percent of the respondents say they had bad bosses, the equivalent of 15 million workers in the nation's workforce. In addition, 36 percent say they feel pressure to stay with a bad boss because of today's worsening economy.

Last year, Pete received 1,276 votes from visitors to the Bad Boss site and beat out five other semifinalists, including a waitress whose boss knowingly hired her stalker.

Pete's boss callously threw away his employee's paid leave paperwork, leaving him without paid leave or disability benefits for those days. The father of three small children was battling a rare form of cancer and needed paid leave to help pay his family's bills.

In 2006, the worst of the bad bosses was the millionaire dentist who, because so many patients canceled appointments on Sept. 11, 2001, took the money he would have made that day out of his employees' paychecks.

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Pilots Pressured to Cut Costs by Cutting Down on Fuel, Safety Margins
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on July 17, 2008 at 9:52 AM.

A few years ago, I was flying somewhere with a friend who was one of those nervous travelers who just has to get to the airport 17 hours before the flight. We got to the gate the agent had arrived and were hanging around shooting the bull nearby. Eventually, an airline employee came and started firing up the computers and whatnot, and shortly thereafter, a pilot arrived. The gate agent had noticed us loitering nearby, but the pilot apparently hadn't because he picked up a clipboard, glanced at it, and then remarked, loudly enough for us both to hear, "Oh, shit, not that fucking plane.

My friend and I were like, 'Who-what? Did he say what I thought he said?' The gate agent instantly freaked out and a big brouhaha ensued, in which the pilot, realizing he had made a major error, at least in protocol, tried to reassure us that he was just talking about the air-conditioning in the flight deck, or some such. Our reaction, naturally, was to declare that we sure as fuck weren't going to get on any fucking plane that the fucking pilot didn't want to fucking fly. (The potty-mouths were everywhere on that clear day.)

They bumped us up to first class on a later flight, gave us some drink coupons and eventually we were mollified (I'm easily mollified with free booze).

I recalled the story yesterday, when I came across this little item, via CNN:

The pilots union for US Airways said Wednesday the airline is pressuring pilots to use less fuel than they feel is safe, in order to save money.

The union also paid for a full-page ad in Wednesday's USA Today addressed to "our valued passengers." The ad accuses the airline of "a program of intimidation to pressure your captain to reduce fuel loads."

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G8 Dispatches: Organizing for Justice: Inside the Anti-G8
Posted by Marina Sitrin, David Solnit, Asha Colazione, Sarah Lazare, AlterNet on July 16, 2008 at 4:51 PM.

July 16
(See below for previous dispatches.)

The G8 delegates may have boarded their planes and flown home, another year's summit having come to a close. But for many, this is just the beginning. Three anti-G8 organizers spent almost two weeks in jail facing the possibility of years-long sentences, mounting legal fees, and families left to deal with the consequences. Another 23 people were detained as a part of government repression of an Osaka-based homeless and precarious workers' rights group that has been focusing on anti-G8 organizing. Solidarity actions are taking place around the world. Perhaps some of the most important organizing happens now when we, as a movement, seize opportunities that arise in the wake of this mobilization to build sustainable international movements for justice. It's not yet time to turn the spotlight away from Japan. There is work to be done, and international support is needed.

The Kamagasaki Patrol

Ten years ago, a homeless man in Osaka, Japan, was collecting recycling by the river when he was assaulted and thrown in the water, where he drowned. The homeless community was outraged and called meetings to decide what could be done to ensure the safety of their community. They decided to address the issue collectively and autonomously, since the police were not supporting them. This was the beginning of the Kamagasaki Patrol.

Since that incident, the Kamagasaki Patrol, composed primarily of precarious workers--day laborers and others with low-wage temporary employment--and homeless community members themselves, has patrolled the encampments and neighborhood in five to seven hour shifts each day.

"The policy is squatters and the homeless organizing themselves," said Koske Nakagiri, homeless rights activist and Kamagasaki Patrol member. "This is about autonomy and self-governance." Nakagiri, 32, lived in the Ogimachi encampment for six years before moving into his own apartment several months ago, and remains very active in the community.

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America is Coming Apart at the Seams
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on July 16, 2008 at 9:00 AM.

A few weeks ago, for the fourth time in the past two years, I was driving in a major metropolitan area -- this time in New York City -- in a country with the world's largest economy, when I hit a massive divit in the roadway, maybe ten inches deep, that blew out my tire.

It was, of course, raining hard, as it tends to be when one gets a flat (I've long thought that Murphy was an optimist).

Last year, in the suburbs of DC -- the capitol of the country with the world's largest economy -- I hit a huge pothole, replaced my tire with the "doughnut" spare, and then blew that out in another Lake Michigan-sized pothole a few miles down the road. As the kids say: I shit you not.

New York, like so many of our urban centers, is falling apart around us -- a result of years of underinvestment in our infrastructure, which, in turn, is a result in large part of the successes of the New Right's anti-tax crusade, embraced as a bipartisan affair since the 1990s.

Last August, after that overpass in Minnesota collapsed, I wrote a piece titled, "Are the Dead From the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Victims of Conservative Ideology?" (I submitted the title, "America, Crumbling," but my editor put the kibosh on it).

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Quit Yer Whining! Cindy McCain's Doing Fine
Posted by Jill Hussein C., Brilliant at Breakfast on July 15, 2008 at 6:48 AM.

You, with your lost job and your house in foreclosure and that letter from the fuel oil company that tells you that your price cap is going to be 61 percent higher than last year's. You with your cancer that your insurance company will no longer pay for. Quit your whining already. Things aren't so bad. I mean, look at Cindy McCain. She's going to pull in upwards of a cool $2 million without so much as lifting an impeccably-manicured fingernail -- simply by virtue of owning a bunch of Anheuser-Busch stock as part of her family's beer distributorship:

Cindy McCain, together with dependent children, earned $50,001-$100,000 in dividend income for 2007 from Anheuser-Busch shares, according to a Financial Disclosure Report filing on the Center for Responsive Politics' Web site.

Anheuser-Busch paid $1.25 dividend in 2007 per share, according to company filings.

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As Facts Emerge, the False Promise of Offshore Drilling Becomes Clear
Posted by Bill Scher, Campaign for America's Future on July 15, 2008 at 5:28 AM.

After a big PR push to exploit public frustration with high gas prices and open up our coastlines to more oil drilling, the facts on how little drilling can help are starting to surface.

Recall that last week, President George Bush said coastal drilling was part of the "short run" answer to high gas prices. As noted here previously, that is false. The oil would take years to get out the ocean floor and into our cars. More importantly, there is too little oil off the coasts to make a serious dent in the price gas twenty years from now, let alone this year.

And yesterday, White House spokesperson Dana Perino admitted it (via Think Progress).

Asked by the reporter about the logic of trying to lower gas prices today with "oil that can't be gathered for another 10 years," Perino conceded the point:

...there's not a real good short-term answer. And we've been very explicit about that from the beginning...

...So the important thing that we need to do is continue on -- to continue the conservation measures, work on a way to send a signal to the market that we're serious about increasing domestic production here in environmentally sensitive ways, and in addition to that, find ways that we can continually express to the American people not to expect a short-term response. There's not going to be a short-term response, and it would be irresponsible for anybody to suggest there would be.

Apparently, that means President Bush is being "irresponsible."

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Now Those Foreigners Are Trying to Take Our Beer!
Posted by Thers, Whiskey Fire on July 13, 2008 at 8:14 AM.

Someone allegedly named "G. Tracy Mehan, III" at The American Spectator laments, for purely sentimental reasons, the possibility that a Belgian conglomerate might purchase Anheuser-Busch.

I believe in free markets, free trade, creative destruction, fierce business competition, and shareholder value.

I also believe in my hometown company, Anheuser-Busch. I believe in family business, local institutions, free beer on brewery tours, Clydesdale draft horses, and Grant's Farm, the Busch family estate with an authentic (or close enough) Bavarian Bauernhof stable and courtyard with little motorized trams to cart you around....

My high degree of angst is caused by the $46 billion (that's with a "b") tender offer by the Belgian brewer, InBev, to buy out St. Louis's trademark business which, for the moment, has been rejected by the brewery's board of directors. In countless churches throughout the city, worshipers pray, devoutly, that this is just not a negotiating tactic in quest of a more generous offer. Just say no!

This proposed transaction puts my economic principles at odds with my sense of rootedness in time and place.

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Billionaire T. Boone Pickens Has a Plan, but What's His Word Worth?
Posted by Phoenix Woman, Firedoglake on July 13, 2008 at 5:31 AM.

T. Boone Pickens has a Big Ol' Plan to get Americans off oil and onto wind. Which is all well and good, except that he has a tough time keeping his promises, as some Vietnam vets could tell you.

One thing that's been a constant throughout T-Bone's career: He does whatever's best for T-Bone. One of the reasons he's heavily into wind is that he figures that the more wind power there is, the more natural gas is freed up to be converted into fuel for cars and trucks -- and guess what? Mr. Pickens has got tons and tons of money in natural gas! Amazing how that works.

Of course, as the Houston Chronicle points out, there's one big problem with T-Bone's plan: It won't work. To wit:

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