Home
Archive
Newsletters
Video
Blogs
Discuss
About
Search
Donate
Advertise

A Serial Job-Killer Is Stalking America

By Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality. Posted April 27, 2009.


With Barack Obama's election, real reform has once again become politically viable. And America's anti-union business leaders know it.

Share and save this post:

      

      

Share on Facebook       

AlterNet Social Networks:
follow us on twitter
find us on Facebook

In Special Coverage

Belief:
What if People Actually Treated Religion as Just a Metaphor (Like Trekkies and Secular Jews)?
Greta Christina

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Labor Against the War Shifting Sights to Afghanistan Occupation
Jane Slaughter

DrugReporter:
The War on Weed: Marijuana Is Basically Harmless -- The Monumentally Stupid Drug War Is Not
Jim Hightower

Environment:
20 Weird, Crazy Ideas for Helping the Earth

Food:
The War on Soy: Why the 'Miracle Food' May Be a Health Risk and Environmental Nightmare
Tara Lohan

Health and Wellness:
When Sex Hurts, and No One Can Tell You Why: The Mysterious Condition Called Vulvodynia
Carey Purcell

Immigration:
What Denying Unauthorized Immigrants Health Insurance Will Cost You

Media and Technology:
The Memory Scrub About Why Ft. Hood Happened Is Almost Complete ... If It Weren't for Archives
Mark Ames

Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler

Politics:
Just When You Thought It Was Safe: 3 Potential Obstacles to Health-Care Reform
Adele M. Stan

Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why the New Breast Cancer Guidelines Are Racist
Devona Walker

Rights and Liberties:
Economic Crisis Is Getting Bloody -- Violent Deaths Are Now Following Evictions, Foreclosures and Job Losses
Nick Turse

Sex and Relationships:
Hot Mormon Muffins and Models for Jesus: What's With All the Sexy Christians?
Liz Langley

Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders

Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick

World:
The Obama Speech America Is Dying to Hear: "This Administration Ended, Rather Than Extended, Two Wars"
Tom Engelhardt

More stories by Sam Pizzigati

Advertisement
Upcoming AlterNet stories on Digg

A new crime has burst out onto America’s political blotter. Move over drug pushing and car stealing, meet the new menace. Job killing. But fear not. We now have in Congress a dedicated army of self-selected saviors who have loudly vowed to keep us protected.

And just how are these lawmakers going to keep our jobs secure? They’re going to put the kibosh on labor law reform.

Americans who believe all workers have the right to bargain collectively with their employers have been battling for labor law reform for some time now. The plentiful loopholes in our current labor law, they note, let companies make life intolerably miserable for workers who want to start a union. But reform had no chance so long as George W. Bush sat in the White House.

With Barack Obama’s election, real reform has once again become politically viable. And America’s anti-union business leaders know it. They’ve been spending furiously on anti-reform ads and lobbying. And now the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is threatening a “firestorm bordering on Armageddon” if Democrats in Congress try to get reform onto President Obama’s desk.

Business groups are claiming that passage of the Employee Free Choice Act — the prime pending labor law reform bill — would “harm the economy and cost millions of jobs.” In Congress, reform foes are echoing that pitch at every opportunity. Labor law reform, as South Dakota Senator John Thune enjoys asserting, would be “a job killer for our economy.”

This drumbeat won’t be letting up anytime soon. Corporate interests have even named their anti-reform front group the “Alliance To Save Main Street Jobs.”

But we need to give the masterminds of this campaign against labor law reform some credit. They actually do have a legitimate point to make. Job killers really are stalking America today. Here's the catch: The real-life “job killers” in our midst aren’t pushing the Employee Free Choice Act. They’re opposing it.

Over the last quarter-century, these real-life job killers — the power suits who run Wall Street and Corporate America — have essentially turned job killing into standard business operating procedure. In effect, they’ve been on a job-killing spree. Their motive: keep CEO pockets stuffed. Their M.O.: merge and purge.

Here’s how the deadly corporate job-killing game has worked: Instead of devoting their time to nurturing enterprises that make good products and offer quality services, impatient CEOs spend their every waking hour cutting deals to buy out other companies. After each deal, they gobble up the customers of these other companies — and then fire huge numbers of their workers.


Digg!    Share on facebook   submit to reddit    Bookmark on Delicious   Stumble This  

See more stories tagged with: congress, labor, republicans, unions, inequality, efca, jobs

Sam Pizzigati is the editor of the online weekly Too Much, and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »


Advertisement
Advertisement

 

You've chosen to turn comments off for the entire site. Would you like to turn them back on?
  • AlterNetYour turn

Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.


Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.

Advertisement
Advertisement