Corporate Greed Behind Opposition to Employee Free Choice Act

[dcsmart]

Pundits, journalists and even economists have strained to find the reasons for our nation’s economic meltdown, stumbling over tortured concepts like “structured investment vehicles” and “collateralized debt.”

The underlying problem is much simpler. In fact, it can be described in six words: The corporate search for cheap labor.

While some people may have overextended themselves by taking out loans on their homes or piling up credit card debt for non-essentials, millions of Americans had no choice but to survive through debt. They needed to pay for health care, college tuition and car repairs. Why? Because even working two or three jobs, they aren’t paid sufficiently to support their families. Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren repeatedly has discussed how the majority of personal bankruptcies happen after a medical crisis or job loss, rather than because of too many 124-inch flat screen TV sets.


Foreclosures, credit card debt and the panoply of miseries we’re now facing are a result, not a cause. They are the consequences of nearly 40 years in which the corporate search for the cheapest possible labor has meant U.S. productivity has skyrocketed while wages stagnated.

And when the corporate masters couldn’t pay wages as low as they wanted in this country, they moved jobs abroad.

Understanding this simple premise—the corporate search for cheap labor—helps explain a lot of what’s going on right now. In our fight for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would level the management-worker playing field so workers seeking to join a union can do so without employer harassment, we’re facing a likely $200 million campaign to kill it.

FULL ARTICLE:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/01/12/corporate-greed-behind-opposition-to-employee-free-choice-act/#more-9065