“Open” Shop and the Public Rise of Oligarchy

Posted on May 30, 2003 in Liberty

I think the beginning of the end of the last round of true democracy in America began when the open shop laws were passed in several states. Capitalists were big on pushing “right to work” laws in several states and for a few years, this meant less business in those states because workers would not relocate to places where they would not be taken advantage of.

Slowly, thanks to capitalist propaganda, a new generation began seeing the unions as the bad guys. I remember one fellow complaining to me about how his company had gone union and they’d lost the donut truck that came every day. He said that they could take whatever they wanted from the truck. After the company went union, the truck went away and he blamed that on the union.

Union dues were seen as yet another tax. The Jimmy Hoffa scandal certainly didn’t help things. Union pension fund managers who ran off with the money were seen as the norm for all union officers. The media put every one of these stories on the front page and gave it major airplay. Unions, the corporate media proclaimed, were bad.

At the same time, they said next to nothing about corporate executives who lined their pockets with cash. I worked in one company where the Chief Financial Officer embezzled millions of dollars so he could drive a Mercedes and live the good life in Danville, California. It seems that he’d done it before at another company, too. But the newspapers didn’t cover his story. Though he was made to pay back the money and go to prison, management kept the stories out of the paper and off the airwaves. This computer made parts: it never bought advertising. So why the secrecy? I don’t claim a conspiracy, but I do claim a mindset and an attitude. You just don’t say bad things about the members of the Boy’s Club.

Corporate executives don’t tax: they divert the money from the productive worker’s pocket before it gets there.

Neil Bush who fleeced small time savings and loan earners for millions got to keep the money and is now selling software to Florida schools. When was the last time you saw the name of Kenneth DeLay in the major news? When a business magnate gives himself an outrageous salary and lives in luxury, his house ends up in an interior decorating magazine. Union leaders couldn’t live so openly. There was a double standard here, one for those who leeched openly and one for those who leeched in secret.

Liberals and progressives that I don’t like corrupt union officials any more than conservatives (DLC) and fascists (Republican Party) do. But where the former applies a single standard of truth to what is right, the latter only get upset when those who are supposed to be representing the people get rich quick by dubious and illegal methodologies.

There’s a double standard at work when it comes to the “open shop”, too. The laws explicitly forbid unions from representing a company’s entire work force. On the other hand, I am aware of no laws which prohibit a personnel services company –owned by a small group of stockholders or even a single man who do none of the work themselves — from making contracts to provide all the workers, temporary and permanent, to a company.

Look at the difference in this way. America is democratic republican by nature. Every citizen has the right to vote for who leads him. If we don’t like the leader, we can attempt to replace him by a fair vote. In the corporate world, the reverse is true. Corporate leaders do not represent the workforce. They claim to represent the customer (which isn’t entirely true — they say that because they want the customer’s money), but the bottom line is that they represent their own interests. More and more we’re seeing corporate executives who don’t even represent the stock holders. Scratch that. It’s the norm today.

My point is that in this democratic republic of ours, we’ve slowly been turning away from our democratic republican values: workers in corporations don’t get to pick their leaders. They can’t block the rise of a greedy co-worker or prevent the owner’s pampered son from succeeding him. When layoffs happen, the prime workforce must be the ones to sacrifice their jobs, healthcare, and other benefits. Money that they helped generate is regularly used to elect officials (such as GWB) who oppose their interests.

We say we love democracy, but our laws support monarchy. Next week’s “deregulation” of the media is the most open example to date of this trend. Unions may have their share of scams, but management has so many more and they also have the power to hush up their deeds.

Here’s another slant on the deregulation: for years, we’ve kept checks on the so-called “fourth estate” of government, namely the so-called “free press”. Now we are removing those checks. How many of you would support a removal of the checks and balances on the three constitutional branches of government? No takers? I’m not surprised.

Unions, like the government, will bring their share of criminals to power. Their deeds will be exposed. But the same is not true of the deeds of management and finance. With their thumbs on the fragile neckbone of free expression, they can keep bad news about them to a minimum. We are denied a check on them. It is time that We the People insisted that they be there. Regulation was designed to do that. Let’s bring it back, intelligently, so that while it does not suppress creative initiative, it also does not allow for the creation of pashas and kings.

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Further thought: while we’re deregulating corporations, why not deregulate unions, too?