Worker rights

Mondragon Corporation

January 31, 2013
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While technically a corporation, Mondragon is actually federation of worker cooperatives operating mainly in the Basque country. Quite different from the typical capitalist corporation, it is one of the most promising developments in area of business management. It was founded in 1956 by a progressive Catholic priest named José María Arizmendiarrieta, who had a mission to spread a form of humanist teaching emphasizing solidarity and participation. From the outset, the purpose of Mondragon was not simply to earn profits, but to provide employment and other social benefits to the local community. It is now the largest business group in the Basque…

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Stiglitz on economic inequality

June 30, 2012
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The issue of economic inequality has been receiving quite a lot of attention in the past few months–at least in the progressive media. This is no doubt due in part to the Occupy movement and to the anti-austerity protests in Europe, which have really thrust the issues of inequality and economic justice into the spotlight. More so than at any point in the last several decades, there is a real public thirst for understanding the causes and consequences of economic inequality and what can be done to reverse it. The Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is one of several academics who have…

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Alternatives to capitalism?

June 28, 2012
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In this brief article first published in the Guardian, Richard Wolff, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts and New School University, discusses the amazing success of the Mondragon Corporation of Spain and its potential as a model of social organization in a post-capitalistic economy. Key differences between businesses working within the MC framework and typical corporations are (1) the democratic nature of the decision-making process within the organization and (2) the limits on income inequality between workers. Imagine all businesses in a country working within the MC framework and you have a realistic and intriguing alternative to capitalism. Here…

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Can there be “good” corporations? (by Marjorie Kelly)

April 22, 2012
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When companies are owned by workers and the community—instead of Wall Street financiers—everything changes. Our economic system is profoundly broken. To anyone paying attention, that much is clear. But what’s less clear is this: Our approach to fixing the economy is broken as well. The whole notion of “fighting corporate power” arises from an underlying belief that there is no alternative to capitalism as we know it. Starting from the insight that capitalism has become virtually a universal economy, we conclude that our best hope is to regulate corporations and work for countervailing powers like unions. But then we’ve lost…

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More on the Apple sweatshops

February 7, 2012
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Another article in the mainstream media (in this case from CNN) on the horrible working conditions at the Chinese factories run by Foxconn, the main supplier for Apple and many other high-tech brands. One really has to wonder what Apple has done to deserve all of this bad publicity in the Western press, especially considering that just about every other major western brand is doing exactly the same thing–that is, outsourcing to Chinese sweatshops in which there is neither the incentive nor the inclination to maintain labor conditions that are acceptable by Western standards. The article is worth reading mainly…

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Should consumers boycott Apple products?

February 1, 2012
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The New York Times, rather surprisingly, published an interesting article recently on the inhumane and unsafe conditions in which Chinese workers are suffering while making products for high-profile, high-tech Western companies like Apple. The conditions there are so bleak that when workers there aren’t being killed by explosions or toxic chemicals they are killing themselves. And those who manage to survive don’t fare much better, working overtime, sleeping in crowded dorms, living effectively in conditions of slavery. The NYT article, and others like it,  have received a lot of attention and caused a bit of an image problem for Apple–surprising because…

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How profitable is lobbying?

January 15, 2012
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With a number like 25.8 lobbyists per member of Congress (totaling 11,140 in Washington alone), lobbying has become a serious business. The  idea is to get regulations gutted or a tax loopholes and exceptions created to spare corporations of inconvenient profit losses. But getting those laws changed can be fairly expensive. And if so, how much money does a corporation get back from investing in a good lobbyist? Fortunately there is a study conducted by Raquel Alexander, Susan Scholz and Stephen Mazza entitled “Measuring Rates of Return for Lobbying Expenditures: An Empirical Analysis under the American Jobs Creation Act” that provides some hard fact answers…

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Chain gangs are cheaper

December 10, 2011
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As one could expect, Alabama’s tough new immigration law  induced a large percentage of immigrants to flee the state. However, the Alabama legislators responsible for the new immigration law apparently either thought otherwise or simply underestimated the consequences this law would have for the agricultural sector, which is heavily reliant on low-waged Hispanics to do the hard labor and now struggling to replace the lost labor force.  But fear not, for John McMillan, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries knows the solution to this problem. He suggests: […] that inmate labor through the state’s work-release program offers a…

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