By Jeeni Criscenzo
In a recent interview about the groundswell of popularity for Bernie Sanders, Richard Wolff, author of “Democracy at Work, a Cure for Capitalism,” opined that we are seeing a new form of socialism that doesn’t give the power to the government, but rather focuses on “changing the way we organize enterprises, so they stop being top-down, hierarchical, where the board of directors makes all the decisions, and we move to this idea which is now catching on: cooperation, workers owning and operating collectively and democratically their economy and their enterprise.”
Instead of looking at this as a new kind of socialism, I like to think of it as a new kind of capitalism—democratic capitalism, where workers are actually free.
For all the talk about how lucky we are to be free in America, the reality is that anyone working for an enterprise that is not their own, is not free. There is no democracy in an employer/employee relationship. And where there is no democracy, there is seldom fairness or justice. One person, (owner, CEO, supervisor) has all the power and you had no voice in appointing them. The worker/employee must do as they are told or lose their job.
Losing your job is disastrous for the worker and everyone who depends on his/her income. Without wages from employment, the worker is deprived of even the basic necessities. If they don’t replace their job quickly, they will also lose their credit rating. Young adults who were sold the myth that they must go into massive debt (that cannot be forgiven with bankruptcy) for an education to qualify for a “good” job are particularly vulnerable to having that ding on their credit. They start their careers as indentured servants.
The motivation to keep a job, no matter how unfulfilling, is intense. Many people will endure a lifetime working at a job they hate rather than face the possibility of being unemployed, even temporarily. That bestows near totalitarian power on those in a position to fire or layoff workers, whether that is a supervisor, bean-counter, or owner(s) of the business.
Under our capitalist system, workers voluntarily relinquish their Constitutional rights, in exchange for job security. While some workers have risked financial ruin, imprisonment, beatings and even death, to reclaim some of those rights by forming unions, most persist, day after day, convinced that doing good on the job is the way to achieve the American Dream. They believe that those who are wealthy have acquired that wealth through hard work and they want to be one of those wealthy people someday.
In the popular novel, The Shadow of the Wind, Fermín, a savvy, street-smart character, observes that, “The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich.” Reminds me of a young man I was telling about Dennis Kucinich during the presidential primaries in 2004. “The other candidates only care about the rich. Why would you vote for them?” I explained. “Because I intend to be rich someday,” he responded.
American worker productivity … grew by about 74 percent between 1973 and 2013, but compensation for workers grew at only 9 percent during the same time period!
I’ll bet that kid isn’t rich today. The Wealth Club is getting more and more exclusive every day. And the politicians who could always count on workers voting against their own best interest because they thought they have a chance of joining the Wealth Club, are clearing the path for a populist like Bernie Sanders.
Take for instance this recent quote from Republican presidential candidate, Jeb Bush:
My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4% growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families.
While some claim that Bush’s quote shows that he’s out of touch with the American worker, in fact he just doesn’t give a damn. “Growing the Economy” (code for growing their wealth), is all that matters. In reality, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, American worker productivity (defined as the output of goods and services per hours worked) grew by about 74 percent between 1973 and 2013, but compensation for workers grew at only 9 percent during the same time period! Look what working longer hours got us!
Referring to this in an interview in The Atlantic, Feb. 2015, economist and senior-associate dean for research at Harvard Business School, Jan W. Rivkin, explained:
From the end of WWII until the 1970s productivity in the U.S. and median wages grew in lockstep. But from the late 1970s until today we’ve seen a divergence, with productivity growing faster than wages. The divergence indicates that companies and the people who own and run them are doing much better than the people who work at the companies.
Obviously, for an increasingly large number of Americans, capitalism isn’t working out as planned. Not only are we working harder than ever, the wages being paid are seldom enough to cover the basics. The shrinking middle class is finding itself on the losing end of an economic model that sees them as a dispensable column in a spreadsheet:
To increase profits, select U.S. Workers and click DELETE.
Back in the time of the American Civil War, the Hazard Circular, a document penned by the bankers, was quoted as saying that slavery was not an economical source of labor because slavery “carries with it the care of the laborers, while … capital shall control labor by controlling wages.” In many respects, especially now as good paying jobs become scarce, those fortunate enough to be employed are as controlled as slaves – but they still have to buy their own bed and board.
Is it possible to do what you love and still be personally responsible? Is it possible for everyone to work at what they love and still have a prosperous community?
Given our conditioning, we think of work as something we have to do, whether we like it or not. But consider the innovation and creativity that will never be manifested because of all the people with brilliant ideas and talent who must spend their lives working at something that gives them no personal gratification.
Let’s not stop with what Bernie Sanders is proposing—let’s start there. Let’s ask amazing questions: Is it possible to do what you love and still be personally responsible? Is it possible for everyone to work at what they love and still have a prosperous community? What if we started from the assumption that almost everyone needs to feel that they are contributing and that people derive great satisfaction from doing so?
In our current system, a worker’s labor is for the benefit of shareholders or owners, who want only one thing—greater productivity at lower costs. In Democratic Capitalism, everyone is a stakeholder in the fruits of their labor. There is no necessity to show growth every quarter, nor the need to cajole customers to purchase unnecessary products that are harmful to our health and environment. Production is engaged in for the purpose of providing what is necessary, using processes that result in the lowest possible carbon footprint rather than the lowest cost.
This is not socialism! No one is asking the government for anything. In fact, since our government has become so entrenched with the military/industrial/financial oligarchy, it is important to organize with as little government intervention as possible.
Neither is this communism, because the individual is actually valued more here than in our current system. Each individual is essentially their own boss, contracting their time, talent, experience, ideas and labor. Some people will want to negotiate long-term contracts, which differs from having a job because the individual retains control over the deal. And since democratic capitalism provides many livelihood options, the individual is in a stronger bargaining position.
I know—it’s pie in the sky… so let’s get cookin’!
Latest posts by Jeeni Criscenzo (see all)
- Isn’t It Good, Norwegian Wood? - December 6, 2018
- Homelessness and Capitalism: Some Untold Truths - May 30, 2018
- Fault Line Park | National Poetry Month - April 18, 2018
Beautifully done- also tells me why people vote against their own self-interest..want to be rich and/or famous. However I disagree with this: What if we started from the assumption that almost everyone needs to feel that they are contributing and that people derive great satisfaction from doing so?
EVERYONE needs to feel they are contributing. Thank you for a great article,Jeeni!
Co-ops such as Mondragon are busy all over the world doing just what you propose. These are worker controlled enterprises. There are many worker owned, worker controlled enterprises in the UAS as well.
The following is from The Co-op Movement – Democratizing the Ownership of Wealth One Step at a Time. from my blog.
The co-op movement has the advantage of not requiring a top down revolution and is the most promising way for democratizing the ownership of wealth because it doesn’t require any laws to be changed. It doesn’t require any lobbying; it doesn’t require any violence except maybe to the bank accounts of Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry. It represents a progressive systemic change in society that is well under way. That’s important because the US political system has been characterized as being in gridlock. That’s a very charitable description indeed because in actuality it’s not in gridlock; it’s in dysfunction. The fact that the US is completely dysfunctional on a national level makes a strategy of localization all the more important. What is needed is an economy that is built on the local level one enterprise at a time by and for local citizens.
Gar Alperovitz reports in his book, “What Then Must We Do?” the following information:
As time has passed, new priorities and another set of alliances have begun to develop. Now, all of the linked worker-owned companies are very, very green by design. For instance the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry [part of Evergreen Cooperatives, a group of worker-owned businesses launched by Cleveland’s largest foundations and anchor institutions] operates out of a LEED Gold-certified building and uses (and has to heat) around one-third the amount of water that other commercial laundrys use and heat. Evergeen Energy Solutions is poised to install twice as much solar capacity in the coming period than currently exists in the entire state of Ohio. And Green City Grocers Cooperative – a three-and-a-quarter acre hydroponic greenhouse (the largest in any American city) – currently produces some three million heads of lettuce a year along with hundreds of thousands of pounds of herbs. (Two new cooperative businesses are scheduled to come online each year as the building processes continue.) Then there is Organic Valley, the $500 million leader in the organic dairy industry, which is also a cooperative of family farms.
Capitalism and socialism are just labels. What is more important is to clarify the differences between the two systems (which are everchanging) as you have done.
What you are leaning in the direction of is something called “market socialism” where workers collectively own the enterprises they work with. It is ahistorical to pretend this isn’t a form of socialism – or even to claim that it is a new form of socialism, because the idea of cooperative socialism dates back to the 19th century socialist movement and had serious advocates throughout the 20th century. Yugoslavia’s economy was based on a similar form of worker-owned cooperative economy, the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s was organized around cooperatives, and many economists argued that cooperatives would be more productive and equitable than shareholder-owned private capitalist enterprises.
The concept of bottom-up workplace democracy and cooperative ownership fits squarely in the socialist tradition.
Battlecry, I’m curious to know what you would call America’s current economy, historically speaking, of course.
I’m not even going to bother quoting the dictionary definition of socialism” because it only matter what the people understand a word to mean. And the people have been instructed by mainstream media to think that socialism means that the government controls everything. Because our government is no longer (and perhaps never was) representational of the people, I agree with those who do not want to give more power to the government. This is why I do not call what I am proposing _____ socialism. It must come from the people, run by the people and profiting the people. The profit component puts it more in the camp of capitalism. What we have now is Totalitarian Capitalism.
The concept of profit does not in and of itself denote capitalism, nor does the concept of a pool of capital necessary to start a new business. These concepts have been used by socialist and communist countries throughout history. You can’t undertake a huge enterprise without capital. That’s the whole purpose of banks. It’s all about who controls the capital and who makes the profits and how they are distributed. You don’t want a society consisting of unprofitable enterprises. That pretty much characterizes Soviet Russia which was a huge failure.
Ah, but capital is just a collection of ones and zeroes. Economics is a human invention and is subject to the laws of science, although economists like to pretend that it is. Money is just the legal tender that humans have agreed represents value. We could create a local economy with democratic enterprises, alongside the existing economy, with an amalgamation of Federal Reserve notes and a local fiat currency. We can wait for the whole system to collapse to do it, or we could experiment with it now. The idea is to not limit our imagination by what has been taught as economics, when our values have not been included in the equation. Profitability is a subjective result on a planet that can no longer sustain perpetual growth. But these are topics for another day. I’m delighted to see the conversation evolving.
Correction: economics is NOT subject to the laws of science.
If economics are not subject to the laws of science, then what laws are they subject too? If they are not subject to the laws of science then they can not be known, if they are not knowable then we are only spectators and there is nothing we can do to change our plight.
If “we” create a “local economy” alongside the Capitalist economy what happens to people like me who work under Capitalism? How do working people fit into your unknowable economy? What happens to the thousands of people who work for the corporation I work for?
But also if your economy threatens Capitalism as it has to if it starts to become successful, how do you keep the Oligarchs who control the government from smashing your fair but unscientific economy?
If you ignore history…
On the other hand, what if the opportunity opens up to replace the current system. And we have nothing ready. Then organized crime moves in as it did in Russia.
Offensive as well as defensive strategies against oligarch sabotage would need to be part of the strategic plan.
Working people know how to work in a co-operative way. We do it every day, it’s how work gets done.
Socialists and Communists and even Anarchists struggled against the Capitalists and their police forces to give us things like the 8 hour day, an end to child labor. What we need is a working class party that can make that change, nothing is going to change by itself.
These people do not just give up their power. The Soviet Union was no longer needed by the emerging ruling class in Russia, they had enough power that they no longer need the guise of Socialism.
Those are important questions that need to be considered – because only when we talk about this, and ask those questions, can we inspire the creative genius that are out there with answers. The important thing is to have this discussion – over and over because what we have now cannot sustain. What happens to you and the thousands working for your corporation when it collapses – think Enron etc..
I agree that discussion about the economics and politics of class needs to happen. The 1% versus the 99% is a very rudimentary class analysis and not thorough enough to sustain a movement.
Enron as an entity mostly went away, but most of the production that Eron was engaged in just changed hands no opportunity there, none of it went to Socialist Democracy.
This is the definition of market socialism given by the second volume of the Encyclopedia of Political Economy:
“Market socialism is the general designation for a number of models of economic systems. On the one hand, the market mechanism is utilized to distribute economic output, to organize production and to allocate factor inputs. On the other hand, the economic surplus accrues to society at large rather than to a class of private (capitalist) owners, through some form of collective, public or social ownership of capital.”
The key concept here is social ownership of productive property, meaning the entire population receives the profits as opposed to a class of private owners. The reason socialists advocate for social ownership is not simply to reduce inequality (though it certainly has that effect!) is to eliminate the distinction between workers and owners, so that workers (or citizens) receive a share of the social surplus in addition to their normal wage/salary earnings. This means that instead of job automation leading to rising unemployment and inequality we can shorten the workday for everyone and expand what Karl Marx referred to as the “realm of freedom”.
This seems to be the type of thing you are advocating for – having industries owned and managed to benefit all of society instead of a narrow group of shareholders. I would also add that “socialism”, especially when presented in a coherent manner, is not a dirty word in the United States. As a piece of anecdotal evidence, I have consistently labelled myself a socialist for all of my adult life and have sparsely received negative reaction from it.
This seems to be what the IWW was attempting, taking over the factories and democratizing them, Anarcho syndicalism. Although I guess it depends on how you get there. If do take over existing enterprises that’s Anarcho Syndicalism, if you attempt the Petit Bourgeois fantasy of starting up worker owned businesses which are going to be able to compete with Multinational Corporations, and somehow not bring down their wrath then that is more in line with the Utopian Socialists who couldn’t pull it off under the less developed Capitalism of the early 1800s.
Run on sentence much?
Well perhaps we will have Bernie Sanders to thank for re-defining socialism in the minds of the masses. As I said earlier, it doesn’t matter how the books define a word, it only matters how the people understand it. If we are trying to get the larger, mass-media brainwashed population to support a new system, we might not want to start out with a word that they have been “trained” to reject. If you have not had a negative reaction to it, Battlecry, I suspect you have been traveling in a different circle than I.
As for taking over existing enterprises, I would only suggest that if the existing enterprise is failing. As for being able to compete, if your raison d’etre is to provide a service or product that is needed locally, better than anyone else, with sufficient profit margins to stay viable, I think you can be competitive. Not in every market or product, but certainly we can start in the markets that can work – look at local breweries, coffee shops, furniture/appliance/bicycle repair/recycle, things that can be made better locally – frankly I’d rather buy something old from a thrift shop and fix it than buy most of the new junk made in China today. What about alternative energy generation – small scale – market it for emergency energy so it isn’t on the mucky-mucks radar right away.Then you need clever marketing to make it worth paying a little more to feel good about your purchase.
“What we now have is totalitarian capitalism.”
I have written before about how the economic system of capitalism fits well with totalitarian political systems. Democracy fits much better with socialism.
What is the mechanism for your new world? How do you get the owners of corporations to give their businesses to the workers?
Utopian Socialists have been trying to talk the Bourgeoisie into giving up their power as long as capitalism has been around. The ruling class likes it’s position and will not relinquish it willingly. And yes, it is ALL about class.
Mao Chu, it used to be that we elected people to office so that they would write people-friendly legislation, but your Republican heroes bought the legislators (ALEC stories today explain one of the mechanisms, just one) and laws now establish that banks and other corporations ARE people and they can spend as much money as they like to purchase legislation. You don’t do eastern mysticism any good by cloaking your messages in a beggar’s cloth; it’s disrespectful of the ancients and those suffering from your favored beliefs in a government dedicated to those who believe as you do.
Considering you don’t know what I’m saying, your post is really pretty disrespectful. Sorry you feel you need to base your reply on a misconception.
Mao Chu, why not come clean and tell us what political theory you hold most dear. Help us out a little.
Since it seems you want to act like a child can I call you Bob Dork? or better yet Boob Dork? Cool thanks.
Why is it important to you that I “come clean” and tell you what political theory I “hold most dear?” Somehow you already decided that I was a Republican, but why is my political affiliation or tendency so important to you?
Why is it that I matter?
Why not just read my words and try and glean my meaning as it relates to the discussion and then decide whether or not you’d like to respond to the things I say instead of engaging in juvenile name calling?
Could it be that you think I’m too far to the left of you? Only worthy of your ridicule. Maybe a little red baiting? I have not seen you ask anyone else to “come clean” maybe I should take a loyalty oath. I have not now nor have I ever been…
You have issues.
Alright, Mao whatever, whoever, you don’t matter any more than I do, so I can tell you you’re a practicing casuist because you throw around capitalized words like Anarcho-this and Utopian-that and reject ideas about worker-owned businesses and collectives and call yourself a lefty and then tell us you work for a corporation employing “thousands of people.” Sounds like you need a little love in your life.
There Boob I looked one of them big words up for ya. There is a much bigger definition but this should do ya in the short term.
“Anarcho-syndicalism is a theory of anarchism which views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and, with that control, influence broader society. Syndicalists consider their economic theories a strategy for facilitating worker self-activity and as an alternative co-operative economic system with democratic values and production centered on meeting human needs.”
By the way you are a pompous donkey. What is so threatening to you about a working person discussing politics in a forum like this? You want to attack me because I actually work? What’s wrong with you?
I don’t feel threatened, Mao. I didn’t even feel threatened by the
real Mao.
MaoTzu is obviously a socialist and he makes a valid point. It is really naive to think that we can just elect people with good intentions to power and sit back and let them transform the economic system for us. This has been tried throughout the 20th century by social democratic parties and has been a dismal failure.
Talking about something as comprehensive as changing the institutional makeup, ownership structure and economic system requires a lot more than changes to government policy. Even the most well-intentioned reformer will be unable to affect the kind of structural changes needed to move from a capitalist system to a socialist (or “people’s capitalism”) system.
In many cases workers have bought out corporations. See the article mentioned in my comment above for examples.
I don’t doubt the sincerity or the hard work put into communal or worker owned enterprises. The problem is that they do not change the nature of the capitalist system that we live under, and I do think that Capitalism and Socialism are more than just names, they are as valid as other historic economic systems that have existed like feudalism and slavery.
Co-ops and communes have always either failed, been run out of business, or have dwindled away. They’ve never fundamentally changed a society and will not as long as the Oligarchs maintain their power.
I think Bernie while not really wanting to changes Capitalism’s stripes at least has a better handle on the whole idea of Socialism than some of his well meaning supporters, in that he supports Unions and therefore to some extent class struggle.
Ever heard of Amana refrigerators? How ’bout Oneida silverware? Both are products of cooperative communities. They have and CAN exist successfully, albeit they aren’t the most numerous.
And they have done nothing to make capitalism democratic.
Amana is a great example of what happens to such enterprises.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amana_Corporation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amana_Colonies#
If Capitalism is a “valid historic system”, what version of capitalism are you talking about? Is it the capitalism in the era of the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch tulip mania? Or the capitalism of Blythe Masters who invented derivatives and credit default swaps? Is it Capitalism 101 or 201 or … etc? The fact is that Capitalism has mutated over the years from one era to the next. Do you mean by capitalism a system that has a stock market? Communist China has a stock market. The point is that both capitalism and socialism have changed so as to be unrecognizable to capitalists or socialists 100 years ago. Therefore, to talk about capitalism or socialism as specific entities is meaningless specially if you’re defining a new system.
The definitions of those systems are in a simple way is which class controls the “means of production,” under Capitalism the means of production is owned by the Bourgeois and under Socialism it’s controlled by the people under the stewardship of the government. Those are pretty much textbook definitions that cover all of the mutations.
China is not a Communist country, working people do not control the means of production, and as you point out they have a stock market. If you believe that the name of the party in power determines the system in place then you would believe that the United States switches back and forth between a democracy and a republic, depending on which party we’ve been duped into voting for. Or like Glen Beck you would believe that Hitler was a Socialist.
All history is the history of classes. Capitalism has not changed it’s fundamental nature which is the exploitation of working people by the Bourgeoisie. It’s definitely more blatant in the US. Corporations are people, members of the actual Bourgeoisie like Romney and Trump actually run for office rather than just their surrogates. The right of the poorer parts of working people to even vote is being eroded.
In Europe banks are foreclosing on countries.
Trying to democratize Capitalism by starting up co-ops is futile and naive.
Technically speaking, capitalism refers to an economic system structured on the dynamic of capital accumulation (sometimes this has been referred to as the “profit system” or the “system of business enterprise”). This is what underlies all the institutional configurations of capitalism – from free-market capitalism to state capitalism.
In the traditional sense, socialism was to be a qualitatively different system from capitalism, meaning that it would be characterized by different economic dynamics. It wasn’t about suppressing or regulating profits, for example, it was to be a system where the category of profit in this sense would be irrelevant since productive assets would operate according to different dynamics (the term Marx would use is “laws of motion”). Now granted, there is a long-standing theoretical school of thought that argues that a socialist system can involved factor markets and thus operate under the same economic dynamics of capitalism (the profit-loss system) so long as the means of production are socially-owned, meaning the profits go to the entire population and thus the distinction between owners and workers is eliminated. This latter conception of socialism is called “market socialism” in the literature.
These categorical distinctions still hold as true today as they did 100 years ago: all modern economies to a large extent are subject to the economic dynamics of capitalism and operate around the accumulation of capital, even the “socialist” market economy of contemporary China. And so all these economies still suffer the same systemic problems that early socialist theorists identified as being inherent to capitalism, like tendencies toward crises arising from over-accumulation of capital, and Marx’s notion of rising automation leading to unemployment (“the rising organic composition of capital”).
We can even evaluate China’s current economic system from the framework of the “market socialism” school of thought, but even then we find that, while many enterprises are nominally state-owned, the population does not in any meaningful sense own them. The profits are usually retained by the enterprise, managers are paid high salaries that are not commensurate with their marginal contribution, and there is no social dividend or similar scheme for disbursing the profits of the enterprises among the entire population. So we still have the distinction between “owners” and “workers”. And this isn’t even touching upon the extent to which productive property is under private ownership in the China today.
Rather than take over existing enterprises, I was thinking of a kind of group entrepreneurism. Look at some of the examples offered in the comments above and use them as inspiration, but not blueprints. This is why I took the liberty of renaming the cooperative concept – first so we are not limited by what has been tried before, and second because we need to use language to our advantage. If the word socialism carries a negative connotation with so many people who should be on our team, let’s use the word they feel good about and give it a new meaning. My goal in writing is to get people thinking, not to tell them what to do.
The word socialism DOES NOT carry negative connotations. The most popular politician on the campaign trail now i9s Bernie Sanders, A SOCIALIST. Let’s not drag a noble tradition in the mud.
Great job getting a dialogue started, Jeeni. Harley Davidson is another example of a great employee owned business BTW.
I agree with the person who posted that any change in overall dynamics is almost impossible in the US and also would be the case even if Bernie was elected. We see what happens to progressive ideas when the President has them and Congress doesn’t.
” Even the most well-intentioned reformer will be unable to affect the kind of structural changes needed to move from a capitalist system to a socialist (or “people’s capitalism”) system.”
Are you sure about Harley’s? It’s a public company traded on the NYSE.
And then there’s this from Wiki, “On February 2, 2007, upon the expiration of their union contract, about 2,700 employees at Harley-Davidson Inc.’s largest manufacturing plant in York, Pennsylvania went on strike after failing to agree on wages and health benefits.[87][88] During the pendency of the strike, the company refused to pay for any portion of the striking employees’ health care.[89]
The day before the strike, after the union voted against the proposed contract and to authorize the strike, the company shut down all production at the plant. The York facility employs more than 3,200 workers, both union and non-union.
Harley-Davidson announced on February 16, 2007, that it had reached a labor agreement with union workers at its largest manufacturing plant, a breakthrough in the two-week-old strike. The strike disrupted Harley-Davidson’s national production and was felt in Wisconsin, where 440 employees were laid off, and many Harley suppliers also laid off workers because of the strike.”
Perhaps this little tidbit will help you see that symbiosis between employees and ‘bosses’ can work. It’s one of the best employee models in the world. Definitely points out how unions can work well also.
From HD:
One of the things that sets Harley-Davidson’s culture apart from other businesses is employee involvement. The participation of our employees in the business has been an essential component of our success. In fact, at Harley-Davidson, we consider our employees to be our greatest competitive advantage.
In order to maximize employee involvement, traditional hierarchy and layers of management have been minimized, and an “open door” policy extends throughout the Company, all the way to the C.E.O.’s office. Easy access to senior management speaks volumes about our belief that every employee is expected to communicate and contribute his or her thoughts. Employees aren’t allowed to check their brains at the door or avoid responsibility or accountability.
In fact they are expected to take the initiative to identify problems and solve them. In the late 1980s we created the Harley-Davidson Business Process with the goal of better aligning employees’ contributions with the Company’s goals. The idea is
for the Company to share its vision so that all of our people can put their efforts into working in the same direction.
To make that possible, salaried and unionized employees are full participants in many key business decisions at Harley-Davidson. Through our unique Partnering
Agreement, important studies are conducted and decisions are determined jointly between company management and leaders of our two unions, the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE.) We believe Partnering is one of the ways we can benefit from the thinking of all our employees, and we know that employee involvement has been an enabler of our success. We also recognize the contributions of our employees in a number of ways, including a bonus plan tied to the Company’s performance …
http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/HDI/0x0x329002/fe33c217-5914-4dc1-ae6d-44374a5806c9/bckgrdr.pdf
Free and equal access to land solves the inequality dilemma. Equal ownership of the earth and her resources is where the solutions are found.
Bernie has something that both Ralph Nader and Ron Paul did not have- Americans can see him as our President. I think that he would even snag some older conservative voters as well. Who knows, maybe we will have a Bernie Sanders/ Elizabeth Warren ticket. This could get interesting.