Shock: Corporate Advocates Who Break the Law Don't Want to Be Punished

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.seiu.org/2009/08/shock-corporate-advocates-who-break-the-law-dont-want-to-be-punished.php

12:39 PM Eastern - August 10, 2009

By Michael Whitney

Corporate groups are expanding their attack on working people and the Employee Free Choice Act. The latest volley? Defending the status quo of ineffective penalties for when corporations break the law. Yeah, they went there.

In a Wall Street Journal editorial, John Irving, an adviser to the National Association of Manufacturers, advocates for the current toothless system that allows corporations to get off scot-free when they break the law. Irving helpfully explains just how toothless the current system is:

For example, employers who might sincerely assert to their employees that "unions cause plant shutdowns" or "could cause loss of customers" may or may not be exercising lawful free speech, depending on the views of the labor board at the time. If employers fall afoul of the law today, they face only nonpunitive "make-whole" and "cease and desist" sanctions. <...>

There is no provision in current law for punitive fines and treble damages. Nor is there any requirement, as there would be under EFCA, that nondiscretionary injunctions be sought against employers based solely upon the NLRB general counsel's determination of "reasonable cause."

What does that mean? Irving finds virtually no fault in intimidating threats, and is supportive of the fact that one of the most severe penalty employers face is to say they won't do it again. One of the most "severe" penalties corporations face when they break the law is to post a notice in the workplace saying they broke the law and promise to never do it again - presumably with their fingers crossed.

Irving then goes on to explain just what the Employee Free Choice Act would do for corporations that break the law:

But EFCA dramatically escalates these penalties. Under the new bill, the employer could be subject to a $20,000 fine for each questionable statement, and to near-automatic injunction proceedings based on union-filed unfair labor practice charges.

FULL story at link.

[RandomThoughts]

1. And any system that can not enforce justice on its own members.

equal to the justice it enforces on members of other groups, has no authority. If it was done for compassion, that would be an argument, but selective compassion for self protection is not an argument. Especially when it leads to worse outcomes for all people.

If a system that protects corporate people from prosecution exists, and it does not equally protect all other members of society, or if a system does not have a method to stop the corruption of its own members. Then any system that protects corruption from just and compassionate enforcement,(enforcement equal to how they treat other people), is part of that same corruption. And it means the entire system becomes at fault, and co-conspirators after the fact, equally guilty of the actions of those that it unjustly protects.

It is true systems can take some time to accurately gather and process information for prosecution, but corruption has to be prosecuted, at the same level any other group is prosecuted by a group, for a system to claim any just authority.

It should be noted some in the system do not want to claim just authority, but instead law of the jungle authority, those people by their definition of what is just, thinking with both logic and with what I believe to be true, will themselves be judged by that same system they want to be use against other people.

[Wednesdays]

2. K&R

:kick:

[Kievan Rus]

3. This is why I hate corporatists

They think they're above the law.

Sorry corporatists, but you're just as subject to the law as everybody else is. NOBODY is above the law, not even corporate fat cats like them.