corporations ARE unions

[unblock]

a corporation is really nothing more or less than a union. it is composed of owners rather than employees, but at its core it is the same concept. the owners get together and agree on a power structure to enable them to act with a single voice. minority shareholders have little power beyond whatever ability they have to forge a majority coalition (possibly by offering money to make other shareholders go away). whatever the majority decision is, they control the executive decisions in the corporation. they make a majority of the board of directors, the compensation committee, and they in trun pick and pay the chief executive officers, who serves their interests or gets replaced.

sounds remarkably like a union, no? the employees get together and agree on a power structure to enable them to act with a single voice. union structures vary, but the fundamental point is that instead of having separate powerless individuals negotiating from weakness for their own compensation and working conditions, they get together and act as a single voice, arguing for pay and benefits for all on pains of strike or forms of leverage, gained by acting in concert.

imagine if a corporation didn't have the power structure it universally does, and that different investors could be approached individually. imagine if you didn't like the pay and working conditions your ceo offered, you could simply find some other investors and decide to work for what THEY offered instead. the ceo has great power because the ceo can negotiate from a "take-it-or-leave-it" position. if he had to compete against a host of would-be ceo's advanced by fellow investors at every turn, the role of the ceo would be greatly diminished -- but far more responsive to workers.

but they don't do it like this, because corporations like unions. unions of investors, that is. just not unions of workers.

so when anyone trots out some "philosophy" about how unions are evil, make sure they understand what complete horse manure they're talking about. the only real "philosophy" at play in anti-union rhetoric is that is that they like powerful institutions backed by great wealth, and don't like any hint of power that might pose a threat to such power.

[fascisthunter]

1. The right wing Represent the Interests of the Powerful, At the exclusion of everyone else

they are the wimps who stand with the bullies... they are the losers who admire the wealthy but hate those that aren't "successful" in their little lizard-like brains, because in truth, they aren't successful either. They are the sociopaths that blame the victim rather than standing up against those who victimize. And yet they are the biggest whiners this world has ever seen... nothing is ever enough.

[annabanana]

2. So is a Monopoly. . . .n/t