On this Labor Day weekend, Im thinking about how unions helped create our middle class. They used to be 30% of the work force, now they are 6%. No wonder the middle class is disappearing. Not content with that, the oligarchs are now attacking the Letter Carriers and Postal Workers Union. We need a new business model of employee owned and operated businesses, as in union owned and operated, along the Mondragon model. Below is an essay I wrote a couple years ago called Resurgent Unionism which addresses these ideas more fully. Lets bring back the middle-class. Lets elect a Congress with fewer millionaires and more people like you and me. Resurgent Unionism and a A New Business Model for the 21st Century by Will Bronson, Democratic Candidate for US Congress Fl 17 Both the negative effects of globalization and the financial fallout from unfettered greed in high places call for a new business model for the future. Private equity corporations and the removal by Congress of traditional safeguards against monopolies, have resulted in an unprecedented consolidation of wealth in the hands of less than 1% of the population and income disparities unseen since the age of the Robber Barons. Two new business models are beginning to emerge all over the world. The first is the result of micro-lending pioneered by 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus who founded Grameen Bank, Grameen Phone, Grameen Danone, Grameen Fisheries, etc. The system that he calls Social Business is described in detail in his 2007 book Creating a World Without Poverty, subtitled: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. Social business uses the incentives of profit but leaves the profit in the corporation. Investors may recoup their investment but do not continue to take resources out of the company. A social business differs from a charity in that it is self sustaining. It makes enough profit to repay investors for their generally low interest loans and pay its bills and employees. After repaying its initial capital it can continue to provide services and livelihoods indefinitely. It is unlike a normal business in that it is not focused on maximum profits for investors, but rather the focus is to provide a high quality product while protecting the interests of its employees though retirement, health, and other benefits.. The second business model is that of Mondragon Industries of Spain. Founded after WWII by a priest, it has grown into the premier worker-owned and operated corporation with companies on five continents employing 80,000 workers. The maximum differential between management and average pay is only 5 times as compared to over 300 times for CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Profits remain in the company and are managed by workers for their pay, retirement, vacations, health, and other benefits. Much of their financing comes from their own financial institutions and capital is borrowed so equity is not sold to outsiders who have a much different agenda than the worker/owners. A one person/one vote democratic model prevails inside the company for decision making. Recently, Mondragon and the United Steel Workers Union have combined to reopen closed steel mills based on this democratic socially enlightened model. Can you image how our business environment could be transformed if our major unions invested their pension funds and other money into worker-owned and operated businesses all across the country? This would create a new resurgence of unionism that the world desperately needs. It is the perfect concept and vehicle for investment by union pension funds. Why should unions invest in businesses that have typically used those resources to exploit the very people the unions are created to protect? There are many capable people within the union ranks that could start and run businesses on this model which in time would blow away the competition. In a short time, the old system of exploitive corporatism would become as archaic as colonialism. All that is necessary to begin this revolution is the vision of current union leaders and members to launch these new business models. When existing companies begin to see the writing on the wall, they could convert to this new paradigm. Can you imagine an employee owned and operated Walmart-like empire? Starbucks? Wendy’s? Airlines? Can you imagine the employee morale, pay, and benefits, if upper level management was not draining resources as they do now where one salary could pay 200 or more employees a living wage? Can you imagine boards of directors no longer playing their cozy games with CEO’s but replaced by worker/owners who had each others interests at heart? The U.S. Postal Service is an iconic institution under fire by those who cannot tolerate the idea that a government agency can be both efficient and profitable. Some members of Congress want to privatize it so they can get their hands on the pension funds. Soon they would have its workers earning starvation wages as they “spin and thin” for the benefit of their investors. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Post Office was turned over to the unions to operate it as an employee owned and operated corporation? That would turn some heads. It is time to rally to the defense of one of our most cherished institutions and not let it fall to the current Darwinian economics that is tearing our country apart. And it is time we challenge our unions to promote and further invest in worker and union owned and operated companies that can restore our middleclass and make America great again. William E. Bronson Bronson For Congress Committee, PO Box 1507, Lehigh Acres, FL 33970 239-940-6080 cell willbronson7@gmail bronsonforcongress Paid for by the Bronson For Congress Committee
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 18:35:51 +0000
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