What an inspiring description of your efforts and progress with
labor,starting with Walter Reuthers testimony.
Dear Barry, Tim, Dan and the ESOP Privatization
Community,
There is a way for genuine labor leaders to be sold on ESOP/CSOP plus the
"real third way." But it takes a gutsy, authentic leader
like the late Walter Reuther of the UAW. I worked as the CCAP's
director of planning for Reuther when he headed the Citizens Crusade Against
Poverty from 1965-1968 and brought him together with Kelso in 1966.
Reuther, who was committed to the "revitalization of the labor
movement" testified on February 20, 1967 before the Joint
Economic Committee of Congress that year and pointed out that "stock
distributions to workers would help democratize the ownership of America's
vast corporate wealth which is totally appallingly undemocratic and
unhealthy. . .If workers had definite assurance of equitable shares in the
profits of the corporations that employ them, they would see less need to
seek an equitable balance between their gains and soaring profits through
augmented increases in basic wage rates. This would be a desirable
result from the standpoint of stabilization policy because profit sharing
does not increase costs. Since profits are a residual, after all costs
have been met, and since their size is not determinable until after
customers have paid the prices charged for the firm's products, profit
sharing [through wider share ownership] cannot be said to have any
inflationary impact upon costs and prices." (Page 774, Part 4 of
"Hearings, The 1967 Economic Report of the President, Joint Economic
Committee, 90th Congress, 2d Session.)
To give you some more background on the successes and failures of Kelso
and me in promoting the "pure Kelsonian" principles and
applications among U.S. and non-U.S. labor unions, please visit the CESJ web
site at http://www.cesj.org and read the
labor sections of "A Personal Journey to the Third Way", the
case study on South Bend Lathe, and the long paper on Value-Based
Management, which you can retrieve from the CESJ "Site Map."
Dan was with me when I made a presentation before the former communist
labor unions in Moscow and he saw the positive response I received in making
the case for labor's very significant role under the "third
way." Working for the Banana Workers of Guatemala in 1972, Joe
Recinos and I came very close to acquiring all of United Fruit's banana
plantations through a leveraged ESOP with the backing of the U.S. anti-trust
division of the Department of Justice. In Egypt in 1987 we worked with
the head of the Chemical Workers Union to implement the first leveraged ESOP
in the developing world at the Alexandria Tire Company, a joint venture with
Pirelli Tire of Italy. In Argentina we developed a leveraged ESOP for
the Argentina utility unions in privatizing the San Miguel nuclear power
plant. In Bangladesh we are now working with all the textile worker
unions to privatize 9 textile mills which the Prime Minister wants to
"turn over to the workers."
So, Barry, Tim and Dan, the key to getting organized labor aboard is
challenging the leaders and even going over their heads to the
rank-and-file, when appropriate, to abandon the feudalistic wage system,
which is the cancer of every economy on the globe today and to return to
roots of democratic trade unionism by spearheading economic justice for all
members of society. (See our definition and paper on economic justice
on the web site.)
Norm Kurland
Center for Economic and Social Justice
Web: http://www.cesj.org
Barry Randall wrote:
When I sent the original
message on unions and coops I was hopingto find out
why unions had not embraced ESOPs and why coopshad
not embraced CSOPs. I was hoping to find a way to
convincethese two groups to join "the
ESOP/CSOP movement." Now after reading
Tim's message I want to change the question.How
could we take the best union ideals and framework along withthe best from the coop movement and merge them with the
bestfrom the ESOP/CSOP concept? Is there
common ground betweenthese concepts where they
could all be improved upon? Barry
RandallOttawa, Ontariobrandall@fox.nstn.ca
-----Original
Message-----
From: Tim Mitchell <pentim@netspace.net.au>
To: EOpriv@cog.kent.edu <EOpriv@cog.kent.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October
27, 1999 9:33 AM
Subject: Unions and coops
I've just read Barry and
Dan's contributions re above with great
interest. I
think that's an excellent discussion point. I've wandered to myself
how to make coops and esops compatible in a meaningful, practical
and significant way. In Australia, there is a new group called Mutuality
Australia which I will try and vend in to this discussion. They are
committed to the promotion of coops and third way type
ideas. I'm also
going to forward your comments Dan to some of the high level
bureaucrats in my Department of Fair Trading. They administer
registration of coops in this state and I have prompted them to
develop some thoughts on CSOPs in light of our pending competitive
electricity and gas market at all levels including residential. They
are keen to set up a discussion group within the Department on the
subject and assuming we come up with something useful feed it in to
the regulation formation processes. I'll keep you
posted. Cheers Tim
Mitchell