Re: News from the Horizon/Alaska Customer/Employee Co-Ownership Assn.

[Norman Kurland <thirdway@cesj.org>]

I wish Lynn Williams was still in power.  I read his e-mail carefully and agree
with all of his points, with the possible exception of the impact of wage system
bargaining on the incentives of global corporations to engage in what Bill
Greider called wage arbitrage.  As I tried to make clear in my e-mail yesterday,
ownership system bargaining, had it been implemented starting in the 1960s, 
would
have offered a more effective alternative than trade policy for anchoring 
capital
assets to America.  Assuming a level playing field, with no trade subsidies,
unfair labor practices or trade restrictions by other countries, American
companies that maximized worker ownership entitlements with income increases
linked to profits and particpative management would have retained their
competitive edge in global markets. (This was the crux of my quote from Walter
Reuther's statement in 1967 in my e-mail yesterday.)  Not long after Walter
Reuther was killed in a plane crash.

When Lynn Williams was elected as head of the United Steelworkers, he went far
beyond all other leaders of American labor as a supporter of worker ownership.
Unfortunately Lynn was not in power in 1975 during the design of the first 100%
leveraged, voting passthrough ESOP at South Bend Lathe, when I tried without
success to get deeper involvement from Pittsburgh in the design of the ESOP and
later, during a strike around 1980, when I tried to get Pittsburgh to negotiate
to get the control block of shares voted by USW members.  (For lessons learned 
at
South Bend Lathe, click on
http://www.cesj.org/vbm/casestudies-vbm/southbendlathe.html.  For negotiating a
true ownership culture with a risk-and-reward compensation system, see
http://www.cesj.org/vbm/articles-vbm/brief-vbm.htm.)

I also regret that I never had an extended opportunity to make a case to Lynn
when he was in power to help form a broad bipartisan national political 
coalition
to make Capital Homesteading (with a major focus on the democratization and
monetization of capital credit) the leading edge of AFL-CIO policy for
transforming our undemocratic economic institutions and U.S.- and Canadian-based
global corporations into global models of economic democracy.  Only after he
retired was I able to have lunch with Lynn, one of the most memorable and
enjoyable meals in my life, but we never followed that up before he returned 
home
to Canada.  Lynn, I hope we can now resume the dialogue where we left off.

Just as corporations and the mindsets of corporate and financial executives need
to be radically transformed, I hope that Lynn, Vic Thorpe and Deb Olson can 
agree
that the same applies to leaders of the democratic trade union movement.  I
recognize the enormous difficulties in changing mindsets, but that's what
distinguishes leaders like Lynn from other leaders.  Authentic leaders are open
to new truths, no matter how uncomfortable they are.  Authentic leaders are not
afraid of new visions, particularly those who recognize that conventional
strategies are not bringing real economic justice for their members and for the
poor and powerless of the world.  Authentic leaders are not afraid of
controversy, not when the global economic order is as unhealthy, dehumanizing 
and
dangerous as that of today.  Authentic leaders accept the reality that change
cannot be stopped, but that it must be harnessed and directed for the common
good.

How to change those mindsets and open the minds of leaders to new and more
realistic possibilities for redirecting and transforming national economies like
that of the USA and, by example, the rest of the world, is what people like Lynn
and others in this discussion group should be focusing on.  It should be obvious
that producing serious change requires a comprehensive, bold, and inspiring
national plan, something beyond the New Deal and the Marshall Plan, something
that can attract both the left, the right and the "radical middle", not 
something
piecemeal, "old hat" or emotionally appealing only to an ideological fringe
group. I happen to be convinced that the Capital Homestead Act is such a plan,
but I am more than willing to engage in a vigorous and fair debate on its merits
with those thinking they have a superior plan, like Shann Turnbull or Jeff
Gates.  Let the best plan win and all those in the ownership movement can begin
to unite on first steps and pieces of the big blueprint that deserve high
priority treatment.  (I believe that the strategy presented in "Saving Social
Security"
http://www.cesj.org/homestead/reforms/other/savingsocialsecurity-nk.html would 
be
a timely first step as a substitute for the Bush Administration's proposals and 
I
have already discussed it with a Republican and a Democratic member of the
President's Social Security Task Force.)

Why is a big blueprint necessary?  Because nothing changes the mindsets and
behavior of labor leaders, business leaders and financial executives (and 
through
them the media and general public) more than changing the rules of how money and
capital credit flow into the economy.  The democratization of capital credit is
the lever for changing the environment that will in turn change behavior and
mindsets.  The formula for getting from where we are today to the economic
democracy I presume we all want as soon as possible is to combine superior "idea
power" for transforming the money system with a highly organized and committed
"people power", and focus and leverage that combination in a concentrated and
sustained way on the most strategic "money power" institutions, i.e., the 
Federal
Reserve.  Since money power is a product of the law and policy of public sector
institutions, this proposed peacetime version of "Desert Storm" -- aimed at the
Federal Reserve's increasingly visible vulnerability in its frantic efforts to
avoid an economic collapse --  is growing more and more possible by the day.

What's holding this initiative back?  I think the group who could most easily
mobilize this "Desert Storm" strategy, with fairly minimal expenditure of
resources and time, is the AFL-CIO, or even a few major industrial unions
committed to finding new answers to the threat of economic globalization.  
People
like Steve Nieman have the guts to speak the truth to the heads of major unions
and I hope that Lynn and people in COG will support catalysts for change like
Steve.

That closes the circle.  Yes, maverick unionists like Steve Nieman and Richard
Foley have challenged organized labor.  Is that a threat?  It is only for those
leaders who are too comfortable or too arrogant or limit their moral 
imaginations
to traditional wage system strategies.  For authentic leaders these challenges
represent phenomenal new opportunities, if they don't trivialize or slam the
ideas of Kelso and Capital Homesteading.  None of us have ever been enemies of
democratic trade unionism.  Rather, we are opposed to strategies and policies
that perpetuate wage slavery.  Like Walter Reuther, we strongly believe that the
ownership system structured according to sound principles of economic and social
justice is the key to the revitalization of democratic trade unionism.  People
like Lynn can help bring this about.

In case, some of those participating in this discussion group have any question
of my attitude toward organized labor, here is my recent posting to another web
site:


<<In this article you suggest that if unions were doing their job, they will
eventually go out of existence.  I disagree. Only in a perfect world where all
people became angels would worker owners in sizeable work environments not need
an organized association like a democratically-run labor union to promote real
economic justice for each worker.  Managers will not be accountable unless all
stakeholders, including worker- owners are organized, well-informed and 
empowered
to protect their full ownership rights. You're right that today's unions need to
be radically transformed. But to see our views on how unions must be 
transformed,
click on to http://www.cesj.org/vbm/casestudies-vbm/southbendlathe.html>>

Norm Kurland
Center for Economic and Social Justice

LynnRWilliams@aol.com wrote:

> One would have to know a great deal more about the relations between
> Horizon/Alaska and its Teamster local to comment very intelligently regarding
> the alleged comments of the Teamster local leaders about the airline.
>
> In any event, as everyone on this network knows, I'm sure, including Norm
> Kurland, the comments as quoted by Mr.Nieman are not typical of the American
> labor movement. The labor movement, by and large, has been immersed now for
> twenty years, in industry after industry, in coping with the impact of
> globalization, of the all too frequent failure of American leadership to care
> about the significance of the manufacturing sector, of a free trade ideology
> bordering on fanatacism, of irresponsible corporate greed manifesting itself
> as it has not since the 1920's, of a constant attack on the right of American
> workers to be represented in collective bargaining and, therefore, to be
> heard from in a meanigful way.
>
> For a most insightful comment on the role of American corporate leadership at
> this very moment, in the midst of the terrorist crisis, I commend Paul
> Krugman's op-ed piece in the weekend Times, if you haven't yet seen it.
>
> With the actions of CEOs in helping themselves to salaries five hundred times
> the earnings received by their average workers is it any wonder that workers
> may be somewhat less than totally committed to their welfare?  When one sees
> the interest of so many world corporations in exploiting workers in
> developing countries to the maximum, with sweat shops, and ever shifting
> contracts, and child labor, and environmental degredation as in the
> Maquiladoras, and in leading the race to the bottom, is it any wonder that
> workers have some degree of cynicism concerning many company presentations of
> their problems?
>
> In any event, I've been there.  I was there when, in the aftermath of the
> threat to our society in World War II we built a society, for a time, which
> welcomed the role of trade unions and collective bargaining, which created
> real jobs with some security and some level of benefits, which talked about
> social responsibility by the corporate leaders, and I was there as the
> buccaneer capitalists of the turn of the century re-emerged, challenged and
> destroyed much of that progress.  I witnessed, for example, a Marshall Plan
> that built a new Europe, which continues to provide a way of life for
> ordinary people far more secure than ours, and saw our leaders, faced with
> the great needs and opportunities of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and
> leading a vastly more wealthy society than existed at the end of World War
> II, refuse to accept such a challenge and develop a similar program of
> economic growth and development..
>
> I've been there in my own industry.  There is no doubt in my imind that
> without the concern, input and involvement of my union in the steel industry
> it would long since have been in worse shape than it now is.  To speak about
> labor earning too much, or being noncompetitive in a world in which wealth
> has been increasing exponentially, is simply to display one's prejudice and
> superficiality concerning the need to move forward, not backward.
>
> In my union we have pursued the idea that workers need access to the benefits
> of ownership as well as of labor and I, personally, attach great value and
> importance to that idea, but many of my labor colleagues see a world in which
> that idea has relatively little acceptance and in which the immediate, daily
> struggles of workers are crucial, and that, given that reality, the employee
> ownership and related ideas are largely irrelevant to the more immediate
> crises.  We should be focussed, from that perspective, on raising living
> standards here and across the world.  It has taken the current crisis to
> provide at least some greater rhetorical attention to the dangers to our
> entire civilization of a world in which 2/3rds of the people are attempting
> to live on a dollar or two a day.  Nelson Mandela made some powerful comments
> in that regard when recieving honorary Canadian citizenship in Ottawa last
> week - I do not know but suspect they were not widely publicized in other
> countries.
>
> In the work we did in my union concerning employee ownership the greatest
> challenge was finding managers who both knew their business and had the
> sensitivity to work with employee owners, to appreciate where such owners
> were coming from, to truly participate with them in an open, constructive and
> creative way.
>
> I obviously do not know, but I suspect that something of this nature behind
> the remarks about which Mr.Nieman is concerned.  About three years ago there
> was a strike at one of the Steelworker ESOPs largely if not entirely, in my
> opinion, the result of insensitive and inadequate corporate leadership.  We
> assisted in finding a new President and CEO and the situation is entirely
> turned around.  Leadership matters and in a private enterprise, private
> ownership economy it matters enormously.
>
> We desperately need leaders with a vision that includes, but extends far
> beyond the bottom line of their own corporation and includes as well, and
> significantly, what is happening in the broader world, to the living
> standards of humanity at large and to the health of our ever tinier and more
> crowded planet.  Important to creating this vision, and I suspect important
> in Mr. Nieman's specific situation, is to have some meanifngul involvement
> and discussion with the union leadership and membership about their ideas
> concerning the creation of our future.