Monday, September 3, 2018

First, Let's Kill All the Bosses

This weekend I saw an NBC promo that featured some CNBC analyst purporting to advise people who are having problems with their boss.

Short version: stop forcing your boss to "explain your behavior to other people."

Fact: If your boss is spending even five seconds "explaining your behavior to other people," then you do indeed have a big problem.  Your big problem is that your boss is an asshole.

Your boss is an asshole because your boss is undermining and sabotaging you by publicly disparaging your skills and professionalism.

More broadly, your boss is an asshole because 45 years ago repug/conservative capitalism began to flip the New Deal system of powerful labor/worker that prevented owners and bosses from abusing workers to one that allows employers to treat employees as serfs without rights.

It's Labor Fucking Day, people. Let's stop giving bosses power.  Let's stop putting employers in charge. Let's stop pretending owners are "job creators."

If every boss, employer, owner disappeared tomorrow, the work - the actual work of keeping the economy humming - the work would continue without a hiccup.

Workers create jobs. Workers build and run the economy.  Workers are irreplaceable.

What would a worker-centered economy look like?  Let's start with what we lost 45 years ago and build on that.

  • Criminalize non-worker interference with organizing and collective bargaining. Every workplace that votes to unionize gets a union. Every unionized workplace requires collective bargaining.
  • Repeal all pro-rentier, anti-worker legislation, regulations and tax breaks.
  • Permanently bar from all government contracts, tax breaks and subsidies all corporations that take anti-worker actions (not just layoffs and off-shoring but also a worker-management pay ratio of more than 50 to 1). 
  • Ban all future and reverse all previous mergers/acquisitions that give any entity control of more than five percent of any economic sector. Criminalize anti-trust behavior.
  • Minimum wage of $25 per hour, indexed to inflation.
  • Social Security equal to minimum wage, and available at age 55.
  • Medicare for All or Single Payer medical insurance.
  • Universal Child Care.
  • Construct 100 million new units of affordable housing.
  • Build mass transportation that gets every worker to their workplace.  
This is fun!  Let your imagination run wild!  No pro-worker policy or program is too much!

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