Verizon is replacing striking workers with no benefit, low wage workers as well:
http://www.verizon.com/about/work/jobs/search?q=Temporary+Service+Technicians&bid=3813&cid=**&ss=paid&CMP=DMC-CVZ_ZZ_ZZ_Z_ZZ_N_X00693
One more reason why I won't do business with Verizon.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2016 11:43 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Meet the Abusive 'World's Largest Company You've
Never Heard Of'
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > Meet the Abusive
'World's Largest Company You've Never Heard Of'
________________________________________
Meet the Abusive 'World's Largest Company You've Never Heard Of'
By Jim Hightower [1] / AlterNet [2]
May 18, 2016
Giant corporate entities have become so far-flung and impersonal that "human
relations" departments have been created within the soulless structures to
cloak the fact that there's really nothing human about them. HR is mostly known
for sending the corporate rank and file peppy motivational memos that boil down
to: "The beatings will continue until morale improves."
The beatings of American workers (wage slashing, axed benefits, union busting,
mass firings, offshored factories, and brutish abuse of worker
rights) have been increasing in frequency, intensity, and scope-mostly ordered
by CEOs in the posh, faraway headquarters of multi-tentacled global empires.
These detached autocrats are wrecking the lives of hardworking people for no
reasons but institutional greed, calculated self-interest ...
and because our corporate-coddling government lets them get away with it.
Let's meet one of the most powerful of these lords of rapacious global
capitalism-Glencore.
Never heard of Glencore? Neither had I until February, when I visited some
members of the United Steelworkers Union outside a Glencore-owned aluminum
plant (Sherwin Alumina) on the Texas Gulf Coast. In 2014, after months of
negotiating a new contract, Glencore suddenly tossed these workers a
take-it-or-leave-it offer that would drastically cut wages, increase healthcare
costs, and eliminate pensions for new hires. (Glencore's profit that year was
$4.6 billion). Fed up, 98 percent of the union's members voted against the
contract. Glencore's reaction was to lock them out and replace them with
contract workers.
Some 5,500 miles away from these proud, principled workers, you'll find
Glencore's sleek global headquarters (dubbed by Reuters as "the biggest company
you never heard of") in Baar, Switzerland.
Not merely big, it's colossal-the tenth largest corporation in the world-with
160,000 employees in more than 50 countries on six continents. It produces and
trades coal, oil, gas, metals, minerals, foodstuffs, and other commodities.
Indeed, its nondescript name is an acronym for GLobal ENergy COmmodity
REsources, and it owns a huge chunk of the world market for many
internationally traded resources, including zinc, copper, nickel, aluminum,
grain, and oil. Uniquely, Glencore combines the production and shipping of more
than 90 different commodities with the entirely different, corporate culture of
high-speed computer trading of commodities.
Now, let's hail the chief, the uber-competitive and ravenous corporate
dealmaker, CEO Ivan Glasenberg, whose $2.3 billion in personal wealth ranked
him No. 301 last year on the Forbes list of the world's 500 richest people.
Since joining Glencore in 1984 as a base-level coal marketer, Glasenberg moved
swiftly up the executive ladder to become "the savviest trader on the planet."
He dines with prime ministers and hobnobs with oligarchs, relentlessly pushing
acquisitions, devising opaque partnerships, and gaining government favors that
have made the conglomerate a dominating behemoth. But attaining, using, and
holding such power in so many parts of the world can be, well, "untidy:"
. Corruption of officials and severe human rights violations by
executives of Cerrejon, an open-pit coal mining operation partly owned by
Glencore. Charges include Cerrejon security forces expropriating entire
villages to expand mines and, with Columbian paramilitary units, driving a
Wayuu tribe off its land in what the native people called a "massacre."
. Cooking the books to evade taxes that its partially owned Mopani
Copper Mines owed the people of Zambia, and letting pollution flow uncontrolled
from the same mines, causing health problems for five million neighboring
people.
. Permanently shuttering Glencore's Columbia Falls aluminum plant in
Montana last year after 1,500 laid-off workers and local officials had, at the
urging of the corporation, produced a viable plan to reopen it. Then refusing
to reach a fair severance deal with USW members, some of whom had been with the
plant for three decades. Also, opposing EPA's designation of the contaminated
factory site for a Superfund cleanup, claiming that this would devalue its
property-even though a Superfund project would create jobs and benefit the
community. Brian Doyle, president of the local steelworkers union in Columbia
Falls, summed up the corporation's attitude: "To Glencore, we're just a number.
They don't know who we are, and they don't care."
. Exactly. Which is why the workers in Texas are fighting this David-
Goliath battle. To learn more, visit the United Steelworkers website at
www.usw.org [3].
Jim Hightower [4] is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and
author of the book Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the
Flow [5] (Wiley, March 2008). He publishes the monthly Hightower Lowdown [6],
co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
Share on Facebook Share
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [7]
[8]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/meet-abusive-worlds-largest-company-youve-ne
ver-heard
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jim-hightower
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.usw.org/
[4] http://www.jimhightower.com/
[5] http://jimhightower.com/store/swim_against_the_current
[6] http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/
[7] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Meet the Abusive ;
'World's Largest Company You've Never Heard Of' [8]
http://www.alternet.org/ [9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > Meet the Abusive
'World's Largest Company You've Never Heard Of'
Meet the Abusive 'World's Largest Company You've Never Heard Of'
By Jim Hightower [1] / AlterNet [2]
May 18, 2016
AddThis Sharing ButtonsShare to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to Google+More
AddThis Share optionsShare to Email Giant corporate entities have become so
far-flung and impersonal that "human relations" departments have been created
within the soulless structures to cloak the fact that there's really nothing
human about them. HR is mostly known for sending the corporate rank and file
peppy motivational memos that boil down to: "The beatings will continue until
morale improves."
The beatings of American workers (wage slashing, axed benefits, union busting,
mass firings, offshored factories, and brutish abuse of worker
rights) have been increasing in frequency, intensity, and scope-mostly ordered
by CEOs in the posh, faraway headquarters of multi-tentacled global empires.
These detached autocrats are wrecking the lives of hardworking people for no
reasons but institutional greed, calculated self-interest ...
and because our corporate-coddling government lets them get away with it.
Let's meet one of the most powerful of these lords of rapacious global
capitalism-Glencore.
Never heard of Glencore? Neither had I until February, when I visited some
members of the United Steelworkers Union outside a Glencore-owned aluminum
plant (Sherwin Alumina) on the Texas Gulf Coast. In 2014, after months of
negotiating a new contract, Glencore suddenly tossed these workers a
take-it-or-leave-it offer that would drastically cut wages, increase healthcare
costs, and eliminate pensions for new hires. (Glencore's profit that year was
$4.6 billion). Fed up, 98 percent of the union's members voted against the
contract. Glencore's reaction was to lock them out and replace them with
contract workers.
Some 5,500 miles away from these proud, principled workers, you'll find
Glencore's sleek global headquarters (dubbed by Reuters as "the biggest company
you never heard of") in Baar, Switzerland.
Not merely big, it's colossal-the tenth largest corporation in the world-with
160,000 employees in more than 50 countries on six continents. It produces and
trades coal, oil, gas, metals, minerals, foodstuffs, and other commodities.
Indeed, its nondescript name is an acronym for GLobal ENergy COmmodity
REsources, and it owns a huge chunk of the world market for many
internationally traded resources, including zinc, copper, nickel, aluminum,
grain, and oil. Uniquely, Glencore combines the production and shipping of more
than 90 different commodities with the entirely different, corporate culture of
high-speed computer trading of commodities.
Now, let's hail the chief, the uber-competitive and ravenous corporate
dealmaker, CEO Ivan Glasenberg, whose $2.3 billion in personal wealth ranked
him No. 301 last year on the Forbes list of the world's 500 richest people.
Since joining Glencore in 1984 as a base-level coal marketer, Glasenberg moved
swiftly up the executive ladder to become "the savviest trader on the planet."
He dines with prime ministers and hobnobs with oligarchs, relentlessly pushing
acquisitions, devising opaque partnerships, and gaining government favors that
have made the conglomerate a dominating behemoth. But attaining, using, and
holding such power in so many parts of the world can be, well, "untidy:"
. Corruption of officials and severe human rights violations by
executives of Cerrejon, an open-pit coal mining operation partly owned by
Glencore. Charges include Cerrejon security forces expropriating entire
villages to expand mines and, with Columbian paramilitary units, driving a
Wayuu tribe off its land in what the native people called a "massacre."
. Cooking the books to evade taxes that its partially owned Mopani
Copper Mines owed the people of Zambia, and letting pollution flow uncontrolled
from the same mines, causing health problems for five million neighboring
people.
. Permanently shuttering Glencore's Columbia Falls aluminum plant in
Montana last year after 1,500 laid-off workers and local officials had, at the
urging of the corporation, produced a viable plan to reopen it. Then refusing
to reach a fair severance deal with USW members, some of whom had been with the
plant for three decades. Also, opposing EPA's designation of the contaminated
factory site for a Superfund cleanup, claiming that this would devalue its
property-even though a Superfund project would create jobs and benefit the
community. Brian Doyle, president of the local steelworkers union in Columbia
Falls, summed up the corporation's attitude: "To Glencore, we're just a number.
They don't know who we are, and they don't care."
. Exactly. Which is why the workers in Texas are fighting this David-
Goliath battle. To learn more, visit the United Steelworkers website at
www.usw.org [3].
Jim Hightower [4] is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and
author of the book Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the
Flow [5] (Wiley, March 2008). He publishes the monthly Hightower Lowdown [6],
co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [7] Error!
Hyperlink reference not valid.[8]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/meet-abusive-worlds-largest-company-youve-ne
ver-heard
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jim-hightower
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.usw.org/
[4] http://www.jimhightower.com/
[5] http://jimhightower.com/store/swim_against_the_current
[6] http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/
[7] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Meet the Abusive ;
'World's Largest Company You've Never Heard Of' [8]
http://www.alternet.org/ [9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
