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Home > Jim Hightower: America Is Being Economically Disemboweled
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Jim Hightower: America Is Being Economically Disemboweled
By Jim Hightower [1] / AlterNet [2]
July 6, 2016
If the chieftains of industry and their political henchmen want to know
what's roiling the riffraff, they could read Thomas Piketty's landmark,
1,000-page book on inequality: Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Or, they
could listen to one of Bernie Sander's hour-long, tub-thumping speeches. Or,
they could just spend three minutes and 32 seconds watching an online video
showing a Carrier Corporation executive speaking to hundreds of workers in
the air-conditioning giant's Indianapolis plant this past February.
The proud Steelworker union members thought maybe they'd been called to the
factory floor to hear about new orders for their quality products. After
all, sales at parent company United Technologies were zooming-expected to
jump at least $2 billion to $58 billion in 2016.
Instead of receiving praise and good news, however, they got an ugly
surprise. In the fuzzy video recorded on a worker's phone, UTC/Carrier
honcho Chris Nelson doesn't bother with any opening pleasantries. He gets
right to the point, reporting in the dry tones of a corporate lifer that the
bosses have decided that,"The best way to stay competitive and protect the
business for the long term is to move production from our facility in
Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico." KABLOOEY! He couldn't finish his
sentence, for the entire assembly exploded like a human cluster bomb, with
cries of disbelief, raucous booing, and a steady barrage of f-bombs.
"Please quiet down," the obtuse functionary instructed. But the devastated
workers, realizing in an instant that Carrier is kicking their families
right out of the middle-class, got rowdier. Then, as though delivering a
line from The Godfather, Nelson assures the crowd that the corporation means
nothing personal by taking their jobs: "This is strictly a business
decision."
No, it wasn't. This was a calculated greed decision. Severing this workforce
of 2,100 top-quality, experienced, and dedicated producers makes
questionable business sense: The move to Mexico is expected to save UTC only
$70 million a year in labor costs (a blip on the spreadsheets of global
behemoth that hauls in $56 billion a year and has an uninterrupted 22-year
record of increasing dividends).
But, UTC's greedy Wall Street investment bankers demanded that the giant go
on a cost-cutting binge aimed at generating a 17-percent hike in its stock
price over the next two years. And what better way to please big
institutional shareholders than to show a cold willingness to whack payroll.
While making such cuts is "painful," mused Carrier's top financial
executive, they are necessary for "shareholder value creation," adding
cheerfully: "We feel very good about being able to execute on that." So a
city must suffer factory abandonment, and workers must have their
decent-paying jobs taken from them so some distant, don't-give-a-damn, rich
shareholders can see a dollar rise in UTC's stock price. "Execute" seems
like the right word.
There's also an unstated motivation in play: Gregory Hayes's pride. The UTC
chief had taken heat from a board of directors concerned that the stock
price had not climbed as high as fast as Wall Street wanted. Indeed, last
year, the board sliced his executive bonus in half. "It's embarrassing," a
financial analyst noted. "He got dinged." But no need to cry for Greg, since
his 2015 paycheck still totaled $6 million. (A typical Carrier worker would
have to stay on the job 150 years to earn that much).
Welcome to the new Wild Kingdom of Corporate World, where prideful executive
royals are empowered to uproot the livelihoods of commoners in a ploy to
please Wall Street, manipulate corporate stock prices, collect extravagant
bonuses, and save face.
Notice that such whimsy was pulled off autocratically. Despite a unionized
workforce, UTC/Carrier simply commanded the workers to assemble so they
could be unilaterally dispatched - there was no negotiation, consultation,
or any other say-so by the workers, their community, public officials, or
anyone else. This is our new norm of plutocratic rule, envisioned and
implemented by the rampaging forces of corporate avarice.
This disregard for workers is not just a one-time Indiana problem. Carrier's
chief financial officer blurted out to the New York Times that top
executives are eyeing other factories to move to Mexico. Look out Charlotte
(NC), Collierville (TN), and Tyler (TX).
The carnage on working class Americans won't stop until we actually start
punishing these corporate malefactors.
Jim Hightower [3] 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 [4] (Wiley, March 2008). He publishes the monthly Hightower
Lowdown [5], co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
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[5] http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/
[6] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Jim Hightower: America
Is Being Economically Disemboweled
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Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Jim Hightower: America Is Being Economically Disemboweled
Jim Hightower: America Is Being Economically Disemboweled
By Jim Hightower [1] / AlterNet [2]
July 6, 2016
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If the chieftains of industry and their political henchmen want to know
what's roiling the riffraff, they could read Thomas Piketty's landmark,
1,000-page book on inequality: Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Or, they
could listen to one of Bernie Sander's hour-long, tub-thumping speeches. Or,
they could just spend three minutes and 32 seconds watching an online video
showing a Carrier Corporation executive speaking to hundreds of workers in
the air-conditioning giant's Indianapolis plant this past February.
The proud Steelworker union members thought maybe they'd been called to the
factory floor to hear about new orders for their quality products. After
all, sales at parent company United Technologies were zooming-expected to
jump at least $2 billion to $58 billion in 2016.
Instead of receiving praise and good news, however, they got an ugly
surprise. In the fuzzy video recorded on a worker's phone, UTC/Carrier
honcho Chris Nelson doesn't bother with any opening pleasantries. He gets
right to the point, reporting in the dry tones of a corporate lifer that the
bosses have decided that,"The best way to stay competitive and protect the
business for the long term is to move production from our facility in
Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico." KABLOOEY! He couldn't finish his
sentence, for the entire assembly exploded like a human cluster bomb, with
cries of disbelief, raucous booing, and a steady barrage of f-bombs.
"Please quiet down," the obtuse functionary instructed. But the devastated
workers, realizing in an instant that Carrier is kicking their families
right out of the middle-class, got rowdier. Then, as though delivering a
line from The Godfather, Nelson assures the crowd that the corporation means
nothing personal by taking their jobs: "This is strictly a business
decision."
No, it wasn't. This was a calculated greed decision. Severing this workforce
of 2,100 top-quality, experienced, and dedicated producers makes
questionable business sense: The move to Mexico is expected to save UTC only
$70 million a year in labor costs (a blip on the spreadsheets of global
behemoth that hauls in $56 billion a year and has an uninterrupted 22-year
record of increasing dividends).
But, UTC's greedy Wall Street investment bankers demanded that the giant go
on a cost-cutting binge aimed at generating a 17-percent hike in its stock
price over the next two years. And what better way to please big
institutional shareholders than to show a cold willingness to whack payroll.
While making such cuts is "painful," mused Carrier's top financial
executive, they are necessary for "shareholder value creation," adding
cheerfully: "We feel very good about being able to execute on that." So a
city must suffer factory abandonment, and workers must have their
decent-paying jobs taken from them so some distant, don't-give-a-damn, rich
shareholders can see a dollar rise in UTC's stock price. "Execute" seems
like the right word.
There's also an unstated motivation in play: Gregory Hayes's pride. The UTC
chief had taken heat from a board of directors concerned that the stock
price had not climbed as high as fast as Wall Street wanted. Indeed, last
year, the board sliced his executive bonus in half. "It's embarrassing," a
financial analyst noted. "He got dinged." But no need to cry for Greg, since
his 2015 paycheck still totaled $6 million. (A typical Carrier worker would
have to stay on the job 150 years to earn that much).
Welcome to the new Wild Kingdom of Corporate World, where prideful executive
royals are empowered to uproot the livelihoods of commoners in a ploy to
please Wall Street, manipulate corporate stock prices, collect extravagant
bonuses, and save face.
Notice that such whimsy was pulled off autocratically. Despite a unionized
workforce, UTC/Carrier simply commanded the workers to assemble so they
could be unilaterally dispatched - there was no negotiation, consultation,
or any other say-so by the workers, their community, public officials, or
anyone else. This is our new norm of plutocratic rule, envisioned and
implemented by the rampaging forces of corporate avarice.
This disregard for workers is not just a one-time Indiana problem. Carrier's
chief financial officer blurted out to the New York Times that top
executives are eyeing other factories to move to Mexico. Look out Charlotte
(NC), Collierville (TN), and Tyler (TX).
The carnage on working class Americans won't stop until we actually start
punishing these corporate malefactors.
Jim Hightower [3] 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 [4] (Wiley, March 2008). He publishes the monthly Hightower
Lowdown [5], co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [6]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[7]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/labor/jim-hightower-america-being-economically-disem
boweled
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jim-hightower
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.jimhightower.com/
[4] http://jimhightower.com/store/swim_against_the_current
[5] http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/
[6] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Jim Hightower: America
Is Being Economically Disemboweled
[7] http://www.alternet.org/
[8] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
