Why I walked out at UPS and why UPSers will too.

[PatrickforB]

29. Dear Simeon - This is due to the primacy of the shareholder doctrine - a legal

doctrine that was established by the Michigan Supreme Court in a 1919 ruling against Henry Ford and in favor of the Dodge brothers.

Since Ford's new assembly line allowed the factory to put out a much greater number of cars, Ford reasoned that since they were producing more, he needed to expand his market more so a greater number of people could purchase the cars.

So, he raised the wages of the factory workers to the point where they could afford to purchase the cars they built.

The Dodge brothers owned shares in Ford Motor Company and sued Henry Ford on the basis that the 'unreasonably high wages' for his factory workers deprived them of PROFITS to which they were ENTITLED as shareholders. And they won. Seriously.

Thus was born the legal doctrine of 'shareholder primacy' - the shorthand is profits-over-people, and that is quite true.

So the CEO of UPS, Carol Tome, 'earned' (if you can call it that) a base salary of $1,336,251 per year, starting in 2021 with total compensation of $27,620,893. Her job as CEO of a publicly held company is ONLY, and I stress ONLY to increase shareholder profits.

This is why most CEOs are sociopaths, because this system rewards sociopathic behavior. Consider:

If you are Carol, the first thing you are going to do is work to cut labor costs. This means you will try to bust the union if at all possible in as many facilities as possible, will cut hours so you don't have to provide that many benefits, and you'll cut corners on working conditions (like not heating or cooling this facility where you and your friends must toil). And you'll contract with companies and lowball the contract prices, which forces them to cut wages and benefits for their drivers, as well.

And, as you say, you don't care if your workers have to get foodstamps or welfare. Not your problem. In fact, according to a study a few years ago, a Walmart store can cost a community upwards of $900K per year in public benefits paid to employees who could not otherwise live on the wage. Walmart lied, of course, and disputed this.

Of course, this also has ramifications for consumers of the service or product the company produces as well as the environment. I won't go into that in depth except to say that the GOP particularly is keen to pass on any costs of corporate malfeasance to taxpayers while allowing the corporation to pocket all profits.

This is why I hate our brand of capitalism. It is literally destroying the earth. If you look at BLS and Census data, you can see wages have remained stagnant for many years, while productivity has risen and corporate profits are stratospheric.

The bottom line is that this system, coupled with the 'trickle down' tax cuts and the bloated Military Industrial complex, sucks (it does SUCK) but as I say, it sucks up wealth and systematically transfers it to fewer and fewer people. This is why we can't 'afford' Medicare for all Americans, which 68% of us favor, and Social Security is not as solvent as it might be. It is also why Congress does NOTHING about gun control even though an overwhelming majority of us want gun controls because, silly us, we don't want our grandkids to be gunned down in a school shooting. It is also why our carbon emissions are rapidly making the planet uninhabitable.

It's all ALWAYS about policy. Congress should be ready to actively mitigate these corporate excesses, but rulings like Citizens United have allowed corporate corruption to nearly bury our republic under Wall Street greed.

OK, rant over...........good luck and best wishes to you!

As