A case of class law: harsh judgement against Berlin cashier

[Hannah Bell]

Some incidents provide a particularly keen insight into the present political situation in Germany. It is only necessary to examine two court decisions made one after the other at the start of this year.

In one case, the former chairman of the German Post, Klaus Zumwinkel, was found guilty...of tax evasion totalling €970,000. He was given a suspended sentence of two years and a fine of approximately €1 million — i.e., the same sum which he withheld from German tax authorities...

In the second case...supermarket cashier Emmely...was dismissed by her employer on the suspicion of pocketing two bottle deposit slips with a combined value of €1.30.

Klaus Zumwinkel, 65, will suffer no personal consequences as a result of his conviction. In his function as head of German Post in 2008 he received a payment of €714,045, including a bonus payment of €480,184, plus share options with a current value of more than €1 million. His private wealth is currently estimated at €8 million. In addition, he possesses a castle at Lake Garda valued at €5 million, which is now his retirement home. Just a few days ago, Zumwinkel drew out his pension from German Post — a lump sum of €20 million!

The situation looks very different for 50-year-old Emmely, who, in her 31 years of hard work as a cashier had never committed any sort of offence. Her reputation has now been blackened by the judgement of the Berlin court and she will have great difficulty finding any alternative employment. In the months before receiving her notice in February 2008, she had been living on a monthly wage of just €1,700. Since her sacking she receives the paltry Hartz IV unemployment payments, and it is now likely that she will spend the rest of her life in poverty — despite her long working life...

Her sacking had been preceded by a strike by the Verdi trade union, of which Emmely was a member. The union had undertaken strike action for a wage increase for retail trade workers, and Emmely was one of the most militant participants in the strike...

According to Emmely, two of her colleagues were present at the cash point when the incident is alleged to have taken place and both testified that the mother of three had cashed in the slips. Emmely denies their accusation, which cannot be backed up because video recordings that could have helped to clarify the incident were deleted a short time afterwards. "Why should I steal €1.30 after 31 years of work for the company?" Emmely asked. "The accusation is crazy."

In the case of Emmely, her employer—the food company Kaiser's Tengelmann — was able to rely on a judicial relic from the era of the German Kaiser, the possibility of "dismissal on the basis of suspicion"...


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/germ-m21.shtml

[paulsby]

1. article suspect due to fallacious conclusion

specifically...

"The situation looks very different for 50-year-old Emmely, who, in her 31 years of hard work as a cashier had never committed any sort of offence."

the article writer of course does not know this to be a fact. the only person who knows this would be emily. it would be correct to say "The situation looks very different for 50-year-old Emmely, who, in her 31 years of hard work as a cashier had never been suspected of any sort of offence."

typical of MSM writing. inaccuracies immediately apparent just a few seconds into an article.

whether or not the articles POINT is valid, it doesn't help , when trying to persuade people, when you can't even get the facts stated accurately.

i suggest a copy of the "the elements of style" and a remedial english course.

(and please no snarky comments about my lack of caps. i'm typin' with one hand)

[Jim Sagle]

2. Your useless hairsplitting is duly noted.

There isn't a single reader anywhere who could be misled by the trivial mistake you highlighted in order to suppress the whole point of the article.

And BTW, wsws is NOT MSM, it's Trotskyist. And THAT'S not hairsplitting at all.

[paulsby]

4. irrelevant

the point isn't that a reader would or wouldn't be misled. the point is that it is a blatantly inaccurate statement.

similar to how many articles will say "a jury found a manchester man innocent of assault charges today..." when of course juries can't and don't find people INNOCENT.

but you are correct. wsws is not MSM. my bad. however, the mistake they made WAS typical of MSM. it's nice to know that an example of trotskyist media can be as inaccurate and poorly written as the MSM usually is.

accuracy matters. it is a simple difference of a word or two, but it makes all the difference. as soon as i see blatant inacuracies like that MEGO because i know i am dealing with a writer for whom their metanarrative is more important than simple accuracy and clarity of style. sad that.

[Hannah Bell]

6. grammar policing is certainly more important than the issues raised in the article.

she has a near-spotless record over 30 years of working for the same employer, as they go on to elaborate.

your comment is useless & wrong as well. the meaning is clear.

[paulsby]

7. it's not grammar policing

this isn't merely a matter of grammar. you can try to minimize all you want.

it's a matter of ACCURACY.

if you can't grok the difference, go back to remedial english, try an analytical reasoning course, and get thee an elements of style. hunker down.

yes, god forbid i want the articles i read to be factually accurate. what a ridiculous demand.

[Hannah Bell]

8. maybe you should read the article. your comment is idiotic.

"Barbara E. had worked continuously since 1977 for the Kaisers/Tengelmann supermarket chain. Only once, in 2005, did she receive a warning as a result of a customer complaint. The substance of this complaint and the warning are not referred to either in the judgement or by Rieble. Otherwise she has an unblemished record of thirty years."

[paulsby]

10. and THAT is accurate

but the other statement wasn't. so, PART of the article is accurate.

talk about damning by faint praise...

[Bluenorthwest]

36. Accuracy matters? Except when calling wsws 'Mainstream Media'?

And sorry, but you use no caps. While screaming for rule books of style, you mistake the source and refuse to capitalize. Except when you randomly capitalize words for highlighting reasons. What happened to the 'one hand' excuse when you typed WAS and MSM?
The irony alone makes any point you might have utterly vanish in a sea of hypocrisy.

[Hannah Bell]

5. Supermarket Cashier Becomes German Anti-Capitalist Hero

Barbara E. was fired for allegedly stealing 1.30 euros. Now, the German media has transformed a 50-year-old supermarket cashier into a national hero. Even senior German politicians have voiced their solidarity.

In these times of economic crisis, even such a measly sum as €1.30 ($1.66) can turn a supermarket cashier into a national hero -- and may ultimately cost a leading German politician his job.

That, at least, appears to be the moral of checkout clerk Barbara E.'s story. The 50-year-old mother of three, who goes by Emmely, was fired from her job at Kaiser's a year ago for allegedly stealing bottle deposit slips worth no more than a handful of pocket change. On Tuesday, a state labor court in Berlin upheld the grocery chain's right to dismiss Emmely.

...The mass-circulation tabloid Bild even put the veteran cashier, who has been working cash registers for 31 years, on its cover. The tone was clear: At a time when fat cats of the financial world have escaped relatively unscathed despite bringing the global economy to its knees, a common grocery store clerk loses her job for a few coins. Emmely quickly came to be seen as a martyr of class conflict...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,610083,00.html

[paulsby]

9. and an article that doesn't have a glaring error

like the other one, immediately apparent.

nice

[Hannah Bell]

11. don't you have some schoolchildren to turn off education or something?

i didn't post the articles for a journalism critique, but because it's criminal to fire a 50-year old woman over $1.66 in cents-off coupons.

[paulsby]

12. i certainly do not think it's criminal

fwiw. the issue imo is the standard of evidence. iow, at least from what i can glean from the article, she was fired with a modicum of evidence. if that wasn;t the case, then i don't think the firing was wrong.

iow, i think a business is well within its rights in terminating an emloyee for stealing, even if the stealing is (apparently according to some people) de minimis. no,i am not referring to taking a pencil home from work, etc. but this is a blatant theft, ASSUMING it happened, which is my point.

certainly, a business does not need to meet the beyond a reasonable doubt standard of a criminal trial, but they also need more (imo) than a he said/she said thang. and at least based on the minimum of info in the article, it seems that's all they have.

the issue, iow, to me is not the gravity of the offense, it's the standard of evidence.

i draw a bright line with crimes of dishonesty. especially for a CLERK who deals with money everyday etc. you have to be able to have 100% confidence she is not stealing. we are not talking truancy, mouthing off ot a customer, stuff like that that can be subject to progressive discipline.

[Hannah Bell]

13. why am i not surprised?

"According to the cashier's lawyer, Kaiser's has offered up no proof that she is guilty; she was apparently turned in by a co-worker. Emmely herself suspects she was fired because of her union activity."

"In the case of Emmely, her employer—the food company Kaiser's Tengelmann—was able to rely on a judicial relic from the era of the German Kaiser, the possibility of "dismissal on the basis of suspicion," according to paragraph 626 II BGB. According to this law, an employer can sack an employee without notice on the basis of suspicion of a punishable action that leads to a breach of confidence between the employer and employee. The employer must state the reasons for his suspicion, but must not prove that the deed actually took place. Instead the burden of proof lies with the accused employee. When in doubt, criminal law decides in favour of the accused, but this does not apply to German labour law. Since the beginning of the organised workers' movement in Germany this paragraph has been frequently used by employers to get rid of militant or left-wing workers."

The camera at the checkstands that would have shown the deed - erased.

undoubtably the employee did it to hide her theft of $1.66 in cents-off coupons.

[paulsby]

14. yea, that;s exactly what i have a problem with

the lack of evidence. the fact that there is at least some indication that it was done in retaliation for union activity is even worse.

my point is that IF she stole and IF they had reasonable evidence to believe she stole, i don't care if she stole .25 from the register. it's a justified firing.

in this case, it appears there's a bit more to the story.

[Hannah Bell]

15. perhaps we could apply your scrupulous standards to the rich, who steal more in a day than all the

cashiers in the us put together.

[paulsby]

16. spare me the rich are evil rants.

an employer has the right to fire somebody who steals from them. period. end of story.

the issue is was there sufficient evidence for the employer to come to this conclusion and was the real reason (iow a pretext case) her union activity.

yes i know the rich are evil and profit is theft and capitalism is the insect preying upon the working class and bla bla.

but let's deal with the facts of this case, not some kind of boring rant against the evil rich people.

in my lifetime travels (and i have friends you would consider obscenely rich), i have seen no evidence that the rich are more or less moral than anybody else.

[Iterate]

18. So, tell me about the CEO who got canned for suspicion of stealing €1.30

It's ok, I'll wait.

[paulsby]

19. how is this remotely relevant

i said a business has the right to fire somebody who steals from them

i am not aware of any cases where a CEO was found to have stolen €1.30

but i believe a business would have the right to fire that CEO as well.

again, why can't you stick to the case facts and the issue at hand?

if she was canned for her union activities or w.o sufficient threshold of evidence, then i hope she is given whatever redress german law allows.

one of the things i like about being unionized fwiw, is that i, and my coworkers, have a lot of protection against such egregious actions by management,.

otoh, if one of my coworkers was caught stealing, i KNOW he would be fired.

actually, a couple of years ago, that's exactly what happened. and i say good fucking riddance to him.

[Iterate]

23. It is absolutely relevant

In fact it's only the transposition of teller to CEO that makes my statement sound absurd, even if it shouldn't. But the whole point of the articles and the public reaction to the events is not necessarily the details of the accusation, it's the disparity of crime and punishment, something you don't seem focused on.

Nor do I get any sense that you've thought about the cultural differences that make this issue more telling. For instance, I can't imagine this being much of a story in the US. Or that age discrimination is not illegal in Germany and this woman is screwed by the accusation far, far beyond any official penalty. Or that tellers in Germany are far more scrupulous and honest than in the US, and that workplace petty thievery, though common here, is on a much, much smaller scale. So there may be many workers who see nothing at all wrong with taking home some office pens, but wouldn't think of going beyond that on their worst day. Or that once someone goes up the employment scale, the workplace thievery(which I would define as taking or using workplace assets for private benefit) changes in scale as well. By the time you get to the top, you're using workplace secretarial labor to manage private bank accounts and billing, taking unnecessary "business trips", or raking in public money to finance your private enterprise. I guess those things aren't called stealing though.

And an aside, for the amount of cruel gossip and petty bickering I've seen in German workplaces, I'm not surprised two co-workers would back the accusation. I admit limited experience, but that bit seems worse than in the US. All of these are from firsthand observation, with a volumes worth I won't belabor.

So who gets caught? Who gets crucified when the standard suddenly changes to an absolute measure of honesty (like the one you describe)? Not the directors. Not for a 1:1 measure, not by the euro. The prosecution and punishment get scaled as well. In fact the scale runs the other direction: one must prove her absolute innocence(which you seemed quick to doubt) and for the other the state must prove his guilt. Herr Zumwinkel gets some mild inconvenience (which others are paid to handle) and Frau Emmely struggles in poverty the rest of her life. It's a good thing this isn't Victorian England or she have gotten the death penalty for that amount, no doubt.

[paulsby]

25. what ridiculous moral argument

"absolute measure of honesty". what crap. like it's some kind of huge purist moral burden to insist that employees simply NOT STEAL.

look, it comes down to this . regardless of the double standard (alleged) for CEO's etc., :

**theft is not acceptable behavior in businesses, and ANY business is well within their rights in firing an employee if they have good evidence they committed theft.

you also lie about my position. i was not "quick to doubt" her innocence. i said, based on the article, that it appeared she was fired with only a modicum of evidence of guilty, basically he said/she said crap. try some reading comprehension.

what i said was that *if* there was sufficient evidence of thievery, they are absolutely within their rights of firing her despite her exemplary record. contrarily, as i said, if they did not have a reasonable basis for said belief, then i hope she gets the redress allowed under german law (whatever that is).

my coworker who was fired for theft also had a (relatively) long career of good service. so fucking what? he stole. he was GONE.

as it should be.

i don't abide by thieves.

i am curious as to your basis for this statement : "Or that tellers in Germany are far more scrupulous and honest than in the US, "

not saying it's true or not, i just doubt you have backing for that.

i am not FOCUSED on the alleged disparities, because i think a greater point is that businesses should not abide thieves. it sucks that they may give CEO's greater latitude. that sucks, but life is not cosmically fair.

what is fair though is that if you work for a company, you don't steal from them. no matter how minor the theft. and if you get caught, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

i deal with thieves all the fucking time. i arrest them, help make cases for prosecution, and sadly - deal with their victims. i don't like thievery.

[Hannah Bell]

28. i don't like thievery either. thus i protest & hate the theft of the entire world from 99%

of its inhabitants by a relative handful of ruling class families.

[paulsby]

30. ah yes more hate the rich

crap about the evil rich people who are ruling the earth from their high perches and using their power to suck us poor proles dry of of the rightful value of our labor.

boo hoo

[Hannah Bell]

33. more synchophantic apologetics for the rich from someone who thinks bill gates,

privatizer of life for profit, is a "nice guy".

[paulsby]

41. i do think gates is a nice guy

have you met him? he is.

don't like him. don't buy his software. he won't go cryin' about it on an internet site, i can assure you.

[Hannah Bell]

51. he's too busy eating african babies.

[paulsby]

52. lol

troll o meter

weak------------------------------sweeet-------------------------------super sweet
*******************************---^---*********************************

[Jim Sagle]

42. You repulse us more with every post. Keep digging.

[Iterate]

46. OK, let’s try the moral absolute.

Actually, I was trying to play nice.
But I’ll go along and we’ll try that absolute. “Thou shalt not steal.” There it is, carved in stone.

So what’s our new measure? Certainly you intend it to be less than €1.30. How much less? €1.00?, still stealing, €.10? nope, must be €.01 because that’s the lowest we can measure, though personally I favor the €0.00001 standard.

And what about that time when you were a kid and clocked out five minutes early? Or did they steal from you when you clocked out 5 minutes late? And when you had that bit of daydreaming, did you pay it back? Or that client you billed for a 15 minute call when it was really 14:30? These things get tough to measure, so maybe we had better include intent to steal as part of the measure.

Still no burden, intent is easy, right? Did you intend to steal the company pen, or did you just leave it in you pocket by mistake? And when your phone company overcharged you, and you got no satisfaction, did they intend to steal (wink wink, nod nod)? Doesn’t matter, you fired them and signed up with the other AT&T. Or there are the court cases, those in which the decision includes that “shocks the conscience” phrase, did someone intend to steal from the plaintiff, or was it really just a legal dispute?

And what about that two euro coin you found on the way to the train after work at Tengelmann’s? It was in the parking lot next to the shopping trolley bin. Does it belong to the company (their property), or the customer who dropped it (their coin)? Pick it up and keep it and you’re fucked. Did you mean to keep it? or did you forget? or was it just not worth finding out? Ooops, your fired.

This bit about intent seems tricky, so we’ll need someone to decide.

So who does decide the amount, the intent, and who it is that gets prosecuted? You? Your simple standard? I’m sure you’re fair, but no thanks. Laws, and courts seem the better option. One consistent standard for everybody. Hurray. Except it really doesn’t work out that way does it? Which laws? If it’s 18th century Britain, she’s executed, or flogged, or sent for transportation. If it’s the Kaiser’s law from 120 years ago, trouble is, she’ll have to prove her innocence. Other places she loses a hand. Tough, life’s not fair. She’s damned lucky not to have trial by ordeal and at least she had an appeal.

And who is held to the standard? Just employees? And management too, you’ve said as much. Certainly not everyone. And what about your other statement “and if you get caught, you have nobody to blame but yourself.” What about good people who are bad thieves and do get caught with that €.01? Still no discretion? You do realize don’t you, that if you carry out that policy for a number of years you’ll end up with a company full of good thieves. Just my casual observation, but it looks to me that by your standard most everyone in the USA will be changing jobs soon, and there aren’t near enough courts. I suppose though with such a simple standard, there’s no need for thoughtful judges, just some ticket agents.

Well that’s enough moral simplicity for me, I’m bailing out. All of this is enough to make my head hurt, because frankly, what is moral simplicity for you just seems to me to be unbearably arbitrary, deeply unfair, and applied as a tool of social power. I’ve looked in the past and nowhere have I seen a simple moral standard written on stone or hanging from a tree. Your position doesn’t allow for the grey area, the unclear situation. It doesn’t allow for wisdom, or judgment, or discretion, but it’s in that grey area that I find the calm that stops my head from hurting. All that had to happen in this case was for a wise judge to say “this doesn’t make sense, you give the money back, and you make clear the company policy concerning found coupons.” But that isn’t what happened.

You’d better not let go though, better hang onto #7 or #8 or whatever of your top ten, because if you do see the world as a bit more complicated and nuanced the wheels will come off. You’ll have to admit that people made it up the rules, that it’s applied by and for the benefit of those in control, and the laws themselves serve that purpose. From there it’s only one small step to see that the moral construct itself follows from the social structure and not the other way around.

[Hannah Bell]

20. spare me the "teller who 'steals' a coupon for $1.66 LEFT BEHIND BY CUSTOMER must be fired despite

30 year exemplary work history" rant.

Spare me your "the rich are just like everyone else" rant. They're not, & the difference in the punishment for wildly non-commensurate crimes shows it.

The trust fund class are directly responsible for the impoverishment & murder of millions. That's how they stay rich. They may be charming & pet puppies face to face, but they make their money from other people's suffering.

[paulsby]

21. no, i won't spare you

*if* she stole, or more correctly - if the employer has good cause to believe she stole, then they absolutely have the right to fire her.

assuming she has a 30 yr work history that's exemplary - bully for her.

the employer is still going to be well within their rights to fire her for theft. whether or not they decide to, should be entirely their decision. the problem i have is it appears (based on the articles) that they had little valid reason to conclude she had stolen.

i didn't say the rich are like everybody else. they aren't. they have more money :)

i have said that in my lifetime, and that includes plenty of contact with some rich people, i have seen no reason to believe they are any less or more MORAL than others.

the anti-rich crap amongst some really pisses me off. i find it detestable, and similar to how i feel about racists, sexists, or others of that ilk.

based on your last paragraph, you sound like one of those zero sum people who think that the rich can only exist if they are sucking the blood of others. it's just crap. capitalism is the greatest wealth building engine ever invented. it is entirely possible, and quite common, to become rich without being responsible for anybody's impverishment and murder

example: bill gates. he's a good man. i've met him personally (have a few friends who work for bill and melinda gates foundation). i also know he became rich in a way that did not impoverish or murder anybody. he's also quite charitable and supports many good causes.

hatred of the rich is a cancer. it's just a stupid bigotry that makes you people small and bitter.

[Hannah Bell]

22. no, idolatry of the rich is a cancer. despising the ruling class for the bloodsuckers they are &

rejecting their values, their ideas, & the bullshit they push to manipulate the masses = wisdom.

the gates foundation is not a charitable organization. it's a tax shelter & policy making tool for the ruling class, & the biggest promoter & pusher of genetically modified, patentable food & medicine on the planet.

bill gates got rich in a way that impoverished & murdered many people, & we'll start with great grandpap's career with national city bank (the foreign coupsters' bank) & the railroad barons, move on to mining (& war, & foreign fiefdoms) in africa, & from there to the recolonization of africa presently underway by gates et al under the guise of "charity". Then we can move on to his stockholdings, his buffett/aig/bankster connections, & more.

great grandpop's connected banking money is the origin of billy's little lakeside education, his mom's & dad's corporate connections that got billy his first computer contract, his insider knowledge of the industry direction & his spook connections. without those he'd be nothing & nobody. just another ugly nerdy kid with a middle class coding job.

The rich *can* only exist by sucking off others. It's self-evident to anyone who actually thinks about it.

I despise bill gates & his ilk more than any garden-variety racist, sexist, or any other "ist" the rich promote as scapegoats for their own murders. Racism is the creation of the ruling classes, & if you look into the background of any ruling class family 9 to 1 you'll find they made money from some aspect of the slave trade or the drug trade.

[paulsby]

24. false dichotomy

there are not just two option: idolatry of the rich or hatred of the rich.

i engage in neither. you clearly engage in the latter.

i judge people as individuals. y'know the whole content of one's character thang.

bigots tend to judge people by what group they can class them in. and hating people because they are rich is just another odious example of such bigotry.

the gates foundation does GOOD things for people. i know that. i have seen their work firsthand and one of my best friends did a lot of work on their library program, flying all over the country and helping install computer systems and internet access for libraries so kids would have access to computers and the internets.

for haters like you, any good that a rich person did will of course be explained away as a "tax shelter".

well yes, EVERYBODY gets tax benefit for charitable giving. do you have a problem with that?

by your specious logic, rich can do nothing charitable. if they don't give to charity, they are selfish. if they do, it's just for tax sheltering.

bill gates father/granfather is not how he got rich. he got rich, as a college dropout , because of a computer program he wrote.

it is CLEAR you do not understand economics. the rich can and frequently do get rich NOT by sucking off others. wealth is CREATED. that's how capitalism works. even HONEST and KNOWLEDGEABLE critics of capitalism will acknowledge this.

and capitalism rewards some people with more money than others. capitalism did just fine for my immigrant ancestors, and many people in my family fwiw. i owe a lot to capitalism. it's a great system.

people like you that are filled with hate are no different than racists or others who hate people because of what group they can be fit into. it's sad, frankly.

stop hating and spread some love!

[Hannah Bell]

27. no, once you actually have a clue, which you clearly don't, hatred of the rich, by which

i mean the ruling class, as a class, is the only option.

wealth is created - but not by the rich.

it's typical of those who cluelessly idolize the rich to bring racism into discussions of power & economics, as if "racism" springs into being from air, & not from economics.

[paulsby]

31. well at least you are honest

about your bigotry and hate. i will give you props for that.

wealth is often created by the rich. when you (for example) invent something that increases efficiency you CREATE wealth.

a field that would previously yield 6 quatloos now yields 8. guess what . wealth is created.

again, with your lies about me "idolizing" the rich.

for the umpteenth time, i don't idolize or hate them.

i deal with people as individuals. i am not going to hate somebody because they happen to be rich. that's bigotry.

your hate just makes you a small and bitter person

spread some love!

[Hannah Bell]

34. rich people don't invent shit. nor do they spread love. they spread hate, division,

war, racism, slavery, drug addiction, poverty, starvation, pollution, ignorance & false "solutions" to the problems they create & profit from.

[paulsby]

39. again, utter rubbish

guy who invented the artificial heart, guy who invented the paperclip, etc.

wah!!!! capitalism sucks. WAH! the rich sucks/

spread love, not hate.

[Hannah Bell]

50. the paperclip. lol. important inventions of "the rich".

the rich "culture" of the ruling class.

[paulsby]

53. i love your throwback marxist speak

it makes me yearn for the days of hearing naive college students opine on the greatness of marxian analysis, while trying to avoid spilling jolt cola on their "labor is value" buttons.

i am not quite sure you pass the turing test, though.

a pretty simple software program could be written to mimic your posts, kind of like an eliza (discredited marxist hogwash edition)

[Hannah Bell]

57. and your fawning over gates harkens back to the syncophants who lauded the

"philanthropy" of peabody, rockefeller, & carnegie.

after working them to death in the textile mills & coal mines, murdering them at homestead, ludlow, et. al.,, funding their sterilizations - they gave the masses libraries. oh kind masters!

300 years of their kind philanthopies, & still we are not saved. & they try sooooo hard.

[paulsby]

63. when in doubt,. misrepresent

i aint fawning over anybody. i am simply saying gates is a good man.

that's all.

this is not about hero worship.

this is about the fact that one's moralness, integrity, etc. are not related to his wealth.

again, i just people by the content of their character, not the contents of their money market fund.

prejudice is wrong. classism is wrong.

period.

[Greyhound]

43. "Behind every great fortune there is a crime"

I've known many rich people and have never seen an exception to this.

[paulsby]

54. i know plenty of rich people

and have seen plenty of exceptions.

wow, our experiences differ.

[Greyhound]

55. Possibly different definitions of rich as well. n/t

[paulsby]

56. i'm talkin'

mansion on cliff drive in newport RI rich.

old school hella rich

rich as a butter and fudge pie.

rrrrrrrrriiicccchhhh! :)

[Hannah Bell]

58. & i'll bet you know nothing of how they actually got rich.

[paulsby]

59. oh, i do

they kept a basement full of class slaves woefully toiling away for THE MAN, ruthlessly exploiting their labor with the fascist insect patriarchal heterosexist capitalist racist white supremacist imperialist machine they have installed down there.

i mean, duh. that's how the rich get rich.

[Hannah Bell]

60. i'll bet you know nothing of how they got rich.

& yes, most old-money families made some of it on various aspects of the slave trade.

the saintly roosevelts, for example, made much of their initial fortune on slave-grown & processed sugar.

then they started some banks, which, among other things, financed slave ships.

if your friends are old money in rhode island, the family undoubtably made money in the trade in some fashion, since rhode island's economy was heavily dependent on the trade for over 100 years.

http://www.slavenorth.com/rhodeisland.htm

too bad you don't know your history. capital amassed from slave labor financed the industrial revolution & financial establishment.

[Greyhound]

61. All of which means nothing. If they're generational rich then, as the night follows the day,

great-great-great... grandpappy stole it, killed people, blackmailed people, etc. Balzac knew these people then as I do now and nothing has changed.

[paulsby]

62. first of all, do you believe in collective responsibility

even assuming that some of the rich people got that way through their ancestor's evil, well it doesn't mean i am going to hate the son for the sins of the father.

second of all, plenty of poor people do insanely evil things, as did their ancestors.

being poor or middle class doesn't mean one is pure compared to the average rich person. i see NO evidence of that.

reflexively hating somebody because of how much money they make or have is a disgusting bigotry. i hate racism, and i hate classism as well.

it's disgusting.

[Greyhound]

64. You're the only one assuming hatred. I don't hate anybody, it's counter-productive.

However, I do advocate taking it all back just like the proceeds of any criminal activity, and first, making reparations to the victims and then applying all that is left toward the commons.

Why would anybody hate all the Kennedy's or Rockefellers just because Joe and John were murdering thieves? But they should not be allowed to continue the deprivation of thousands that their wealth causes either.

[Jim Sagle]

40. A convenient way to think, even if it has no real-world basis.

[Kievan Rus]

48. The rich ARE evil

[Blue_Tires]

65. at least her case is getting some attention

as opposed to suffering in anonymity...

[Iterate]

17. You’ve missed the point entirely.

You did zero in on the phrase “had never committed any sort of offence” and realize that it can’t be known as fact. True, we can play the epistemologist and say there is no evidence to prove that negative, but neither is there any evidence that she “had never been suspected of any sort of offence.”

And that’s the bloody point: judgment was rendered (whether by you or by the court) not on the basis of sufficient evidence and consistent application, but by suspicion, by class, and that the punishment is also based upon class.

The original phrase was spot on and did its work.

[rug]

49. Go pound on the cashier while the guy who stole a million euros walks.

At least you admit you typed it with one hand.

[Hannah Bell]

3. The firing of a German supermarket cashier: A case of class justice

The dismissal of the supermarket cashier Barbara E, often referred to as “Emmely”, has provoked broad public indignation in Germany. The 50-year-old... was sacked without notice because she had redeemed store coupons worth €1.30 left by a customer. Her dismissal was upheld both by a Berlin labour court and an appeal court.

The public anger generated by the case is in large measure due to the double standard in the way ordinary workers are treated as compared to the financial elite...For this reason, the World Socialist Web Site characterized the judgement against Emmely as a case of “class justice” in an earlier article.

This provoked an answer from Professor Volker Rieble. The professor for labour and civil law at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich published a five-page article justifying the judgement against Emmely in the Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (NJW, New Legal Weekly Revue) and referring explicitly to the article by the World Socialist Web Site.

Rieble’s essay attempts to refute the accusation of class justice, but ends up doing the opposite. His aggressive and in part insulting tone, his exaggerated and absurd social prejudices and his partisanship for bankers and managers who have gambled away billions or evaded taxes, only serves to underline the class character of the judgement against Emmely.

Why class justice?

The class character of the judgement against Emmely is not limited to a one-sided interpretation of the law by the courts. It is contained in existing law and legal precedents that are vehemently defended by Professor Rieble.

Thus, in labour law the presumption of innocence does not apply. The mere suspicion of malpractice is sufficient for dismissal, even if that means the “person will never again find a job”, as Rieble writes with satisfaction about Emmely; that is even if dismissal is a lifelong punishment.

Citing judgements of higher courts, Rieble justifies “dismissal on grounds of suspicion”. Such dismissal, he writes, is not a reaction to an offence, but rather a reaction to the loss of confidence arising from the suspicion. In other words: If an employee is suspected of an offence, he or she can be sacked because the mutual trust no longer exists, even if the offence is not proven at all.

This argumentation is grotesque. After thirty years employment, a trifle such as redeeming a coupon worth 1.30 euro is supposed to represent an irrevocable breach of trust. If that is not disproportionate, then what is?

Barbara E. had worked continuously since 1977 for the Kaisers/Tengelmann supermarket chain. Only once, in 2005, did she receive a warning as a result of a customer complaint. The substance of this complaint and the warning are not referred to either in the judgement or by Rieble. Otherwise she has an unblemished record of thirty years...

Rieble justifies his call for prosecution with the fact that Barbara E has publicly opposed the judgement against her — which is her democratic right...What the professor is demanding here is prosecution as retaliation for criticising the courts.

Other yardsticks

As soon as the professor addresses the conduct of bankers and managers he imposes completely different standards than in the case of the cashier. This is particularly obvious in the case of Deutsche Post CEO Klaus Zumwinkel, who had to vacate his post because he had evaded millions in taxes. Here the presumption of innocence applies, and mutual trust suddenly no longer plays a role.

Responding to a reference by the World Socialist Web Site to the extremely mild punishment Zumwinkel received, the professor answers, “Herr Zumwinkel has ‘only’ evaded taxes. Outside the public service this would not form grounds for dismissal on the basis of suspicion and also not on the grounds of fact — since the crucial link to the employer-employee relationship is lacking”.

If mere suspicion of inappropriate behaviour by an employee suffices for dismissal, it is entirely different in the case of a manager worth millions: “Even custody and certainly house searches do not suffice for dismissal on grounds of suspicion”. Rieble states regretfully that under “public pressure” Zumwinkel eventually gave up his job voluntarily “after radio and television were allowed to report on the search of his property”. He received a compensation of 20 million euro, something Rieble does not mention.

It does not even occur to the professor that the “bond of trust” could be destroyed if the boss of a large corporation engaged in evading millions in taxes, in particular when this company belongs to the state. What he regards as self-evident in the case of Emmely — that the redemption of coupons worth 1.30 euro destroys the bond of trust irrevocably — does not apply when the public purse is cheated by millions...

Whether bankers, whose greed for profits make them speculate billions, thereby destroying or endangering millions of jobs, should be held liable in criminal or civil cases, “nobody at present” can judge, maintains Rieble...

A similar argument was also deployed by the house sheet of the Frankfurt stock exchange, the Frankfurter Allgemeine. Referring to the Bochum lawyer Klaus Bernsmann, the paper regards the criminal law altogether as “unsuitable for judging on collective actions like the financial crisis”, and arrives at the conclusion that it is not in the interest of the capitalist free-market economy if those responsible for the financial crisis were summoned before the courts. If the requirements faced by directors became stricter, there was a “danger that harsher laws would produce cowards. Executives would lose the desire to take risks from fear of the courts”...

He calls critics of the Emmely judgement “infuriating social romantics” and — referring to “the authors of the WSWS and taz” — regrets that “freedom of opinion allows non-state organisations to attack the courts and judicial rulings non-objectively and emotionally”.

...His article comes to the conclusion that the Emmely case is “not a case of class justice — but proof that the citizens do not understand their (!) justice system”. That is not because of the justice system, but because “of the readiness of the citizen, free of knowledge and effort, to pass judgement based on their own indignation”.

...Professor Rieble is in reality reacting very sensitively to the fact that the citizens are beginning to understand his justice system... He is not so much concerned about the legal aspects of the Emmely case. Rather he is conducting a campaign that seeks to prevent that the law and official politics from coming under the influence of mounting social discontent and public pressure.

Who is Professor Rieble?

If one investigates Rieble’s background, his views do not come as a surprise. Despite his professorship and university chair he is a paid lobbyist of the employers’ associations.

He draws his salary from the Centre for Labour Relations and Labour Law (ZAAR), whose director he is. ZAAR is funded by a foundation that is financed by big business, and is attached to the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich (LMU). The board of trustees, foundation advisers and foundation board contain exclusively representatives of the employers’ associations and large-scale enterprises, in particular the chemical, metal and electrical industries, as well as Daimler, Bosch and Siemens.

...Despite all its statutory independence, ZAAR and Professor Rieble are in reality nothing more than a lobby and a think tank for employers in the garb of a university institute.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/emme-a24.shtml

[izquierdista]

26. Local cop to the rescue

I see our local cop apologist is providing a blistering defense of why chump change criminals (yes, €1.30 is just coins, no bills involved) must have the book thrown at them while fraudsters of the million Euro class must be treated with kid gloves. Even if it's a book from a century ago, dust it off and throw it at the vile lower class perp.

But it's nice for the rich to have these apologists to turn to. After you get done here, can you bring me a stack of c-notes and wipe my hiney?

[Hannah Bell]

29. but he's met that nice man, billy the kid gates.

with his more than 2.1 trust fund spawn. how many kids does old billy have now, i lost track at three.

there's too many people in the world, the peons must have none, but i notice the trust funders have plenty.

[paulsby]

32. ah yes

when all else fails, use personal attacks. here's a hint, there was no POLICE involvement whatsoever in this case.

i , god forbid, have the temerity to beleive that employers should have the authority to fire suspected thieves GIVEN sufficient evidence.

that's not "the book" thrown at them. nobody here is advocating she be thrown in the brig.

and it is also extremely poor form to reference somebody (e.g. me and make false claims) not in response ot my posts. iow, you are lying about me instead of responding directly. how cowardly.

but you can;'t even get the case facts right, since you claim the "book" was thrown at her. she was fired. she wasn't caned, and thrown in jail.

and like i said, *if* they fired her w.o sufficient evidence and/.or in retalation for her union activities, then i do hope she gets redress and her job back. as i already said.

yes, the evil rich. they suck so badly, don't they. stop the hating. spread some love. judge people as individuals. that's how MLK did it. content of character, not class membership. hth

[Hannah Bell]

35. yes, they suck the big one, glad you agree.

personal attack? racism?

it's not me who, like john kerry's family, addicted millions of chinese to drugs for profit, or stole india from the indians & worked them to death in their mills.

nor me, who like george bush's family, made money off slaves & slave labor through bank manipulations & political coupstering.

[angstlessk]

37. I am quite certain that some individual who belongs to the KKK or Aryan Nation can be just fine

folk, whom I could think was a swell fellow/gal, but as a group I ABSOLUTELY HATE THE KKK AND THE ARYAN NATION TOTALLY! The rich as a class are DESTROYING THE LIVES OF MANY..though many individuals are just fine folk...AS A CLASS THEY ARE DESTRUCTIVE OF THE ENTIRE WORLD!!! I hate them with the same enthusiasm with which I hate the KKK and the aryan nation.

[izquierdista]

38. I've read enough of your posts on here

And just like every other cowardly cop, you scream "personal attack" and call for backup when I point out a simple fact: you love to beat up on the little guy and suck the dick of the wealthy and powerful.

When I see an individual who has more than their fair share of money, I have to ask how they got it. Did it require a squad of thugs and goons murdering laborers who were trying to get a fair shake? Did it require lots of people dying because they were denied health care after they paid years and years of insurance premiums? Did it require the payoff of crooked cops to look the other way while some stash of money was absconded with? Or are they just naive children, inheriting the wealth of psychotically greedy parents? That tells a lot about the content of their character.

You, personally, have a long way to go to regain a normal sense of human compassion. That which is found in liberals who care about people other than themselves and is absent in conservatives who care only about themselves. To not see the injustice in this WSWS article, to not see injustice in how adolescents can be labeled "sex offenders" for normal human behavior, to insist that the "rule of law" can make no errors is to demonstrate that one has regressed to the reptilian survival mode from which most conservatives view the world. It must be an occupational disease with law enforcement types; they see so much of the bad that people are capable of, that soon they attribute that capability to everyone. Once they do, anyone is capable of unspeakable horror and justly deserves a savaging from a hungry crocodile.

[blindpig]

44. But we need to keep perspective.

The antisocial behavior rightly condemned is largely the result an economic system which rewards and encourages such behavior. Even the rich are played by this system, no excuse but worth keeping in mind.

[Jim Sagle]

45. This thread illustrates well the dynamic of modern police practice.

As Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley said in 1968:

The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder.

[Lorien]

47. He's an obidient little brownshirt for his Authoritarian masters

and would have been much happier working for the German government a number of decades ago.