Our Perspective
CEOs Sing a
New Tune, But
Action Must Follow
By Stuart Appelbaum, President
Retail, Wholesale and Department
Store Union, UFCW
Twitter: @sappelbaum
Business Roundtable — a lobbying organization
Caribbean L 56 ife, Aug. 30, 2019
made up of almost 200 chief executives from
Apple, Walmart, JP Morgan Chase, and many
more of the world’s largest companies — released a
statement in August that proports to change the role of corporations in our
society. The statement declares that American corporations should promote
“an economy that serves all Americans.”
On the surface, it’s a welcome about-face from the “free-market”
corporate identity established in the late 1960s where profit and “shareholder
primacy” were the overpowering motivations for corporate America, often at
the expense of workers, communities, and the environment.
The results have had a staggering effect; Over the past five decades, the
top 1 percent of American earners have nearly doubled their share of national
income. The real value of American wages has flatlined, failing to keep up
with increased productivity. And pay for top CEOs is now hundreds of times
that of the pay of their employees.
So, it’s good to see some of the world’s richest CEOs say they are now
dedicated to compensating employees fairly and providing them with
important benefits while supporting communities and embracing
environmentally friendly practices. It’s refreshing to see corporate America
declare its dedication to diversity and inclusion and treating workers with
dignity and respect. This is language that American workers, and the labor
movement, agree with.
We all know, however, that talk is different than action. What the
Business Roundtable didn’t say was specifically how corporate America is
going to change. Income inequality was not addressed in the statement;
neither was obscene CEO pay, nor changes in the way companies and
management approach labor relations and politics.
Since the late 1960s, when corporate America embraced a draconian freemarket,
profit-first ethos, union membership has fallen at a steady rate. So too
has worker pay and benefits. This is no accident. Corporations have consistently
used all of the resources at their disposal to fight workers’ wishes to organize,
and to politically hurt unions. With few exceptions, corporations have done
everything they can over the past 50 years to ensure that workers lose their
union voice — the very “dignity and respect” they now claim to support.
When companies agree not to fight their workers by bringing in
expensive union-busting “consultants” and don’t intimidate or threaten their
employees, workers choose the dignity and respect afforded by union
membership.
The statement by the Business Roundtable is a step in the right direction;
but so far, it counts only as good PR. American corporations need to lead the
way by ending their half-century war against unions and their own workers.
The signatories of the Business Roundtable statement can show it’s not just
talk by agreeing to workplace neutrality and allowing their employees to join
unions without interference or intimidation. It would be a
striking change, especially considering that companies
like Amazon and Walmart, both of whom signed the
statement, have historically been virulently antiunion.
That’s how true change will be achieved,
and how America’s corporations can fulfill their
new stated purpose.
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