Possible Presidential candidate for 2020, Sen. Elizabeth Warren [D-MA], has introduced a bill to put unions on corporate boards of directors.
From Haight-Ashbury hippies to AFL-CIO union bosses, Senator Elizabeth Warren [D-MA] is adored by the American Left.
The Left’s love for Warren comes from her devotion to soft-core Marxism combined with her hard-core attack-dog style as a U.S. Senator and, as well, her more recent almost-blinding hatred of President Trump.
Playing to her core constituencies and viewed as a likely candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020, Senator Warren has just introduced a bill that, if it were ever to pass, will “destroy capitalism,” according to Jeffrey Miron, Harvard director of undergraduate studies.
One of the more game-changing measures contained within Warren’s bill is to require companies to allow their workers to elect 40 percent of the membership of their board of directors.
Here’s how Elizabeth Warren described her bill in the Wall Street Journal:
….The Accountable Capitalism Act restores the idea that giant American corporations should look out for American interests. Corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue would be required to get a federal corporate charter. The new charter requires corporate directors to consider the interests of all major corporate stakeholders—not only shareholders—in company decisions. Shareholders could sue if they believed directors weren’t fulfilling those obligations.
My bill also would give workers a stronger voice in corporate decision-making at large companies. Employees would elect at least 40% of directors. At least 75% of directors and shareholders would need to approve before a corporation could make any political expenditures. To address self-serving financial incentives in corporate management, directors and officers would not be allowed to sell company shares within five years of receiving them—or within three years of a company stock buyback. [Emphasis added.]
Specifically, within the text of Warren’s bill, it states:
Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission, in consultation with the National Labor Relations Board, shall issue rules to ensure that director elections at United States corporations are fair and democratic.
[snip]
UNITED STATES CORPORATION ELECTIONS.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Not less than 2⁄5 of the directors of a United States corporation shall be elected by the employees of the United States corporation using an election process that complies with the requirements of the rules issued under subsection (a)…
While the bill does not state “unions” or “labor organizations” specifically, given that the bill does refer to the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor to coordinate these efforts, it seems abundantly clear that her intentions are to have unions, or their subordinate worker organizations, to serve in this capacity.
Moreover, the bill does not state that the 40 percent of seats should go to persons employed by the corporation—although the Left may portray it as that—only that the employees get to vote, through an NLRB election, as to who (or what entity) will fill those seats.
If the corporation does not comply with Act, Warren’s bill calls for fines of “not less than $50,000 and not more than $100,000 for each day that such representation is not in compliance…” [Emphasis added.]
If Warren’s proposal seems like a foreign concept here in the U.S., that’s because it is also foreign in the literal sense.
In many ways, Warren’s model is similar to the German model of “co-determination.”
With unions in the United States struggling to find relevancy in the 21st Century, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka tweeted his enthusiastic support for Warren’s bill.
.@SenWarren is right! It’s time to rewrite the rules so our economy
works for working people, not just those at the top. https://t.co/HYYvuwmXFw— Richard L. Trumka (@RichardTrumka) August 15, 2018
The Accountable Capitalism Act on Scribd
Hopefully, most people will see the bill for what it is, a blanket attempt to supplant the economic system within the United States and replace it with a quasi-European socialism model.
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