by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

So, this is Time Magazines Cover Story this week(Note: this site requires a paid membership to access the complete article.) It is an expose of a well known but little discussed fact: Corporate America is abandoning all pretense of being in any kind of partnership with its non-executive employees. It seems that only 20% of America's corporate employees are now covered by any form of private pensions. And who are the people doing the "bottom-line two-step here? Why, they are the same people who support George Bush et al. These are the oligarchists could care less that your wife may end up collecting aluminum cans to pay for her groceries each week. These are the same people who push for the end of Social Security which would mean that American workers would end up with nothing to get them through their "golden" (hah!) years.

It is time to send these people messages: First, if you have a pension plan in place, it needs to become against the law to abandon it. Therefore, pension plans should be outside of Corporate Bankruptcy laws. If you bankrupt a company and the pension plan is not 100% funded, then all corporate executives and Board members become personally liable for funding. Further, that group also becomes eligible for a vacation at Hotel Greybar. Second, we need to enact a new surtax on corporations to fund an agency whose mandate would be to pick up the slack in private pension plans. You want to save money by screwing your retirees? Not any more...that's the message that should be sent.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005