A volunteer went to work today at Toledo Jeep, and placed information on tables referring workers to our website. Another worker told him that at the monthly union meeting a couple of weeks ago our Union Chairman stated that any employee passing information out about the employee ownership will be disciplined.Within the last 36 hours, we got a telephone call from another individual associated with the AAWOC. This individual presented the outline of the buyout plan to individuals in management. Their reaction was to ridicule the plan, and label it "communism." They did not explain how, when the plan is for workers to have direct private property stakes in the means of production, it could possibly be described as "communism"!
Frankly, the push for a government bailout is communist. When a company is considered "too big to fail," the plain truth is that, ultimately, that company is too big to exist in terms of the free market. The idea that a company can be "too big to fail" in effect argues that it has placed itself beyond the constraints of the free market and is now an integral part of the common good, and thus subject to direct control of the State for the benefit of everyone. This is called "communism." Management (or at least some of them) is ridiculing the free market and advocating communism by turning the language upside-down, just as George Orwell predicted in 1984.
As Karl Marx himself declared in The Communist Manifesto (1848), "The theory of the communists can be summed up in the single sentence: the abolition of private property." Evidently the union leaders don't share the late Walter Reuther's openmindedness, while management lacks his knowledge of communism and private property.
With these examples of union pressure and management ridicule before us, it casts grave doubts on the honesty of those campaigning to abolish the secret ballot when voting whether to unionize, and in some cases abolish elections altogether. If the behavior reported to us is any indication, the so-called "Employee Free Choice Act" would simply provide limitless opportunities for union thugs and shoulder strikers to bully and browbeat workers into surrendering their natural rights of liberty and property to the union, while management looks on and cheers.
Rather than threats or ridicule, the UAW and management might want to try delivering justice to the workers and the public at large by reforming themselves as an "Ownership Union." They could trade a percentage of fixed labor costs for unlimited flexible supplemental incomes based on tax-free corporate incomes that flow into the pockets of workers in the form of dividends, productivity bonuses, additional shares of stock and eventually diversified assets. After paying off the credit for purchasing all buyout and modernization shares in the company through a leveraged Employee Stock Ownership Plan ("ESOP"), a portion of future company profits would be used to acquire a diversified tax-exempt portfolio of outside securities for enhancing the retirement security of ESOP participants.
Own or be owned. You have nothing to lose but your chains.