Workers Always Lose, Even in Rescue Operations

Odds are, had Chrysler been worker-run back in 1979, the company would be in a wholly different place today.

The trouble is that what is deceptively called “worker-ownership” here in America, with the exception of some very small companies and co-operatives, is in reality just a carefully circumscribed rip-off scheme, in which workers surrender their assets and swallow pay raises, and maybe get a token representative on the board, but end up being systematically excluded from any significant role in managing “their” company, which is actually run by a board composed of the agents of banks, institutional investors and other owners.

The only difference this time around is that the governments of the US and Canada will now have majority control of Chrysler’s board. Perhaps the board members appointed by those two public investors will act more in the interests of the workers at Chrysler, and in the long-term interest of both Chrysler and of the two countries, the US and Canada. But given that President Obama has put this nation’s economic management in the hands of the very people who helped bring the US economy to its knees, and that Canada is currently being run by a conservative prime minister, the odds of this happening seem pretty slight.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist (and is webmaster of a worker-owned and run blog called ThisCantBeHappening.net). His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net