One last fact in this very specific instance which proves that workers are losing any semblance of democracy in the workplace is that people who work the day shift work what is called a 9/80 schedule. Under the 9/80 schedule, a day worker works four nine hour days and one eight hour day in one week and the next week works four nine hour days and has Friday off. Each and every one of those days is paid at straight time. There's no overtime paid for the daily hour worked after the first eight hours. As the pay is distributed every two weeks, this adds up to eighty hours or forty hours a week.
The obvious question, of course, is how does the corporation manage to circumvent the state law which requires employers to pay overtime to workers who work over eight hours a day so that day workers can work the 9/80 schedule?
Ultimately
The answer to the above question is pretty easy. Corporations have gotten to a place where they no longer worry about their workers, the communities in which they locate or even the nation which allows them to exist. It is an understatement that corporations have a "hand" in governing the United States. They are, after all, "persons", are they not?
That answer is also easy. No, corporations are no more persons than are the rocks one digs up when planting a garden or the tires on one's car or the chairs one sits in or the shoes one wears. Corporations are entities created by human beings. Human beings should and do have the right to shut down corporations when they harm communities and people who live in those communities.
Open Up the Floodgates
There is a case before The Supreme Court which should be decided very soon. The case is Citizens United (a corporation) v The Federal Elections Commission.
Citizens United decided to screen a documentary injurious to Hillary Clinton during the last sixty days of the 2008 presidential campaign. Citizens United claims that, by ruling against their showing this so called documentary, the lower courts infringed upon its first amendment rights.
It cost Barack Obama $700 million to become president of The United States in 2008. If The Supreme Court decides in favor of Citizens United, that $700 million will look like pocket change.
Not only that, but those who want to see the Democratic and Republican parties disappear may get their way, albeit not how they envisioned that happening. It's possible that, if Citizens United wins this court case, the names of the political parties, like the names of our great sports stadiums, will be changed. There will be the Monsanto Party or the Hewlett Packard Party or The Dow Chemical Party. The candidates could possibly be chosen from a group of CEOs who already rake in more money in a year that most Americans will earn in a life time.
If one was to do a root cause failure analysis on why the American political system is broken, one would find a tiny seed which was planted in 1886 and has grown to break that system. That seed has spawned corporate personhood.
Ultimately, the answer is for us, the real human citizens of the US, to not fear the corporations, but to remind them that they should fear us. Without us, they couldn't exist.
How do we do this?
If we're workers, we organize. If we're consumers, we buy and/or bank locally whenever possible. If we keep our money away from the large multinational corporations, we will be able to keep it in our local communities. That could possibly initiate a need for workers and, also, possibly help local economies. If local economies begin to thrive again, it's possible that the national economy will look better from what has been referred to as Main Street.
Courage does not manifest itself in flags, bombs dropped from miles above a target or tea bags. Courage manifests itself in actions, actions that may not be comfortable at first or may never be comfortable. But those actions can make this a better world for our children and our childrens' children, the real humans who will be inhabiting this world in the future.
To friendship,
