Thanks for the feedback on the previous post. My guess is that once the situation gets to the point that Citigroup is at, planning to lay off 53,000 workers, then it's too late for any kind of union — labor, shareholder or otherwise — to make much difference.
The larger difficulty is probably that I'm looking for a shortcut to the kind of democratic management one might get from employee-ownership and that shortcut may not actually exist. Still, building alliances between shareholding employees and — in Erl's phrase — "pension groups, sympathetic union organizers and the Generally Chill" seems like it could be a positive step in the right direction.
Thanks also to Marc M. for pointing out the precedent of sokaiya — a form of shareholder extortion practiced by the Yakuza. That's a bit beyond the kind of legal pressure I'm thinking of, but it is an interesting indication of the sort of effect a determined minority of shareholders can have.
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If I were in the U.S. Senate, I could not approve a $25 billion aid package for the Big 3 automakers.
I might consider a $24 billion package, or even a $27 billion package, but trying to split $25 billion three ways is just asking for trouble.
Seriously, I wouldn't trust the heads of GM, Ford and Chrysler with a blank check — I wouldn't trust those guys if they asked to borrow my leaf-blower — but if this bailout/aid package is done properly, it wouldn't be a blank check. It would be more along the lines of "Here is the money and here is how you will spend it."
I agree with both of the points Josh Marshall makes here:
people. Even in ordinary times having that all gone down the tubes
would mean a massive shock to the economy. If we can avoid having that
happen now, why would we possibly let them happen in the face of what
already promises to be a massive recession?
Second, on the question of the environment. There is no question
that the internal combustion engine is at the heart of the climate
crisis. But getting rid of Detroit won't get rid of cars. More to the
point of creativity — one of the things about crisis is that it opens
opportunities would never exist in normal times. People have been
looking for ways to get Detroit to get serious about developing
cleaner, more fuel efficient cars for years. At this point, we're
beyond that. We need to get serious about cars that don't use gas at
all. If the whole domestic auto industry is all but asking to be taken
into federal receivership, that tells me that the people running the
federal government now have quite a lot of leverage.
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On the subject of layoffs as a failure of management: It's possible to imagine a scenario in which mass layoffs are not the result of an equivalently massive failure on behalf of top management. But such scenarios are rare in the real world.
Likewise, it's possible to imagine a scenario in which mass layoffs are an absolute last resort and thus not a grievous sin being committed by top management. But such scenarios are also rare in the real world.
Yes, "sin."
You don't get to traumatize and place at risk 53,000 people and their families and then pretend it was just some kind of fluke natural occurence, like a hurricane or earthquake, and that you have no moral or ethical responsibility for the consequences of your decision. (See also one of my favorite economists, the late John Paul II, on "the scourge of unemployment," which he called "the opposite of a just and right situation.")
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