So make it a popularity contest?
if you want to destroy any notion of private enterprise and property ownership. And go WELL BEYOND card check, and just say that all 1000+-employee corps are all of a sudden union shops. If that is all the case, then your suggestion is perfectly reasonable.
Nonsense. The owners of a corporation should decide who runs it. Employees who want a say can buy stock just like anyone else and then vote for directors who agree with their views on corporate governance.
I think the satire skills are somewhat lacking here . . .
Don’t quit your day job.
If you’re going to do a satire, at least make it more interesting than that.
The CEO works for the board. He doesn’t work for the employees. You would be placing the CEO in a no win situation. He would have to please the board and the employees, and would be an ineffectual bowl of jello by the end of three months.
A suggestion box? Why not... as long as the employees realized not every suggestion could be approved
A secret ballot to fire or not? Unworkable IMO
Save the utter idiocy of opinions like this for DU, not the “News/Activism” section of FR.
Corporations are in business to make money. Period. They are not in business to satisfy employees. I think smart companies would listen to their workers, but they are not obliged to.
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This premise, though often taught in colleges, and repeated ad nauseum in the press; is not one I have found to be true of corporate management.
To accuse management of it, without a shred of evidence, shows a lack of understanding of how businesses,employees, and economics, actually work.
My suggestion: go out and start your own company, hire a bunch of people, and work out your theories for yourself.
In 10 years, re-write your proposal, based on actual experience.
Did you lose your way to democraticunderground.com?
Stop it already.
This was supposed to be satire, the hint being “modest proposal”, the famous Jonathon Swift piece about eating children to end poverty.
(for those with limited literary knowledge )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
it’s just not very good satire - as it seems very few get it.
First, you have no understanding of capitalism, or for that matter basic business principles.
Second: A corporation has absolutely no duty to its employees other than to pay them promptly for their wages and to provide a safe workplace or if the job is inherently risky to provide employees with proper notification of risk.
Third: A corporation has no duty to the community other than to follow local customs and laws.
A corporation's sole duty is to its stockholders who have invested their hard earned money. It owes investors the maximum possible profit that can be earned while following the law. No bribery, no fraud, etc.
A corporation, or as that matter no successful business, is a democracy. You do what the boss wants you to do whether you agree with his policies or not. You might also try the idea that everyone else thinks the boss is smarter than you are, otherwise he would be working for you.
If you suspect that the boss is unethical, then you quit.
The problem is not that corporate managers make decisions without regard to the employees, but that corporate managers make decisions without regard to the owners—the shareholders—for whom they are in theory fiduciaries (or to use an old-fashioned word for the same thing, stewards).
We do not, by and large, have a syndicalist economy, but a capitalist economy. Certainly employee buyouts, employee compensation paid in part in common stock and the holding of common stock in union pension funds have introduced elements of syndicalism into our economy. Your suggestion, that management serve at the pleasure of, and work for the benefit of, the rank-and-file employees, is just a different means of abolishing capitalism, as it makes the effective owners of the corporation the employees, rather than the shareholders.
A mixed capitalist/syndicalist economy might actually be the optimal type of economy, in that pure syndicalism has problems with capital formation, while pure capitalism, once the ownership of capital has become as diffuse as it has so that major blocks of stock are voted by fund managers, rather than wealthy individuals with a personal interest in the corporation’s success, suffers from the problem of bad stewards—managers who act in their own self-interest, rather than the corporation’s interest—which might be constrained by an element of responsibility to the employees. But your proposal goes too far.
Who is John Galt?
Nope.
Corporations belong the shareholders, not the employees. The shareholders already have a vote.
If the employees have ‘no confidence’ they’re free to look for another job.
These are HORRENDOUS idiotic proposals.
These are EMPLOYEES not owners. If they want a say in a publicly traded company then they are free to invest their own money in shares.
This communist trasition manure has no place in the free market.