Labor Unions in the United States

Labor unions are major participants in the world of work in the United States and abroad. Although union membership in the United States has steadily declined since the 1950s, unions continue to provide a critical countervailing force to the largely unchecked power of employers, whose strength has increased. Hence, to be successful in meeting their goals, unions must learn to deal creatively with the realities of automation, globalization, privatization, de-unionization, and the trend toward contingent work arrangements. Nonetheless, despite the disadvantages and struggles they face, labor unions in 2020 represented almost 16 million wage and salary workers, who have families who vote; therefore, they remain a core constituency for political and corporate America and a significant part of the economic landscape in this country and abroad. Unions remain a core constituency and continue to be a significant part of the economic landscape in this country and beyond.

The Pandemic and Shareholder Value

Shareholder value has driven corporate governance in North America for over a century. In the wake of significant financial crises and growing inequalities, corporate America decided in 2019 to embrace a more egalitarian model, in which all stakeholders matter equally. The brutal pandemic that wreaked havoc in the first half of 2020 exposed a startling disconnect between the real economy and the stock market. This disconnect is due to a gap between explicit and implicit corporate governance. While officially corporate America wants to convert to a new doctrine, the pandemic has shown that shareholder capitalism has remained the default model. Good intentions and official declarations are not enough in a system that has been specifically designed to serve the shareholders. If stakeholder capitalism is to succeed, it needs a clear normative content and perhaps a more radical reform of institutions and regulation.

Requiem for the American CBD: The Impact of COVID-19 and a Dispersed Workforce

Digital communication technologies have rendered the American Central Business District (CBD) obsolete, and one can expect the corporate headquarters function to be removed in varying degrees from the CBD as this decade further unfolds.  The COVID-19 pandemic forced corporate America to widely embrace a dispersed workforce model. We argue that corporations will continue to embrace this model for profit driven reasons, while employees will also demand its continuance for another set of reasons: some monetarily based with others rooted in flexibility and the ability to reside anywhere.  In the meantime, the public will perceive such moves as environmentally friendly and enhancing worker safety.  The traditional CBDs and their adjoining sports/entertainment districts will likely face significant near-term fiscal challenges, which for some cities will be magnified by poor public policy decisions and increasing crime. 

Corporate Ethical Training: An Answer to White-Collar Crimes

The modern business corporation is a culturally significant component of American Society. It is facing a cultural invasion of the highest order. The categorical imperative, an unconditional principle that rational individuals must follow despite natural desires or inclinations to do otherwise, is today being called into question. This is most likely the result of grounding moral values upon information that is transient and unstable rather than upon established data. The social contract, which governs the formation and maintenance of individual morals, is a requirement in organizations that demands collective agency – employees acting together to set forth moral rules of behavior and eschew pernicious leanings and tendencies. From that perspective, ethical training becomes a key leveraging point in the disconnect between cultural expectations and individual behaviors in corporate America.

Assesing the Roles of Race and Profit in the Mass Incarceration of Black People in America

Shortly after the alleged discovery of America and its vast expanse of land waiting to be cultivated with cash crops using cheap human labor, millions of Africans fell victims and were kidnapped to work as slaves in American plantations for about four centuries. Even though it has been over 150 years since the official abolition of slavery in America, the effects of the 400 years of enslavement continue to reverberate: irrespective of the blackletter rights protecting Black people from injustices, the deep racist structures typically decrease the potency of these rights, and thus perpetuate oppression. This article assesses the roles being played by race and profit in the administration of criminal justice: it deems the systemic oppression of Black people as a humanitarian crisis and seeks to ascertain this by interpreting the attitudes of the various key players in the American Criminal Justice System, the majoritarian population, mainstream media, and Corporate America: it challenges some entrenched racist practices suspected to be the umbilical cord that links Black people in America with mass incarceration.

USA Inequities from K-12 Education through Corporate America

There is a relationship between marginalized Black K-12 children and Black women in Corporate America. This practice results in Black K-12 children and Black women being undervalued on all levels. Highlighting personal experiences supports current assumptions around inequities, marginalization, and the Black lives Matter movement. At times, the more money you make, the more tolerant you are of the abuse. You become addicted to a lifestyle. I believed my corporate career was the best I would receive from a professional white-collar work environment. Did the inequities experienced in the U.S. K-12 educational system prepare me to accept this belief in Corporate America? As a child, you learn about the American dream and capitalism. White Corporate America leaders received the same education with a higher probability of a more valuable educational experience. Would the Corporate America experience improve if White children learned about diversity, equity, and inclusion in K-12 to help them see differences as being valuable? Does their comfort level have a direct impact on Black people’s assignments, exposure, and careers? My authentic story is shared for others with similar experiences to help them realize they are not alone. We must push past our fears and tell our stories. We should never be ashamed! I will continue to focus on the freedom that blossomed from the time I put pen to paper.

The Squandered Brilliance of Our Disposable Youth

This chapter addresses the education inequities in the United States, and distinguishes between “public schools” and “charter schools.” Though the chapter recognizes that this is itself controversial, and charter schools have taken to referring themselves as public schools, for the sake of clarity it is important to be able to distinguish between the two. While the charter schools' efforts have been primarily directed at Black and Brown communities thus far, the chapter unveils the school privatizers' ultimate targets, which are set much more broadly than that. It examines the impact of school privatization on public school systems and the harms caused by school privatization in communities of color. The chapter then takes a look at Corporate America and Wall Street, and analyses how they can always profit from new markets and expandable markets. Ultimately, it reveals how the ultra-wealthy maintain education inequities to ensure that there will be millions of poorly educated, low-skill individuals who are essentially forced to accept the low wages to survive.

The Racism Profiteers

This chapter begins by recounting the experiences of Anna Jones, Carlil Pittman, and Mónica Acosta who endured a persistent emotional and psychological torture that comes from the knowledge that their lives, or the lives of their children, are not valued as much as others. It analyses how the systemic racial injustice affects communities of color across the United States, and persuades more people to listen to what people of color are saying about the challenges they face and how they should be addressed. The chapter also discusses that the residents of the communities of color share a set of common experiences, some of which are similar to the predominantly white communities, and some of which are remarkably different. The chapter then describes how, and why, ultra-wealthy leaders from Corporate America and Wall Street are the driving force behind many of the public policies that uphold systemic racism and cause severe harm to communities of color across the country. It unveils how the nation's mass criminalization and incarceration system can be traced back to the leaders of many of the largest and best-known corporations in the United States, Wall Street banks, private prison companies, and the Kochs' network of ultra-wealthy allies. Ultimately, the chapter explores how many of the same individuals and organizations have played a significant role in the creation of the extreme anti-immigrant policies that have plagued millions of migrants for decades.

From Jim Crow to Juan Crow

This chapter details how the expanded criminalization trap terrorized immigrant communities in the United States, with the threat of not only criminal justice consequences but immigration consequences as well. It investigates a small group of Corporate America and Wall Street executives who have been instrumental in creating and preserving the immigration policies that have forced millions of people to live “in the shadows” as far less than equal members of the society. While many immigration issues contribute to racial injustice, the chapter focuses on whether the people, as a country, are going to continue allowing undocumented residents of the United States to be ruthlessly exploited and treated as a virtually permanent underclass. To address that issue, and demonstrate how the ultra-wealthy profit off immigrants' pain, the chapter seeks to understand how the immigration policies work in practice. Ultimately, it looks at the US policy makers' lack of genuine interest in discouraging undocumented migration into the United States and how this is intimately related to the fact that most US corporations are more than happy to benefit from an expanded and more easily exploitable labor market.