They say there’s honor among thieves, but I say: That depends on the thieves.
Your common street thief, yes – but not those princely CEOs of corporate larceny. The elites in the top suites are pickpockets, swindlers, thugs and scoundrels, routinely committing mass economic violence against America’s working families to further enrich and empower themselves.
But now comes a cabal of about two-dozen corporate chieftains pushing a vicious new campaign of physical violence against workers. The anti-labor bully, Walmart, is among the leaders, but so are such prestigious chains as Macy’s and Nordstrom, along with Lowe’s, Kohl’s, and Safeway. Their goal is to gut our nation’s workers compensation program, freeing corporate giants to injure or even kill employees in the workplace without having to pay for the lost wages, medical care, or burial of those harmed.
Workers comp insurance is a social contract between injured employees, who give up the right to sue their companies for negligence, and employers, who pay for insurance to cover a basic level of medical benefits and wages for those harmed. Administered by state governments, benefits vary, and they usually fall far short of meeting the full needs of the injured people, but the program has at least provided a measure of help to assuage the suffering of millions.
But even that’s too much for these avaricious, multibillion-dollar corporations. Why pay for insuring employees when it’s much cheaper just to buy state legislators who’re willing to privatize workers’ comp? This lets corporations write their own rules of compensation to slash benefits, cut safety costs – and earn thieving CEOs bigger bonuses.
Yes, this shifty move is a scurrilous crime, but it’s a crime that pays richly. And the money can fill the hole in their souls where their honor used to be.
“Walmart, Lowe’s, Safeway, and Nordstrom Are Bankrolling a Nationwide Campaign to Gut Workers’ Comp,” www.motherjones.com, March 26, 2015.
A Brief History of Workers’ Compensation,” www.ncbi.nih.gov, 1999.

Oil refinery workers on strike over explosive issue

It doesn’t take highly-advanced knowledge and skills to work at one of these quick-fix automobile maintenance chains that specialize in routine jobs like muffler replacement or oil changes. But handling maintenance at a huge petro-chemical complex is a whole other story – an oil refinery is not a Jiffy Lube.
But the big shots of Big Oil have been treating maintenance at their explosive refineries as a task to be done on the cheap. BP, ExxonMobil, Motiva, Tesoro, and other global oil profiteers have been cutting back on the experienced, technically-skilled people responsible for keeping the miles of pipes, high-pressure equipment, balky gauges, and flammable liquids functioning properly and – most important – harmlessly. The top bosses (safely ensconced in faraway corporate headquarters) have decreed that maintenance and safety be contracted out to low-cost firms using temporary, inexperienced, inadequately-trained workers.
The impact of trying to save money on safety has been… well, explosive. Two occupational safety experts, Celeste Monforton and Barbara Rahke, report that, “Once every eight days, a serious fire, explosion, or toxic release takes place at a US refinery.” Death happens when bosses play with fire – and that’s why the United Steelworkers union has been on strike at refineries across the country. “None of us wants to be the next person to lose his life for no good reason,” says a refinery worker on the picket line in Anacortes, Washington.
Of course, Big Oil’s bosses dismiss the danger. Motiva’s CEO, Dan Romasko, glibly said the strike is not about safety, but about increasing the number of union jobs.
Well, yeah – union maintenance workers know how to do the job right! I’ll bet if we moved Don’s office inside the refinery, safety would suddenly become priority #1.
“Safety and staffing two sides of same coin in refinery work,” Austin American Statesman, March 13, 2015.

Help oust the Koch’s junk science from our public science museums

We’ve all seen those touchie-feelie TV ads with baby deer, butterflies, and sylvan streams – claiming that Amalgamated Contamination Inc. is nature’s best friend. There’s a word for such hokum: Greenwashing.
Leave it to the Koch brothers, however, to invent a whole new category of greenwashing. Doling out millions of their oil-smeared greenbacks, David and Charles have been buying their way onto the boards and into the exhibits and studies of elite museums of science. The fossil-fuel billionaires are using the academic and cultural prestige of these establishments to wash their filthy reputations and to spew the self-serving balderdash that climate change is a natural phenomenon, not one caused by polluting profiteers like them.
Astonishingly, David Koch was able to purchase a seat on the decision-making boards of the American Museum of Natural History and of the Smithsonian’s natural history museum. The exalted Smithsonian has even allowed him to fund a Hall of Human Origins that promotes David’s junk science fantasies. I know museums are scrambling for money, but come on – an infamous science-denier directing a science museum?
Maybe not for long. A new kind of museum has been started to highlight economic and political forces that shape (or misshape) nature. Called The Natural History Museum, it’s outing the Kochs and other greenwashers who’re invading the public’s science spaces… and invading science itself. More than merely exposing the invaders, however, this upstart museum is recruiting prominent scientists, activating museum staffers, and rallying you and me into a spirited cultural campaign that literally can oust these hucksters, reject their tainted money, and throw junk science out of our centers of real science.
Connect with this new museum at www.TheNaturalHistoryMuseum.org.
“Science Museums Urged to Cut Ties With Kochs,” www.nytimes.com, March 24, 2015.