{"id":130075,"date":"2014-07-14T14:50:59","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T14:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=130075"},"modified":"2014-07-14T18:58:26","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T18:58:26","slug":"corporate-labor-reform-proposals-maximize-workplace-bullying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/business-news\/corporate-labor-reform-proposals-maximize-workplace-bullying\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate \u201cLabor Reform\u201d: Proposals to Maximize Workplace Bullying"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prof. James Petras<\/em><\/p>\n

Leading management consultants, top government officials and prominent financial journalists are proposing, what they dub, \u201clabor reforms\u201d as the solution for double-digit unemployment and underemployment, economic stagnation and the decline of capital investments.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cLabor Reform\u201d as the Concentration of Power and Profits<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First of all, the term \u201clabor reform<\/em>\u201d is just a euphemism for labor regression, the\u00a0reversal\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0of laws and practices that workers and employees secured through decades of struggle against employers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The idea that \u201clabor reforms<\/em>\u201d would create jobs for the unemployed has been tried and disproven over the past decade.\u00a0\u00a0 Throughout Europe, in particular Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland and France, laws facilitating firings, pay differentials between short-term and long-term contract workers and speed-ups have not reduced unemployment, which still remains at depression levels.<\/p>\n

\"workplace-bully\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What neo-liberal economists and journalists call \u201clabor market flexibility<\/em>\u201d is really all about increasing the power of the bosses to impose reductions in wages, dominate and dictate work rules, intensify management bullying in the workplace and fire workers without just cause or redress. Likewise \u201cwage flexibility<\/em>\u201d means giving management the exclusive power to unilaterally lower wages, to alter work contracts, to stratify payments between workers , to downgrade job categories in order to lower wages and to increase output, and to pit unemployed workers against employed workers, temporary workers against long-term workers.<\/p>\n

The Consequences of \u201cLabor Reform<\/em>\u201d: Rising Inequalities<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cLabor reforms<\/em>\u201d are not policies designed to end unemployment, encourage economic recovery and increase capital expenditure. They are not an economic strategy. The principle goal is to concentrate power in the hands of the bosses in order to lower labor costs, increase profits and double-up production from a reduced workforce.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The growing disparity of power between capital and labor resulting from \u201clabor reforms<\/em>\u201d is the key factor producing inequality. Neo-liberals attribute growing inequality to technological changes, ignoring the fact that it is the growing power of capital that determines how productivity gains, from the introduction of technological innovations, are distributed between capital and labor.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prof. James Petras Leading management consultants, top government officials and prominent financial journalists are proposing, what they dub, \u201clabor reforms\u201d as the solution for double-digit unemployment and underemployment, economic stagnation and the decline of capital investments. \u201cLabor Reform\u201d as the Concentration of Power and Profits \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First of all, the term \u201clabor reform\u201d is just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,5,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-130075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-business-news","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}