Economic uncertainty requires business to ally with labor

Bill Knight column for Thurs., Fri., or Sat., April 12, 13 or 14, 2018

Stable economies in decent societies rest on a tripod of labor, business and government, with each helping to solidify the standing strength of the whole. It’s doomed if any one leg is damaged or destroyed, whether everyday workers who produce value, business with its commercial or entrepreneurial powers, or government and its moderating and empowering tools.

Other comparisons can also illustrate the concept.

Imagine a band where the horn section insists on dominating the sound, regardless of the composer’s or conductor’s instructions and despite the need for strings or vocals or percussion. Or, consider a baseball team where a selfish showboat won’t throw from the outfield to a cut-off man, doesn’t like completing double plays, or refuses to lay down a sacrifice bunt.

The whole effort suffers.

Today, the federal government as embodied in the Trump administration has undertaken a campaign so harmful to regular working Americans that it not only betrays Trump’s campaign and Inauguration promises (supporting the country’s “forgotten men and women”), but also threatens businesses and therefore the economy, the society and the future. (“But wait! There’s more!! He’s messing with business, too!!!”)

Trump’s treacheries against ordinary workers are familiar but worth recalling: Jobs moving overseas, resulting from taxing profits from U.S. subsidiaries operating abroad at half the rate for domestic profits; overtime pay virtually abolished (in the 1970s more than 60 percent of the nation’s salaried labor force earned it but it’s now received by about 7 percent); employees again permitted to be misclassified as “independent contractors” who receive no benefits, no jobless insurance and must individually pay self-employment taxes; his administration bragging of a 4.1 percent jobless rate for months, as if 6.6 million unemployed people is acceptable; Trump unilaterally imposing a fossil-fuel-friendly 30-percent import tax on solar panels that threatens tens of thousands of solar-industry jobs; signing “tax reform” that permanently enriches the wealthy and corporations for years but tosses bread crumbs to everyone else – for just eight years; killing an executive order to help enforce regulations by checking on federal contract bidders’ compliance; overturning a prohibition on mandated arbitration for disputes, largely removing victims’ option of class-action lawsuits; essentially discarding students swindled by for-profit “schools”; and emasculating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to instead focus on “burdensome regulations.”

Again, however, business isn’t immune from the immature and impulsive acts emanating from the Oval Office – acts that lead to the uncertainty that causes caution, fear or retreat by companies large and small: pending tariffs provoke trading partners from Europe and China to respond, menacing manufacturers, consumers and farmers; talks to re-negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement also threaten supply chains needed by manufacturers, plus consumers and farmers; the agriculture sector is hurt by harsh immigration policies that the Farm Bureau notes jeopardizes harvests, where more than half of farm laborers are undocumented; likewise, the technology sector is hurt by Trump’s travel ban focusing mostly on Muslim-majority nations; with a surly, schoolboy zeal, the President holds grudges and bullies and smears businesspeople or companies with whom he disagrees, like having his Justice Department block a merger of AT&T and Time Warner (owner of CNN, which he ceaselessly criticizes), like calling for lower prices for prescription drugs MINUTES AFTER Merck pharmaceutical exec Kenneth Frazier resigned in protest from Trump’s manufacturing council, like repeatedly disparaging Amazon (whose owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns the Washington Post).

Trump rejects genuine teamwork and the idea that we’re all in this together, instead demanding mindless praise from silent or silly bootlickers.

So when Trump ensures that the nation can’t count on much beyond stupid tweets, knee-jerk reactions and a slavish devotion to “Fox & Friends,” business as well as labor and civil servants must find common ground. The common good does exist, and it’s time for business to join the Resistance for the good of the country.