Corporate Democracy
By Michael Boyajian
The battle against corporate tyranny must go beyond shareholder rights to providing voting rights to employees. Corporations are creatures of the laws of the states and federal government and have been given certain rights that go beyond those afforded to individuals and in some cases the very governments that created them.
Therefore, workers must be given a vote as to at the very least who the officers of the corporation are to be for a set term. Such a system existed during the American Revolution when American militias voted on who their officers were to be. Good officers were retained and poor ones were let go. In the end the Americans defeated the British whose entire military system was based on royal connections.
If a corporation performs well then its officers are retained, if it does poorly then the first to go are the officers not the workers. Just think how quickly General Motors would have been turned around if this system were in place prior to its financial meltdown. There would probably have been no need for a government bailout with disaster being avoided by simply showing poorly performing officers the door.
Corporations have become such a part of our daily life that they should be enabled with democratic features similar to those found in the society that spawned them. In fact, democracy should be extended not just to American corporations but to foreign corporations doing business here with such power of course limited to their U.S. operations. You want to do business in the world’s greatest democracy than you put democratic features in place in your corporation. This would prevent corporate flight and have a major impact on the companies of totalitarian states like China.
Corporate tyranny has been allowed to fester for far too long. It is time we as a nation extended the rights of our democracy to these creatures of the state so as to protect the rights of workers and the ability of the corporation to run successfully.
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