Re: [Futurework] ADDENDUM: Local living economies

Sun, 15 Jun 2003 14:54:37 -0700

The Italians do it better in their beautiful little company towns like Siena.   Can you imagine abandoning Siena?    I watched the movie the Pianist last night and thought about how when first pushed into the ghetto the Jews were still acting Polish or European, choosing to ignore their own dying in the streets in favor of keeping up their class only to be herded into the cattle cars with less awareness than the cow that bucks its way all the way down the chute to the slaughterhouse.   They failed to make the soldiers recognize their humanity and pay for it by dying so easily.    But it is an even harder lesson when the others claim a morality and righteousness in their attrocities.   In the end the Jews learned the lesson that to kill one Jew is to hurt all Jews and that is why they are so uncomfortable now for the rest of the world. 
 
The Americans have been trying to make American Indians be like those old European passive Jews for 200 years and government policy has driven a wedge between the "real" government approved Indians and those who carry it within their veins and habits.   But that will change as it did with the Jews.  
 
The interesting dichotomy is:   There is loyalty amongst the Republicans to their class and they treat their servants as trash because the servants no longer are loyal to theirs or to their protectors, the unions.   In this battle economists are the quislings who preach the efficiency of death to communities and class locked genius concert pianists spending their lives carrying bricks for the walls of the rich.   It stinks.  
 
Given the the greatness of European Art, that carried Shakespeare out of the hovel of Henry's London with the rotting flesh on the walls and the human shit in the streets, you would think they would have learned what is eternal and of value.      Shakespeare kept the true horror of the street out of his Art but Blake used the medicine of the Zuni and proved that Art was even strong enough to report the contemporary attrocity and still survive.  Given that greatness and the sacrifice of Liszt, George Sand and Chopin in the face of such blight, it is a wonder that they would not appreciate it more.  
 
How much the Jewish Pianist Szpilman truly was Chopin and thus the best of the Polish heart in his actions and the artist student Adolf Hitler the betrayer of the implications and traditions of Western Art in his economics and politics.    Perhaps that is changing.  We have made the choice to accept Hitler's view of the materiality of humanity instead of Szpilman and Chopin.    Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of Western culture?  I suspect so.    We are the watchers?     Must we keep our hands out of it and let it play out or should we do as I am doing here, raise the alarm and try to still the tide.   I wonder.
 
Ray Evans Harrell
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 12:40 PM
Subject: RE: [Futurework] ADDENDUM: Local living economies

Here are beginning and concluding excerpts from commentary by Assoc Editor Susan Nielson of the Oregonian today on the subject of diverse economies, a Prime Topic in Oregon with 8% unemployment (though I�ve read that some temp hiring is up).  Nieslen�s entire piece is attached, 3.5 pages (37 KB) and I urge those who have participated in this thread to read it for the two sides she presented of this coin.

- KWC

 

When the company leaves the company town

By Susan Nielsen, Associate Editor, in the Sunday Oregonian, June 15, 2003

Loyalty is not an American trait, not like independence or drive.  But it's still a shock when a major U.S. corporation acts disloyal by threatening to leave town.

Today it's the Boeing Co., declaring its disloyalty to the Puget Sound region after 86 years of building airplanes in Washington state.  Yesterday it was the trust that controls Hershey Foods Corp., trying to sell the candy company out from under the Pennsylvania town that made Hershey great.  Tomorrow, it could happen in Oregon with Nike, Hewlett-Packard or Intel.

The story goes beyond airplanes and chocolate to any product that can be assembled, processed, designed or serviced more cheaply elsewhere than in its hometown. The more global the commodity, it seems, the less loyal the company to any "home."

American workers need a strategy to deal with this threat of disloyalty.  So do states, which spend millions luring whole industries, only to become too dependent on a handful of corporations.  The problem won't solve itself. As goods and ideas flow more easily between states and countries, so will jobs. 

Blue-collar and white-collar jobs.  Maybe your job.  Or at least, the job you thought belonged to you, in the company you thought you built.  "The whole notion of job security is fundamentally changing," says Bob Bussel, associate professor of history and director of the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon. "The idea of a lifetime job and a loyal company is an older notion."

�.Swallowed by a giant.  Third, communities should diversify, diversify, diversify.  Gresham hoped Fujitsu Microelectronics would stay a major employer forever, but the memory chip plant closed in 2001 after only 13 years.  Portland-based Willamette Industries was an Oregon mainstay since around 1906, but got swallowed by global timber giant Weyerhaeuser early last year.  Counting on a business not to move or sell out is as risky as owning all stock in a single company.

Finally, states should anticipate and prevent destabilizing moves, rather than react in a panic.  Washington state, for example, let the traffic in the Puget Sound area worsen for years, ignoring Boeing's complaints about the difficulty of moving goods and people.  Leaders also dismissed Boeing's plea to spread the cost of unemployment insurance more fairly.  Now, Boeing's threatening to pack the U-Haul. State leaders are standing by the curb and promising to do anything, anything, for Boeing to please stay.  That sets a bad precedent for other businesses. Cortright called it "cash prizes for bad corporate citizenship."  "The more you threaten and the more you bluster," he said, "the more money you get from the state. It's kind of a sad commentary."

Build loyalty from ground up.  Americans think these big U.S. companies belong to them. People in Washington state claim Boeing as "theirs," though Boeing has three major divisions in the United States and operations worldwide.  People in Oregon call Nike their own.  They also claim Hewlett-Packard in Corvallis and Intel in Hillsboro, though both are headquartered elsewhere.

We're all wrong.  These companies belong to themselves.  With the act of incorporation, they become legal bodies with needs as distinct and powerful as human bodies, and survival instincts just as keen.  If they don't adapt, they'll die, said Raymond Waldmann, who retired in 2000 as Boeing's vice president for international relations.  "I think corporations do have to take into consideration the community and people who hold jobs," Waldmann said.  "On the other side of the coin, companies have to stay in business.  There's a balance."

That balancing act happens with every American company trying to be a good employer but getting pushed to compete and cut costs.  The pressure to slash wages and benefits is enormous when people overseas are grateful to work for peanuts.  It's easy for corporate managers to perceive American workers as greedy and unreasonable by comparison, simply for expecting decent jobs.

As corporations flex their global muscles, employees lose power.  The balance between community and corporation gets out of whack.  Blue-collar workers have known this for decades, as their jobs disappeared overseas while corporate profits soared.  Today, white-collar jobs are also shifting overseas.  Computer programmers, database managers and call-center operators now hear that giant sucking sound, too.

This job shift adds to what economists call a jobless recovery.  Workers have a simpler term.  Betrayal.

Demanding loyalty from big U.S. companies on moral grounds is a lost cause.  Communities should build loyalty from the ground up, and spread their investments as broadly as the best mutual fund.  Citizens can help by showing the kind of loyalty to their hometowns that they'd like corporations to show. 

The small decisions about buying locally and staying involved add up.  The goal, of course, is not to control the behavior of airplane makers and chocolate companies.  The goal is to imagine the United States with Wal-Mart as the only place left to shop or work, then pledge allegiance to a more promising future.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/susan_nielsen/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1055505463260060.xml

 

 

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