Business Week Editorial (fwd)

["Bryan A. Alexander" <bnalexan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Notice how the working class doesn't actually *do* anything in this vision:



Bryan Alexander                                 Department of English
email: bnalexan@xxxxxxxxx                       University of Michigan
phone: (313) 764-0418                           Ann Arbor, MI  USA    48103
fax: (313) 763-3128                             http://www.umich.edu/~bnalexan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 14:46:03 -0500
From: Managarm@xxxxxxx
To: bnalexan@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Business Week Editorial (fwd)

Business Week: February 19, 1996
Department: Editorials
THE BACKLASH BUILDING AGAINST BUSINESS

Is Corporate America in denial? When such nationalist conservatives as
Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan and such militant labor leaders as new
AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney agree that corporations are the root cause
of stagnant wages and downward mobility, something very serious is afoot in
the land. So far, most Americans have tended to blame Big Government for
their economic woes. But now their anger may be shifting in some measure
toward Big Business. The role of the corporation in society is being
challenged. Only the foolish would ignore the signs.
   Who benefits from the new high-tech, global economy? That is the question
both right and left are asking. Their answer is virtually identical: Despite
big gains in productivity and profits, most employees are not sharing in the
rewards, while shareholders and option-laden corporate officials most
definitely are. The rising economic tide that once lifted everyone in America
is now playing favorites, and people don't like the new rules. Cutting taxes
can help, but it's not a real solution to families facing declining real
income.
   Buchanan's solution would be to go protectionist and halt immigration,
stopping companies from freely trading and blocking the inflow of goods and
people. That would curb competition and push up wages. Sweeney would up the
minimum wage and also curb immigration and free trade. Not a pretty picture,
if you're an executive intent on building a vibrant global enterprise.
   New conservative and liberal philosophies also challenge the corporation's
role in America. Reviving civil society is the motivating idea driving
conservatives these days. Rebuilding the institutions of civil
society--voluntary associations, churches, schools, and, of course,
families--to replace inept government bureaucracies is their guiding light.
But there is no way for that to happen without family income rising or
parents getting more time off from work to raise their children and attend
Boy Scout or PTA meetings. There is no way for civil society to be rebuilt
unless businesses return to their traditional support of charities that look
after their workers' well-being. Backing local hospitals and baseball teams
are expenses delegitimized recently by shareholder pressure.
   Voices from a reviving left are also calling for changes in the ways
corporations operate. The motivating idea in liberal circles is to build a
stakeholder society, which calls for a wider collection of corporate groups
to join shareholders and chief executives in reaping the rewards of higher
productivity and profits. In Britain, the opposition Labor Party leader Tony
Blair is making this his clarion call to defeat the Conservatives. Just as
civil society unites conservative factions--libertarians, religious
conservatives, growth conservatives, and nationalists--under one principle,
so, too, does stakeholder society unite many liberal factions.
   Whether building a civil or a stakeholder society, both right and left use
the America of the second half of the 19th and the early 20th century as
their reference point. For good reason. It was an era of huge technological
change, economic growth, and downward mobility. It was a time much like our
own. Conservatives see it as a golden age of community, when the YMCA,
libraries, and the Red Cross were created, often with the patronage of
industrialists. Liberals recall it as the Progressive Era, when Populists
were elected to bust corporate trusts, establish fair labor laws, and set new
rules of the game to protect working people in the marketplace.
   What's clear is that both conservatives and liberals want corporations to
do more for society than boost their stock prices. In the recent World
Economic Forum of top business and political figures in Davos, Switzerland,
the central theme was the growing backlash against the cold exigencies of
global competition. CEOs would be wise to ponder these tectonic changes. One
thing is certain: U.S. corporations may have to strike a new balance between
the need to cut costs to be globally competitive and the need to be more
responsible corporate citizens.





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Transmitted: 2/8/96 7:33 PM (B3463121)



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