Corporation after corporation calls for less regulation, but can we trust them to regulate themselves as to consumer and employee safety? The answer is over century old: "No!"
Think of all the mine disasters because production was more important than worker safety. Think of the "Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire" over one hundred years ago. Think of all the auto and food recalls. Think of the shortcuts that led to the latest BP oil spill
Now the latest is the Bangladesh factory collapse, a collapse a day after police ordered it evacuated: "Western Firms Feel Pressure as Toll Rises in Bangladesh", Julfikar Ali Manik, Steven Greenhouse, and Jim Yardley, New York Times, 2013-04-25.
And there was a deadly fire in a garment factory in Bangladesh in November 2012. Almost any story you find will have links to other factory disasters in Bangladesh.
All because we in the West look for low prices and corporation after corporation looks for the lowest price manufacturers. Maybe it's time we double-check what we buy and look for the lowest price executives.
Showing posts with label high-paid executives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high-paid executives. Show all posts
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Friday, March 18, 2011
Benefits - Getting mad at the wrong people?
Tony Sheda wrote an interesting "Local View" in today's Duluth News Tribune. The editors titled it "It's upsetting to pay so others can get better salaries, benefits".
He relates how he left being a union carpenter to have his own business. He sometimes could not put into his IRA all that he would have liked. He has catastrophic health insurance so that his premiums are lower. He has had to pay a $5,000 premium and had $5,000 deductibles.
He is unhappy that his taxes are going to pay for better pay and benefits for public employees than he has.
I think his ire is misdirected. He would be really mad if he read Wendell Potter's "Deadly Spin". Potter is a former PR executive for CIGNA, one of the big health insurers. Potter got fed up with making the health insurers look like they really cared about people's health. He wrote how consolidation and concentration of power has led to huge salaries and benefits for insurance company executives while trying to pay out as little as possible of the premiums they were raking in.
Remember William McGuire of United HealthCare with his million plus salary, the huge number of stock options he received, and the manipulation to backdate those options so that he paid even less for his stock.
Now there is something to "get mad at having to pay so others can get better pay and benefits than we do."
He relates how he left being a union carpenter to have his own business. He sometimes could not put into his IRA all that he would have liked. He has catastrophic health insurance so that his premiums are lower. He has had to pay a $5,000 premium and had $5,000 deductibles.
He is unhappy that his taxes are going to pay for better pay and benefits for public employees than he has.
I think his ire is misdirected. He would be really mad if he read Wendell Potter's "Deadly Spin". Potter is a former PR executive for CIGNA, one of the big health insurers. Potter got fed up with making the health insurers look like they really cared about people's health. He wrote how consolidation and concentration of power has led to huge salaries and benefits for insurance company executives while trying to pay out as little as possible of the premiums they were raking in.
Remember William McGuire of United HealthCare with his million plus salary, the huge number of stock options he received, and the manipulation to backdate those options so that he paid even less for his stock.
Now there is something to "get mad at having to pay so others can get better pay and benefits than we do."
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