Corporate American and the American Dream

With the wide variety of issues and problems facing the United States today, one that regularly overlooked is problems with Corporate America. Today, countless CEO’s and other top executive managers have lost sight of the basic rule of a corporation, which is to serve the shareholders in the best way that they see fit. Do not be fooled by that statement, shareholders does not only mean stockholder, it means anyone that holds a share in the company, including every employee.

These days, many CEOs are being offered absurdly large compensations compared to the low wages that many of their employees are making. For example, a small town in Wisconsin, about 35 miles west of Madison, was a sort of one factory town where a majority of the town’s population worked for the local food processing factory. In early 2002, Tyson Foods Co. bought the factory and decided that many of the employees were being paid too much. Their solution was to reduce the factory worker’s starting salary from $11 per hour to $9 dollars per hour. To some this reduction in pay may not seem like much, but when you are the primary wage earner for you family, whether it is a family of two or a family of eight, a cut in pay may mean that you can no longer provide for your family. Tyson reasoned for this reduction in wages by claiming that it was necessary to compete in today’s market where out-sourcing prevails. Many families now had to apply for Welfare, simply to pay for the heat or electricity, and others were picking up food stamps so they could eat dinner that night.

The workers decided to go on strike and try to fight back, but Tyson hired scabs and continued to run the factory. Tyson would not raise their starting salary of $9, so the strike lasted for more than 11 months when the workers eventually gave in and accepted the lower pay. The side of the story that many do not know though is that in 2002, the top three executives in the Tyson Foods Co. received over $100 million in wages bonuses and stock options. All this for just the top three executives and, in the meantime, they destroy an American town to stay competitive. To add insult to injury, that very factory was closed down in 2004 and the jobs were outsourced to Mexico.

Stories like these are plentiful in our country today; you just have to look for them. The United States was founded on the principle that every man and woman are entitled to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but if corporations are going to out-source jobs and cut wages so that citizens need Welfare and food stamps just to survive, then none of those basic freedoms are fulfilled. The American Dream is constantly being denied to citizens on a daily basis because of executives losing sight of the basic principle that corporations should be focused on.