Happy Labor Day Folks!

by Sheri Divers [courtesy of Blog for America]

Time to relax and celebrate workin’ for a livin’ in the USA!

We are thankful to all Americans who work and take care of those they love for keeping democracy and opportunity alive in America. 

Working Americans have built this country, created the opportunities that this country holds for our children and grandchildren, and have sustained the American Dream which has inspired democracy and human rights in other countries around the world.

As much as we should to celebrate all of this, we also need to deal with the biggest challenge to opportunity, democracy, and free enterprise in America.

It’s time we had a national conversation about the integrity, accountability, and standards of competency among our business leadership.  Yes, there are many great businesses and business leaders in America.  But it is also true that we are  living in the golden age of the overpaid and underperforming chief executive.  Currently:

• Too many senior executives are rewarded for incompetence
• Too many senior executives are being rewarded for malfeasance
• Too many senior executives blame employees and employee costs for mistakes that they make.
• Our business culture now equates cost-cutting with innovation, often leading to the gutting of once-thriving and profitable companies.
• The stock price of publicly traded companies has become the benchmark of their senior executive compensation, giving incentive to short-term gain and cost-cutting at the expense of the employees, long term company value and brand building.
• Most importantly, too many employees no longer participate in growth of companies that they build. Rather they are often rewarded with pressure to cut their own compensation and increase their workload; while senior executives are rewarded with higher and higher compensation packages.

In view of the above, it is not an accident that America’s once thriving industries such as automobile manufacturing, airline travel, healthcare, and technology have become symbols of America’s decline and lack of competitiveness.

Too often, our business leadership’s response has been to loudly whine about employee costs, demand more tax breaks, and maneuver for less responsibility to American citizens who have created and maintained the political, social, and economic infrastructure that has given American companies protection and opportunity.

We can do better.

We can celebrate Labor Day by thinking of ways to change these circumstances and make this conversation a national conversation – especially in our nation’s electoral politics. AND we need to put our money where it counts – in businesses who treat their employees, communities, consumers and taxpayers with fairness, dignity, and respect.

No better time than the present for this discussion!  Have a great Labor Day!

-Jim Dean

Chair