What do George W. Bush and Enron’s Ken Lay have in common? What do Tom Daschle and Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling have in common? Or for that matter what does the U.S. Congress and the Enron Board of Directors have in common? If you said “nothing” you haven’t been paying attention.
On June 26th, 2003 Labor Secretary Elaine Chao announced that the Labor Department filed suit against Enron Corporation, former CEOs Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, and the former Enron Board of Directors. The suit was filed against the Enron honchos for failing to protect Enron’s workers’ retirement assets and to “recover losses that Enron employees suffered due to the mismanagement of… Enron’s pension plans.” The Labor Department announcement goes on to boast “ This action will strengthen the American workforce’s confidence in their retirement savings.”
In today’s shortsighted, “today is the center of the universe” view of America, Enron’s betrayal of their workforce is the greatest sin. Yet before pension plans, and before 401-Ks there was another greater source of the American workforces “confidence” for their future.
America herself was the great confidence for U.S. citizen workers. America’ s foundation built on a steady history of citizen investment was our greatest source of confidence. America’s ever growing, ever expanding middle-class was built on the efforts and sacrifices of preceding generations of American workers.
Every union strike, whether you agreed or not, was aimed at bettering the workers condition and helping to move them into America’s middle-class. Each new American invention, whether you liked them or not, was an effort to improve our society and our standard of living. Every business decision, whether good or bad, was meant to benefit a business that was in partnership with its workforce.
We have inherited a nation from previous generations that WAS our greatest source of confidence in our future. The financial strength of our economy was inherited from the dedicated efforts of previous generations. Our nation of laws and protections was inherited from the sacrifices of many men and women from prior generations. The security and safety afforded us in a troubled and dangerous world was gained from the ultimate sacrifices of prior generations.
Yet today we find our nation and citizens being stripped of all of this investment with the full acquiescence of the elected leaders who are the supposed defenders of our national inheritance.
How are President Bush and the U.S. Congress like those Enron leaders that the Labor Department has filed suit against? Consider that Enron, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are charged with ignoring repeated warning signs of financial trouble, ignoring the plummeting value of Enron stock, and misrepresenting financial conditions to employees. And then consider the exploding national debt, the falling value of the U.S. dollar, and the “less is more” spin placed on the growing loss of manufacturing and high-end service sector jobs.
Our national leadership is betraying the American citizen just as Enron’s leaders betrayed their own workers.
Our nation’s infrastructure shows signs of crumbling and American business is spending BILLIONS to build infrastructure in foreign lands to take advantage of cheap foreign labor. These new facilities produce or provide products at one-third to one-fourth the labor cost, and then those very products or services are sold to the very people whose jobs are being taken by this betrayal to cheap labor.
Watching over this great betrayal are America’s princely leaders like Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. Senator Hatch believes that one million “guest workers” (H-1B and L-1 visa holders) in the engineering and high tech job markets, not to mention the uncounted millions of low skill workers, are not enough. No, for Senator Hatch we should admit even more. With well over 8.8 million Americans looking for work the Senator wants to admit these “guest” because American business says American workers are too expensive.
And what does the great national CEO have to say about all of this…President Bush says “bring’em on.” We need even more “guest workers”, even more work visa programs, and plenty of amnesties to go around.
The foxes are guarding the henhouse. Our national inheritance is flooding out of the country. How do you file suit for mismanaging a country?