Sawant Urges Workers To Seize Factories For Democratic Ownership

reply to post by Kali74


I love it when Progressives always think that they know best, and should therefore be allowed to dictate how people run their businesses and lives.

macman
reply to post by butcherguy

 

There would be nothing to machine if the business owner(s) didn't get the contracts to build those planes.
Nor would there be anything to machine on, if the business owner(s) didn't fund the actual equipment and location.


Morons.

Add to that that there can only be so much profit in a company. And workers' labor is only worth so much.

OK so Boeing made 13 billion in profit ... is that before or after you remove the overhead? No one who quotes these figures ever mentions that.

Look at GM, by the time they became government motors the UAW was so into them that they were only making about a couple thousand per vehicle in actual profit.

reply to post by ketsuko


Hostess "went of business" to get rid of the union. They weren't broke, not even close... and look now, re-opened and union free. 'Murica!

reply to post by macman


She isn't a progressive.

reply to post by Kali74


If it quacks like a duck..........

reply to post by macman


Progressives work within Capitalism this woman does not.

reply to post by Kali74


So you say.

Successful companies generally don't file for Chapter 7 or Chapter 11.

And yes, I realize that in this same piece they needed to get rid of the workers. Part of that is because none of their potential buyers were willing to take on any of the assets with the union attached.

Do you know why? It's because the union obligations has killed the company.

Are you aware that this was Hostess' second bankruptcy with the first being in 2009.

At that time, the only thing that saved the company from having to liquidate was the following:

Hostess was able to exit bankruptcy in 2009 for three reasons. The first was Ripplewood's equity infusion of $130 million in return for control of the company (it currently owns about two-thirds of the equity). The second reason: substantial concessions by the two big unions. Annual labor cost savings to the company were about $110 million; thousands of union members lost their jobs. The third reason: Lenders agreed to stay in the game rather than drive Hostess into liquidation and take whatever pieces were left. The key lenders were Silver Point and Monarch. Both are hedge funds that specialize in investing in distressed companies -- whether you call them saviors or vultures depends on whether you're getting fed or getting eaten.

And again this time around, the unions are once again the main problem. This time, as it is in so many of the recent large scale bankruptcies we are seeing all around (Detroit, San Bernardino, Mammoth Lakes, City of Stockton, Jefferson County, Harrisburg, Central Falls, Boise County), the main issue was unfunded legacy pension liabilities to the tune of -

The critical issue in the bankruptcy is legacy pensions. Hostess has roughly $2 billion in unfunded pension liabilities to its various unions' workers ...

And if the money isn't there, it's not there, and when the economy crashes, no one buys Twinkies so the money just isn't there, but there are plenty of people like you who prefer to believe otherwise.

So, in the end, the trigger got pulled and the company went into liquidation with no more lenders willing to take any risks on it.

There are a few questions that obviously that this woman has not thought about in her statement.

How do you stop a company from simply shutting down, closing the doors and simply abandoning an area? Do the people she is advocating doing this, do they own the land, or the facilities or even the raw materials that sits there? No, it is a part of the Boing cooperation.

While the idea may seem appealing, the reality is that this woman is setting up all of the workers to be thrown in prison, charged and taken to jail, along with herself, if they act on her words. All the executives at Boing would have to do, is simply put the plans on a flash drive, and transport it to another facility, and set up shop there. Then if the workers tried to stop the movements of any of the raw materials, have them arrested for trespassing, after terminating them. It goes to court, and the lawyers have a field day, all costing the citizens of Seattle and the state of Washington millions of dollars in a lose/lose case.
The problem right now, is that with the economy being as bad as it is, it is a market out there for companies to pick and choose which states they want to operate out of. And any state that does stuff like that, risks losing the revenue that comes in from a company the size of Boing being in that state. After all, while it may seem to get tax benefits, that may seem unfair, this woman fails to take into account all of the people it employs, that in turn live in the local communities and spend money that in turns helps out the local communities, cities and states fully.

Forget mass uprising of the machines...it's the socialists/communists who have risen up en masse to destroy what's left of any semblance of economic freedom. They think they are taking back the world from greedy capitalists, but Antony Sutton showed us that the International Bankers were behind the communist invasion to begin with. Thanks for being a tool of the Banking Cabal Komrades.