Corporations in the United States enjoy an exalted status in the media and in the public's perception, but they are also the beneficiaries of a legal status which makes them superior to all other citizens. As non-natural "legal persons," they have standing to sue and to be sued. Unless a corporation is dissolved, either voluntarily, by actions of its shareholders, or involuntarily, by state regulatory authorities, the corporation is virtually immortal. In addition, corporations, by virtue of their political influence in the latter part of the nineteenth century, were granted the equal protection of the laws long before the same civil rights were accorded to black Americans in the Southern States. See, for example, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886).. Most recently, the United States Supreme Court further transubstantiated their essential nature after anointing them with the gift of protected free speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the recent case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876 (2010).
In addition, many federal statutes which benefit corporations have been held by the federal courts to preempt more favorable state consumer protection statutes and state labor laws. Section 301 of the Labor Management-Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a), the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, ERISA, 29 U.S.C. § 1001-et seq., and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), 29 U.S.C. § § 651-678 are examples of federal legislation which courts have held trump state statutory provisions to the contrary, even when those statutes were intended to confer greater legal protection to individual citizens or groups of citizens or to protect against corporate abuses.
An audit prepared by the Congressional Government Accountability Corporation is a further cause for concern. It reported that, between 1998 and 2005, two out of every three domestic United States corporations paid no federal income taxes whatsoever. Among foreign corporations doing business in the United States, a slightly higher percentage--68 percent--paid no federal taxes. The government study surveyed 1.3 million corporations of all sizes with a collective $2.5 trillion in sales. Between 1950 and 2009, the percentage of total income taxes receipts paid by corporations to the U.S. Treasury declined from 27.5 percent--or 4.8 percent of GDP--to 9.6 percent or 1.7 percent of GDP.
The Founding Fathers never anticipated the unintended consequences that an ideology based upon the exercise of individual rights, unrelated to any reciprocal social obligations would exert upon the evolution of the legal system, which would make corporations more powerful than human beings; nor could they have imagined that the financial interests of these entities, after they metamorphosed into global, multi-national organizations, would become increasingly adverse to the interests of their employees.
Roger Steare, a professor at Cass Business School in London, commented in a recent letter to the Financial Times ("Workplace itself is a totalitarian state",2/14/2011], "While most of us who read the FT live in some form of liberal or social democracy, when we work we become citizens of totalitarian plutocracies that more closely resemble Egypt, Zimbabwe or North Korea." Steare further observed that "In business, our language is all about 'executing' strategies and 'terminating' people, who become expendable human resources...Until we can introduce social democracy into the workplace, where ownership and responsibility is mutual and rewards are fairly shared ...we will see no end to dysfunctional wrong-doing and the sight of former 'Dear Leaders' retiring into wealthy exile."
Current state and federal laws impose a legal duty of care upon a corporation to its shareholders alone. The question then becomes: If corporations enjoy the benefits of federal and state protections, as well as favorable tax incentives denied to ordinary Americans, what, if anything, do they owe to their own employees or to rest of us as citizens? Is there a duty of loyalty beyond the profit-motive and the devil take the hindmost? Or may a corporation such as General Motors simply close up its shop and walk away from any responsibility for the misfortune which its policies caused to Flint, Michigan, as was depicted in Michael Moore's documentary Roger and Me?
In addition, many federal statutes which benefit corporations have been held by the federal courts to preempt more favorable state consumer protection statutes and state labor laws. Section 301 of the Labor Management-Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a), the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, ERISA, 29 U.S.C. § 1001-et seq., and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), 29 U.S.C. § § 651-678 are examples of federal legislation which courts have held trump state statutory provisions to the contrary, even when those statutes were intended to confer greater legal protection to individual citizens or groups of citizens or to protect against corporate abuses.
An audit prepared by the Congressional Government Accountability Corporation is a further cause for concern. It reported that, between 1998 and 2005, two out of every three domestic United States corporations paid no federal income taxes whatsoever. Among foreign corporations doing business in the United States, a slightly higher percentage--68 percent--paid no federal taxes. The government study surveyed 1.3 million corporations of all sizes with a collective $2.5 trillion in sales. Between 1950 and 2009, the percentage of total income taxes receipts paid by corporations to the U.S. Treasury declined from 27.5 percent--or 4.8 percent of GDP--to 9.6 percent or 1.7 percent of GDP.
The Founding Fathers never anticipated the unintended consequences that an ideology based upon the exercise of individual rights, unrelated to any reciprocal social obligations would exert upon the evolution of the legal system, which would make corporations more powerful than human beings; nor could they have imagined that the financial interests of these entities, after they metamorphosed into global, multi-national organizations, would become increasingly adverse to the interests of their employees.
Roger Steare, a professor at Cass Business School in London, commented in a recent letter to the Financial Times ("Workplace itself is a totalitarian state",2/14/2011], "While most of us who read the FT live in some form of liberal or social democracy, when we work we become citizens of totalitarian plutocracies that more closely resemble Egypt, Zimbabwe or North Korea." Steare further observed that "In business, our language is all about 'executing' strategies and 'terminating' people, who become expendable human resources...Until we can introduce social democracy into the workplace, where ownership and responsibility is mutual and rewards are fairly shared ...we will see no end to dysfunctional wrong-doing and the sight of former 'Dear Leaders' retiring into wealthy exile."
Current state and federal laws impose a legal duty of care upon a corporation to its shareholders alone. The question then becomes: If corporations enjoy the benefits of federal and state protections, as well as favorable tax incentives denied to ordinary Americans, what, if anything, do they owe to their own employees or to rest of us as citizens? Is there a duty of loyalty beyond the profit-motive and the devil take the hindmost? Or may a corporation such as General Motors simply close up its shop and walk away from any responsibility for the misfortune which its policies caused to Flint, Michigan, as was depicted in Michael Moore's documentary Roger and Me?