Mike Ingles: Organize Home Depot

“The Taft-Hartley Act must be struck down and the fight the Employee Free Choice Act fight must be joined…”

MIKE INGLES

The philanthropist, Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot was on the Neil Cavuto Show on Fox this afternoon. Marcus, told Cavuto that the reason big business is holding onto their money is because the public is stupid, and all the networks (other than Fox) are promoting the big-lie from the Obama Administration that government spending in a weak economy is necessary—even if it adds to the country’s debt. Speaking like a true Republican, Marcus explained that the government should get out of the way of business leaders so they can create jobs.

Part-time, $10-12.00 jobs to be sure, but it beats starving!

In a country that has given him so very much (he will argue that he did it himself), where he prospered beyond his wildest dreams, where a son of a Jewish-Russian immigrant could find such treasure—Marcus just doesn’t get it.

Marcus—ruthless libertarian.

Like all self-made people, he finds it incredulous that anyone could not prosper in this country. From his vantage point, Home Depot offers a fair wage in a tough economy and that the fact the he and his partners all became billionaires from the sweat of poor people who were not born with his considerable skill and drive to succeed, is okay. Labor is a commodity, a cost of doing business. Labor is not people; it’s a fraction on a balance sheet.

Would a union at a company like Home Depot do some good?

Yes and no.

Short term, the answer is yes; wages and benefits would increase for the average person if they had someone to represent the entire workforce.

Long term, the answer is no. Without ease of establishing unions in competitors, such as Lowe’s, prices on goods at Home Depot will rise and Lowe’s will stay constant; folks will buy from the low retailer. Home Depot will go by the wayside.

So, what’s the answer? Well. The Marcus solution is to do nothing. The market—given time—will work things out. Meantime, real wages are so low that workers need government assistance to provide for their families.

The real solution is to ease the process of unionization: for all. Workers should have the same rights that they had in the 1950’s. Votes should be taken with no threats of retaliation. The Taft-Hartley Act must be struck down and the fight the Employee Free Choice Act fight must be joined.

For 50 years, since the terrible days when corrupt union officials disenfranchised the labor movement, our country’s labor wages have remained stagnant. Bernie Marcus and his ilk claim the market will work things out—well, it has—it has said that if workers don’t come together, organize, vote and protest this laissez-faire economy, we will be worshiping at the altar of oligopoly. Folks like Marcus will become ever greater philanthropist.

Marcus, is a philanthropist; he can afford to be. He can’t understand why stupid people, who are being corrupted by network news reports that government might be a solution, can’t see his point of view. Why doesn’t the populace disregard the hungry, the increased numbers of citizens on food-stamps, personal debt and the loss of jobs and tune into Fox News where they have the answers. Just as Neil Cavuto.

MIKE INGLES, while sitting in Ohio, does a lot of thinking about the nation and the world beyond.