And here we are today, with even more concentration in global corporate hands by companies that easily are able to quit the country and close plants down, go abroad, transfer their allegiance to other countries. Although when they get in trouble they call on Washington for bailouts and to send in the Marines. You advocate putting corporations that break the law into trusteeship. Under U.S. labor law, when there are crooked labor unions, the Justice Department, through a court action, replaces the leaders and puts in trustees to straighten out the union. Unfortunately, there has never been a similar law for crooked corporations.
Labor unions are artificial entities.
They are corporations, actually. A business corporation can be thrown into bankruptcy by its creditors, but if you have a criminal recidivist corporation, whether it s through chronic poisoning of communities by pollution, corruption or price fixing or abusing workers in a variety of ways over time, there s no opportunity for authorities to remove the board of directors and its officers and put in trustees to straighten out the corporation. The only way corporations are straightened out is by creditors, and that s a weak yardstick. Creditors aren t worried about pollution by corporations or corruption of government officials they re worried about getting paid. While trusteeship is a pretty traditional means of assuring accountability for institutions, it s never been applied to corporations except in bankruptcy.