I just keep hearing these stories and I'm wondering? Can this be right???
Help me out here and tell me if I'm missing something.
The first one I'm sure you guys heard, was where Boeing is trying to get their Machinists in Washington to switch their defined pension over to a 401K.
"Boeing has offered to build much of the new 777x airplane in the Puget Sound Area, but the company wants to get workers off traditional pension plans, replacing the benefit with a defined contribution savings plan. The company said it is considering moving production of the plane to another state if it can't reach a deal with machinists in Washington."
Chicago based Boeing gave campaign contributions to seven Washington State lawmakers a few days before the legislature voted to give the company a huge tax break accoding to records recently filed with the Public Disclosure Commission
http://www.thenewstribune.com/...
Ok so they get a big tax break from the state, and yet they want to cut benefits to their employees in that state????
I'm thinking maybe the whole thing is really competitive and the profit margins are really small and that's why they need the cut in benefits, and then I hear THIS story:
Aerospace and defense company Boeing BA -0.55% is giving money back to its shareholders, the company announced Monday afternoon.
Boeing’s board of directors authorized an additional $10 billion for the company’s share repurchase program, raising the quarterly dividend by 50% to 73 cents per share. Boeing last announced a dividend at the end of October, when the board of directors approved a dividend of 48.5 cents per share. Monday’s authorization comes as an addition to the $800 million that remains from a 2007 repurchase authorization.
Charlie Smith, CIO and principal of Pittsburgh-based Fort Pitt Capital Group, owns Boeing stock in his firm’s mutual fund and called the size of the dividend a little bit of a surprise, but thinks that a portion of the funds may come from state subsidies the company has been offered for the plant that will produce its new 777x plane. “[I]f you look at the size of the state subsidies that have been offered up for the new 777 plant, it looks like the states will be sponsoring a big portion” of the dividend, Smith said in a phone interview, noting that once the states give out the money, they can’t really control where it goes. “Boeing is seeing multiple billion in subsidies from the states. The money’s all fungible.”
http://www.forbes.com/...
OK so the state is giving subsidies to the factory and then the factor is trying to cut benefits to the workers who live in the state???? Then they are using the money to give dividends to the stockholders??? Wonder how many of them live in Washington??
So the stockholders are more important than the actual employees who make the planes?????
This is confusing.
OK so then I read THIS ARTICLE:
McDonald’s workers alone receive $1.2 billion in public aid, the study found. This is an industry, by the way, that last year earned $7.44 billion in profits, paid their top execs $52.7 million and distributed $7.7 billion in dividends and stock buyback. Still, “public benefits receipt is the rule, rather than the exception, for this workforce,” the study concluded.
http://www.salon.com/...
So fast food workers receiving public aid but they have 7 billion to hand out in dividends?????
FINALLY. I read this:
One economic indicator that has shown extraordinary strength in the recovery from the Great Recession is the share of corporate-sector income claimed by owners of capital instead of employees. By the third quarter of 2013, the share of corporate-sector income accruing to profits and other forms of capital income had reached 25.8 percent, the highest share ever recorded. To put this number into perspective, if the share of corporate-sector income accruing to capital owners in the third quarter of 2013 were 20.4 percent (the 1969–2007 average), every worker in the U.S. economy would have earned $3,200 more in wages.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
We have truly come full circle. From William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech
Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country; and my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses? That is the question that the party must answer first; and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic Party, as described by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party.
There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/...
I mean this whole thing should be the story of the year. That the people who actually work every day are working extra just to give their share to the investors!!!
I mean the republicans keep saying people should pull their own weight but people work more and they get nothing from it? Instead it goes to the "Idle Holders of Capital" who then turn around and expect them to accept less retirement?? The taxpayers have to subsidize low wages when the company gives big dividends?
Something is wrong.