An Employers Responsibility Act (ERA) would simultaneously address the following evils for which employers are directly responsible:   

• The loss of jobs within the United States owing to companies’ moving their operations abroad—solely to pay substandard wages to their new employees.
• The mass firings of employees which usually accompany corporate mergers or acquisitions.
• The widespread victimization of part-time employees, who are not legally protected against such threats as racial discrimination, sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions.

• The refusal of many employers to create better than menial, low-wage jobs.
• The widespread employer practice of extorting “economic incentives” from cities or states in return for moving to or remaining in those areas. Such “incentives” usually absolve employers from complying with laws protecting the environment and/or workers’ rights.
• The refusal of many employers to provide medical and pension benefits—nearly always in the case of part-time employees, and, increasingly, for full-time, permanent ones as well.
• Rising crime rates, due to rising unemployment.

Among its provisions:

(1) American companies that close plants in the United States and open others abroad would be forbidden to sell products made in those foreign plants within the United States.

This would protect both American and foreign workers from employers seeking to profit at their expense. American workers would be ensured of continued employment. And foreign laborers would be protected against substandard wages and working conditions.

Companies found violating this provision would be subject to Federal criminal prosecution. Guilty verdicts would result in heavy fines and lengthy imprisonment for their owners and top managers.

(2) Large companies (those employing more than 100 persons) would be required to create entry-level training programs for new, future employees.

These would be modeled on programs now existing for public employees, such as firefighters, police officers and members of the armed services.

Such programs would remove the employer excuse, “I’m sorry, but we can’t hire you because you’ve never had any experience in this line of work.” After all, the Air Force has never rejected an applicant because, “I’m sorry, but you’ve never flown a plane before.”

This Nation has greatly benefited from the humane and professional efforts of the men and women who have graduated from public-sector training programs. There is no reason for the private sector to shun programs that have succeeded so brilliantly for the public sector.

(3) Employers would receive tax credits for creating professional, well-paying, full-time jobs.

This would encourage the creation of better than the menial, dead-end, low-paying and often part-time jobs which exist in the service industry. Employers found using such tax credits for any other purpose would be prosecuted for tax fraud.

(4) A company that acquired another—through a merger or buyout—would be forbidden to fire en masse the career employees of that acquired company.

This would be comparable to the protection existing for career civil service employees. Such a ban would prevent a return to the predatory “corporate raiding” practices of the 1980s, which left so much human and economic wreckage in their wake.

The wholesale firing of employees would trigger the prosecution of the company’s new owners. Employees could still be fired, but only for provable just cause, and only on a case-by-case basis.

(5) Employers would be required to provide full medical and pension benefits for all employees, regardless of their full-time or part-time status.

Increasingly, employers are replacing full-time workers with part-time ones—solely to avoid paying medical and pension benefits.

Requiring employers to act humanely and responsibly toward all their employees would encourage them to provide full-time positions—and hasten the death of this greed-based practice.

(6) Employers of part-time workers would be required to comply with all federal labor laws.

Under current law, part-time employees are not protected against such abuses as discrimination, sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions. Closing this loophole would immediately create two positive results:

• Untold numbers of currently-exploited workers would be protected from the abuses of predatory employers; and
• Even predatorily-inclined employers would be encouraged to offer permanent, fulltime jobs rather than only part-time ones—since a major incentive for offering part-time jobs would now be eliminated.

(7) Employers would be encouraged to hire to their widest possible limits,through a combination of financial incentives and legal sanctions. Among those incentives:

Employers demonstrating a willingness to hire would receive substantial Federal tax credits, based on the number of new, permanent employees hired per year.

Employers claiming eligibility for such credits would be required to make their financial records available to Federal investigators. Employers found making false claims would be prosecuted for perjury and tax fraud, and face heavy fines and imprisonment if convicted.

(8) Among those sanctions: Employers refusing to hire could be required to prove, in court:

• Their economic inability to hire further employees, and/or
• The unfitness of the specific, rejected applicant.

Companies found guilty of unjustifiably refusing to hire would face the same penalties as now applying in cases of discrimination on the basis of age, race, sex and disability.

Two benefits would result from this:

1. Employers would thus fund it easier to hire than to refuse to do so; and
2. Job-seekers would no longer be prevented from even being considered for employment because of arbitrary and interminable “hiring freeze.”

Donald Trump wants huge tax cuts for corporations. He wants to cut the corporate income tax rate from from 21 to 15%.

According to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, this could reduce revenue by about $200 billion through Fiscal Year (FY) 2035.

He claims that, with this extra income, CEOs will invest in their businesses and create tens of thousands of new jobs.

Donald Trump

But that’s not what past CEOs have done. The have sought to please investors, not workers. And, certainly not those seeking work.

Darius Adamczyk, CEO of Honeywell International Inc., said “tax reform” would “offer greater flexibility for Honeywell.”  He added that the corporation would invest more cash in the United States to pay for mergers and acquisitions, share buybacks and paying down debt. 

He didn’t say anything about hiring more workers. 

According to McKinsey & Company, the 500 largest US nonfinancial companies have accumulated around $1 trillion. Most of this is held offshore, in non-US overseas subsidiaries, to avoid the incremental US income taxes they would pay if they repatriated the money under current US laws

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said the company wanted to bring back offshore cash if tax rates for doing so were lower: “What we would do with it, let’s wait and see exactly what it is, but as I’ve said before we are always looking at acquisitions.” 

In a corporate acquisition, a company buys a controlling interest in another company, by acquiring all or most of its shares.

Most of the offshore cash brought home by U.S. companies in past tax holidays was used to buy back shares or make acquisitions, not to fund investments in production capacity or jobs.

Corporations were not legally required to use those tax cut savings to hire more workers. And Trump’s tax cut proposal had no such requirement, either.

According to John Divine, staff writer for U.S. News & World Report‘s Money section: “As long as there are no strings attached on how or where companies spend these savings, taxpayers get a raw deal.”

Tax cuts for the wealthy have been a favorite—perhaps the favorite—Republican mantra since 1980, when former California Governor Ronald Reagan was elected President.

Ronald Reagan

Reagan, like every major Republican Presidential candidate since, promised that giving tax cuts to the wealthy would prove highly beneficial to ordinary workers.

The official name for this policy was “supply side economics.”  In reality, it was known—and functioned—as “trickle down economics.” 

“A rising tide lifts all boats,” claimed Reagan. A more realistic slogan for the results of his economics policies would have been: “A rising tide lifts some yachts.”

Among those charting Reagan’s economics legacy as President was former CBS Correspondent David Schoenbrun. In his bestselling autobiography, America Inside Out: At Home and Abroad from Roosevelt to Reagan, he noted:

• On January 28, 1981, keeping a pledge to his financial backers in the oil industry, Reagan abolished Federal controls on the price of oil.
• Within a week, Exxon, Texaco and Shell raised gasoline prices and prices of home heating oil.
• Reagan saw it as his duty to put a floor under prices, not a ceiling above them.
• Reagan believed that when government helped business it wasn’t interfering. Loaning money to bail out a financially incompetent Chrysler was “supporting the free enterprise system.”
• But putting a high-profits tax on price-gouging corporations or filing anti-trust suits against them was “Communistic” and therefore intolerable.
• Tax-breaks for wealthy businesses meant helping America become stronger.
• But welfare for the poor or the victims of a predatory marketplace economy weakened America by sapping its morale.

“In short,” wrote Schoenbrun, “welfare for the rich is good for America. But welfare for the poor is bad for America, even for the poor themselves, for it encourages them to be shiftless and lazy.

“Somehow, loans to the inefficient management of American corporations would not similarly encourage them in their inefficient methods.”

To be unemployed in America is considered by most Americans—including the unemployed—the same as being a bum.  

And Republicans are quick to point accusing fingers at those willing-to-work Americans who can’t find willing-to-hire employers.

According to Republicans such as Mitt Romney and Herman Cain: If you can’t find a job, it’s entirely your fault.

And when Republicans are forced—by public pressure or Democratic majorities—to provide benefits to the unemployed, these nearly always come at a price.

Those receiving subsistence monies are, in many states, required to undergo drug-testing, even though there is no evidence of widespread drug-abuse among the unemployed.

But America can put an end to this “I’ve-got-mine-and-the-hell-with-you” job-killing arrogance of greedy corporations.

The answer lies in three words: Employers Responsibility Act (ERA).

If passed by Congress and vigorously enforced by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Labor, an ERA would ensure full-time, permanent and productive employment for millions of capable, job-seeking Americans.

And it would achieve this without raising taxes or creating controversial government “make work” programs.

Such legislation would legally require employers to demonstrate as much initiative for hiring as job-seekers are now expected to show in searching for work. 

How it would work will be outlined in the next two columns.