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

Among its remaining provisions:

(10)   CEOs whose companies employ illegal aliens would be held directly accountable for the actions of their subordinates.  Upon conviction, the CEO would be sentenced to a mandatory prison term of at least ten years.

This would prove a more effective remedy for controlling illegal immigration than stationing tens of thousands of soldiers on the U.S./ Mexican border.

With CEOs forced to account for their subordinates’ actions, they would take drastic steps to ensure their companies complied with Federal immigration laws.

(11)  The seeking of “economic incentives” by companies in return for moving to or remaining in cities/states would be strictly forbidden.

Such “economic incentives” usually:

1. allow employers to ignore existing laws protecting employees from unsafe working conditions;
2. allow employers to ignore existing laws protecting the environment;
3. allow employers to pay their employees the lowest acceptable wages, in return for the “privilege” of working at these companies; and/or
4. allow employers to pay little or no business taxes, at the expense of communities who are required to make up for lost tax revenues.

An Employers Responsibility Act (ERA) would quickly return millions of willing-to-work Americans to fulltime, permanent employment.

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. Among the provisions of a nationwide Employers Responsibility Act:

(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 all 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.

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

(9)  Employers refusing to hire would be required to pay an additional “crime tax.”

Sociologists and criminologists agree that “the best cure for crime is a job.” Thus, employers who refuse to hire contribute to a growing crime rate in this Nation.

Such non-hiring employers would be required to pay an additional tax, which would be earmarked for agencies of the criminal justice system at State and Federal levels.

Republicans, always ready to attack President Barack Obama, have found a new cause for blame:  Obama is responsible for increased inequality.

“Frankly, the president’s policies have made income inequality worse,” House Speaker John Boehner said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in January.

And he blamed Obamacare for the growing inequality:

“All the regulations that are coming out of Washington make it more difficult for employers to hire more people, chief amongst those, I would argue is Obamacare–which basically puts a penalty or a tax on employers for every new job they create.”

Even Mitt Romney has suddenly discovered that millions of Americans are suffering from income inequality.

Yes, that Mitt Romney–who famously said during his 2012 campaign for President: “Corporations are people, my friend”; “I like being able to fire people”; and “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”

“Under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before,” Romney told a crowd of Republican National Committee members in January.

Mitt Romney speaking on the USS Midway

“Their liberal policies are good every four years for a campaign, but they don’t get the job done,” he said from the deck of the USS Midway in San Diego.

“The only policies that will reach into the hearts of the American people and pull people out of poverty and break the cycle of poverty are Republican principles, conservative principles.”

Click here: The reinvention of Mitt Romney – Edward-Isaac Dovere – POLITICO

But syndicated political columnist  Mark Shields has another reason for why millions of Americans can’t find jobs–or jobs that pay a living wage.

His culprit: International trade agreements.

Mark Shields

“They have been a disaster for American workers, a total disaster, beginning with NAFTA,” said Shields on the April 17 edition of the PBS Newshour.

“They have put all the power in the hands of the employer.

“The employer threatens, if you don’t go along, if you don’t surrender your bargaining rights, if you don’t surrender your health and pension benefits, if you don’t surrender collective union membership, we will move your job overseas.

“And as consequence of NAFTA some 22 years ago, documented by our own government, 755,000 jobs lost immediately, five million fewer American–five million fewer American manufacturing jobs than there were….

“We see it where all–the trade agreements, the investor class capital is protected, whether it’s copyrights or whatever, intellectual property, their investments. And they just pay lip service to workers’ rights….

“Median household income in the United States was lower in 2012 than it was in 1989. I’m not saying solely because of this, but largely because of this.

“If you want to see the dominance of capital that I think these trade agreements exemplify and embody, all you have to see is the 2008 crisis, economic crisis in this country.

“Millions of ordinary Americans saw their futures, their savings, their homes wiped out. And they got nothing in the way of relief.

“Those who had caused it, who had brought the country to its knees, the big banks and the investment houses of Wall Street, were bailed out by people. They were made whole.

“So, you had a choice. Who are you going to help and who you going to leave to make out for their own?

“We have capitalism for the rich and we have free enterprise, high risk for workers. And I just think this is what it exemplifies….American workers have lost their clout politically.”

Click here: Shields and Brooks on Pacific trade deal politics

Romney is right: “The rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before.”

And so is Shields: “American workers have lost their clout politically.”

But what neither man offered was a solution–although one is available.

It is long past time for Americans to 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.

The solution to these evils can be summed up 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.