When an American employer can compel his employees to be permanently tattooed with the company’s logo, it’s time for a complete overhaul of the nation’s employment laws.

That’s what happened to about 40 employees of Rapid Reality, a New York-based residentia real estate brokerage firm, in return for a 15% raise in commission.

Behind such an outrage lies the justifiable fear of employees that their employers will throw them into the street and pocket their earnings.

Click here: Rapid Realty discusses company tattoos – YouTube

And the terms of such an overhaul can best be summed up in a nationwide Employers Responsibility Act (ERA)

Eleven of its ts povisions have already been outlined.  Here are the remaining ones:

(12) The U.S. Departments of Justice and Labor would regularly monitor the extent of employer compliance with the provisions of this Act.

Among these measures: Sending undercover agents, posing as highly-qualified job-seekers, to apply at companies—and then vigorously prosecuting those employers who blatantly refused to hire despite their proven economic ability to do so.

This would be comparable to the long-time and legally-validated practice of using undercover agents to determine compliance with fair-housing laws.

(13) The Justice Department and/or the Labor Department would be required to maintain a publicly-accessible database on those companies that had been cited, sued/ and/or convicted for such offenses as discrimination, harassment, health and/or safety violations or employing illegal aliens. Employers would be legally required to regularly provide such information to these agencies, so that it would remain accurate and up-to-date.

Such information would arm job applicants with vital information about the employers they were approaching. They could thus decide in advance if an employer is deserving of their skills and dedication. As matters now stand, employers can legally demand to learn even the most private details of an applicant’s life without having to disclose even the most basic information about themselves and their history of treating employees.

(14) 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. Without employers eager to hire illegal aliens at a fraction of the money paid to American workers, the invasions of illegal job-seekers would quickly come to an end.

(15) A portion of employers’ existing Federal taxes would be set aside to create a national clearinghouse for placing unemployed but qualified job-seekers.

* * * * *

For thousands of years, otherwise highly intelligent men and women believed that kings ruled by divine right. That kings held absolute power, levied extortionate taxes and sent countless millions of men off to war–all because God wanted it that way.

That lunacy was dealt a deadly blow in 1776 when American Revolutionaries threw off the despotic rule of King George III of England.

But today, millions of Americans remain imprisoned by an equally outrageous and dangerous theory: The Theory of the Divine Right of Employers.

Summing up this employer-as-God attitude, Calvin Coolidge still speaks for the overwhelming majority of employers and their paid shills in government: “The man who builds a factory builds a temple, and the man who works there worships there.”

America can no longer afford such a dangerous fallacy as the Theory of the Divine Right of Employers.

The solution lies in remembering that the powerful never voluntarily surrender their privileges.

Americans did not win their freedom from Great Britain–-and its enslaving doctrine of “the divine right of kings”-–by begging for their rights.

And Americans will not win their freedom from their corporate masters–-and the equally enslaving doctrine of “the divine right of employers”––by begging for the right to work and support themselves and their families.

And they will most certainly never win such freedom by supporting right-wing political candidates whose first and only allegiance is to the corporate interests who bankroll their campaigns.

Corporations can–and do–spend millions of dollars on TV ads, selling lies–lies such as the “skills gap,” and how if the wealthy are forced to pay their fair share of taxes, jobs will inevitably disappear.

But Americans can choose to reject those lies–and demand that employers behave like patriots instead of predators.

In 1970, Congress finally recognized the threat organized crime posed to the Nation’s security and passed the Organized Crime Control Act.  This gave law enforcement agents and prosecutors powerful weapons against the Mafia and similar criminal groups.

It’s long past time that Congress be forced–by fed-up voters–to recognize the threat posed to the financial and social security of the Nation by the unchecked power of greed-fueled corporations.

It’s time for Congress to apply to corporate slave-masters the wisdom of Robert F. Kennedy’s warning about the Mafia: “If we do not on a national scale attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us.”

When an American employer can compel his employees to be permanently tattooed with the company’s logo, it’s time for a complete overhaul of the nation’s employment laws.

That’s what happened to about 40 employees of Rapid Reality, a New York-based residentia real estate brokerage firm.  In return, they got a 15% raise in commission.

Although this story has received wide media attention, it has been treated as an oddity out of “Believe It or Not.”  No one has pointed out the sheer barbarity of such a proposal.  Or the sheer barbarity of a culture that bestows such unchecked power on corporate employers.

And the antidote to such employer barbarism: A nationwide Employers Responsibility Act (ERA).

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.

In Part One, I outlined its first two provisions.  Here are an additional nine:

(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.

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.

(10) 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.

(11) Employers who continue to make such overtures would be prosecuted for attempted bribery or extortion:

1. Bribery, if they offered to move to a city/state in return for “economic incentives,” or
2. Extortion, if they threatened to move their companies from a city/state if they did not receive such “economic incentives.”

This would protect employees against artificially-depressed wages and unsafe working conditions; protect the environment in which these employees live; and protect cities/states from being pitted against one another at the expense of their economic prosperity.