Commentary––

No Change Of Heart By Corporations

By William A. Collins

Corporations,

Small or great;

Prove the need,

To regulate.

Connecticut-based Otis Elevator (United Technologies) has exciting news for us. It has invented a revolutionary new escalator. Building owners and riders alike will love it. There’s only one catch. If you want one of these dandies, you’ll have to import it. Otis is only making them in China and the Czech Republic, not here. No jobs for Nutmeggers, and a clear worsening of our balance of trade.

This is no knock on Otis. It’s just doing what corporations do naturally –– making money –– ostensibly for stockholders, but more commonly for top executives who game the system. Indeed, it’s important to realize that this is how our whole business system works. CEOs care not a whit about workers, customers, or community. Decent treatment of any of those folks only happens if management feels that in the long run it will increase share value and bonuses. Thus it becomes the task of us workers, customers, and community to implement serious controls in order to protect ourselves.

And as we know by now, Connecticut companies are no better behaved than others. We all remember Stanley Works’ attempt to relocate its corporate address to a postal box in Bermuda. That would have saved it millions in federal taxes.

Less publicized is Pitney Bowes. It gets a terrific tax break from buying life insurance on its employees and collecting if they die. Nothing to the family.

Union Carbide, of course, was one of ours, too, before Bhopal. That one killed 8,000 and injured or imperiled the futures of many hundreds of thousands more. Shoddy maintenance was determined to be the cause. The company, now part of Dow, still pollutes the seashore in Texas.

And recently we learned that even the price of our wholesome local milk is rigged by corporate shenanigans. There’s been a long-developing (successful) attempt in New England to monopolize processing and sale of the white stuff, in order to guarantee a high, stable, and profitable price.

Citigroup, too, with deep local roots, is on the carpet for its alleged conniving with Enron over financing and reporting of shady transactions. From a citizen’s standpoint, it’s a shame that the investigation won’t extend to many more of Citigroup’s clients.

Responding to this negative sort of reporting, Mike Morris, CEO of Northeast Utilities (NU) climbed upon his high horse and wrote to its employees, “It is time for corporate America to stand up and defend our rights. Most of us have nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about….” He goes on to speak of a “flagrant conspiracy of the media and certain politicians,” and defends “well-meaning organizations and shareholders.”

This from Northeast Utilities. Here is a corporation that bulldozed electricity deregulation through the legislature, foisting onto its customers the whole cost of the decaying nuclear power plants in which it had foolishly invested. Because of the lavish use of lobbyists and campaign contributions, we will all be feathering NU’s nest for decades to come.

Needless to say, Connecticut is not alone in this corporate travail. Meatpacking, coal mining, and hog raising are surely worse. Which is why stern regulation of industry, from accounting to smokestack, is so vital. Understanding this makes it particularly galling to watch Washington speedily stripping away those few cherished regulations that we still enjoy.

No, corporations are not evil (mostly). But they do resemble high voltage electricity. They make our economy go, but they need to be kept under enormously tight control, for fear of the deadly consequences of their getting loose.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)