Reagan praises Walter Reuther (Project Economic Justice)

In this clip on Project Economic Justice, President Reagan's sites Walter Reuther's call for ownership by employees. "Walter Reuther was one of the first major labor leaders to advocate that management and labor shift away from battling over wage and benefit levels to a cooperative effort aimed at sharing in the ownership of the new wealth being produced. He was looking far beyond the next contract. There is a story that Reuther was touring a highly automated Ford Assembly Plant when someone said, Walter, you're going to have a hard time collecting union dues from all these machines. Reuther simply shot back, not as hard a time as you're going to have selling them cars.". August 3, 1987.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Ronald
• Reagan
• Walter
• Reuther
• Homestead
• Act
• ESOP
• employee
• ownership
• economic
• justice
• Norman
• Kurland
• CESJ
• Just
• Third
• Way

[RonaldeRobinson]

He is just being polite. If Reuther had his way Reagan never would have been President and we would be suffering economic crises two decades earlier.

[justthirdway]

The UAW went downhill after Reuther, who told the Joint Economic Committee, 2/20/67:

"Profit sharing in the form of stock distributions to workers would help to democratize the ownership of Americas vast corporate wealth. [F]rom the standpoint of stabilization policy profit sharing does not increase costs. Since profits are a residual, after all costs have been met, profit sharing [through wider share ownership] cannot be said to have any inflationary impact on costs and prices."

[marjacgeorge]

I have been working on implementing ESOPs and evening acting as an ESOP fiduciary. ESOPs are indeed a excellent solution to long term wealth creation for the middle class while assisting the business owners with transition and exit strategy planning.

[utubenotgoodasgvideo]

ESOP is often better than nothing but is also often far from a full worker owned cooperative. Equal partnership or LLC based on parecon principles is more just.

[RonaldeRobinson]

I 'd give more workers a stake in ownership. E.g., I'd give the Post Office to postal employees immediately. But, I am not sure your point is always correct. If capital movement is restricted, which it may be when disbursed, then it might not flow to the best economic opportunities in a timely fashion. That could put pressure on prices or weaken America's competitive position. Again, I doubt that is reason enough not to disburse, at least voluntarily, but let's not over state the benefits.

[louiscaponecchia]

walter reuther was the second coming.