Breeding Disloyalty

1
Breeding Disloyalty

• Anti-Corporate Discontent

2
Job Creation vs. Wealth Creation

• Transnational corporations account for 33 of
  worlds productive assets, but only 5 of worlds
  direct employment
• Between 1990 1997, total assets of largest 100
  corporations increased by 288
• In same period, number of people employed by them
  increased by lt 9

3
Separating Jobs Wealth

• Job creation is no longer part of the rhetoric or
  reality of corporate strategies
• A stable, reliable relationship between workers
  and their corporate employers has little or
  nothing to do with either the unemployment rate
  or the relative health of the economy (p. 261)
• Some statistics

4
Wealth Discontent

• De-linking jobs economic growth breeds
  discontent, disloyalty to corporations
• Power of transnational corporations centralizes
  opposition to corporate power
• Wealth production linked to environmental
  degradation, threats to food supply (water
  quality, mad cow disease, foot mouth disease),
  crimes against indigenous peoples

5
Power Resistance One System?

• Transnationals are affecting democracy, work,
  communities, culture and the biosphere.
  Inadvertently, they have helped us see the whole
  problem as one system, to connect every other
  issue, to not look at one problem in isolation.
• (quote by John Jordan, British anarchist
  environmentalist Klein, p. 267)

6
Employment Discontent

• Discontent is not evenly distributed over
  employment sectors
• Very little corporate loyalty in McJobs sector
  (casual, temporary, joke jobs)
• Less than half of workforce is full-time,
  permanent
• Some statistics

7
Age Discontent

• Discontent is not evenly distributed over
  generations
• Those born post-1965 have received the message of
  no expectations
• i.e. no institutions government or corporate
  are seen to help

8
Resistance Discontent
The state recognizes discontent
Riot police in Windsor, Ontario during the
meeting of the Organization of American States, 4
June 2000
9
The Question . . .

• When job creation is disconnected from wealth
  creation, there is discontent
• When the majority of the workforce is not in
  full-time, permanent employment, there is
  discontent . . .
• The state recognizes discontent
• Can this discontent turn into meaningful
  political opposition?