Companies are Working Against You

Elise Picard
Companies are working against you. No one reading this is a millionaire, no one reading this is a ceo, it’s safe to say you’re a worker or consumer in modern america, and I can tell you with a great deal of confidence that major businesses are working against you. Whether you’re middle class, lower class, or not sure of your place in the economy at the end of the day, we are being targeted in a variety of ways by corporations.

In america right now we live in late-stage capitalism. And in late-stage capitalism, gaining capital is the only thing that matters. From major businesses like Walmart for instance. In June of 2000 when meat workers decided to unionize in certain braches, unionize with no demands yet, Walmart ended the deli part of the store in six states, following with twenty states after that. The current CEO of walmart makes 22.8 million a year. Another example is ever popular Jeff Bezos. In a recent announcement Bezos claimed that he would be boosting the minimum wage of amazon workers to 15 dollars an hour. What he didn’t mention was the significant cuts to bonuses, forfeit of to a number of medical and dental plans, and commissions for white-collar workers. Jeff Bezos meanwhile has a net worth of 165 billion.

There’s a reason why companies are scared of unions, because their demands will ultimately draw capital away from the ceos and top managing class of workers. Their goal is not a safe or secure working environment, nor is it to pay workers a living wage. It’s too pay workers as little as possible for the maximum amount of gain. This is why, although you legally must offer breaks after working for a certain number of hours, many companies will schedule you for just under that requirement. Or companies will often berate and threaten workers, keeping them on the edge of passive exhaustion.

Companies aren’t just harming workers, they’re harming consumers too. Apple’s been a notorious perpetrator of rigging their products so that they can make the maximum amount of profit. When an apple product breaks, newer models now have a system that can detect if they’re being repaired. And the repairs, even if using official apple products, will lock the user out of the phone unless an official Apple code is entered certifying the repair is by the Apple company. Small tech repair businesses are suffering because a major corporation like Apple has put in place a firewall to ensure you have to pay a bigger price for a repair that could be completed by a local business. It harms small businesses, and it harms you the consumer.

And you may say ‘Then I’ll take my business elsewhere, I’ll buy my phone from a different company’. While that option is still available with phones, many other facets of business such as Internet provision is handled by only one or two providers. That’s why in many locations you don’t see competition. Businesses are no longer managed by small groups or local parties, many major brands are all owned by the same parent company.

These factors are obvious in our government as well. Many politicians, republican or democrat, have strong ties to corporations that manipulate their decisions. Corporate lobbyists have overtaken the government since the 70s, and their influence is unprecedented. One famous and recent example being chairperson of the FCC Ajit Pai who was noted to have ties to Sinclair Broadcasting. He then proposed and voted on changed Internet from Title II to Title I. This choice benefitting Sinclair Broadcasting. The writing was pretty on the wall or this one, but there are more subtle tactics of collusion with companies. Major tax cuts is one way, decreasing workplace regulation another, allowing companies to be treated like citizens is a hugely alarming one.

Corporations don’t just manipulate the government for their own benefit but manipulate the populus. A social media craze a few months ago was the Wendys twitter account, drawing on popular jokes and comedy to make you feel an attachment for the company. We don’t personify that company by it’s food or service, but rather by a faux persona created as a marketing tool to relate and manipulate young people. Corporations pretending to be people seems like an innocent marketing tactic, but is a subtly harmful as it makes corporations feel more human. A massive company should not be treated as a person, should not be treated with religious or personal rights. These social manipulation tactics make companies seem harmless and relatable, yet they are anything but.

Social manipulation is a tool that has been used by the government and corporations for years. In the case of corporations that often comes as punishing all workers for any union involvement, which often makes other workers dislike those who attempt to unionize, and perceive the union workers as the source of the misery, not the punishing company. This was evident in the meat handling union in Walmart. Now Walmart workers are too scared to unionize or else lose their job and get others fired. With the government this is another common manipulation. Often in the event of a disaster it’s the upper class appealing to the middle class to get them to donate to the lower class in disaster. Upper class members could just as easily donate, if not use their resources more effectively but often pull on the heartstrings of the middle class. Guilt tripping them into paying to help the lower class. Or in the instance of the most recent presidential election, instead of confronting the corerations and barriers keeping many people in poverty, the Trump campaign pitted one group of poor people against another group of poor people. Pitting lower class americans against immigrating mexican workers. Claiming the immigrants would steal their jobs and use up economic resources.

In America corporations have gotten out of hand, and similar to the industrial era are becoming more and more manipulative, more and more involved in the government, and more and more powerful. We talk about the degree of corruption in the industrial era and that corruption is a mirror image of what’s to come in American society. We need to regulate corporations, redistribute the wealth, and unionize. Politicians, Ceos, and Millionaires are working to preserve their wealth.







Works Cited
Ann ZimmermanStaff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal. “Pro-Union Butchers at Wal-Mart Win a Battle, but Lose the War.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 11 Apr. 2000, www.wsj.com/articles/SB955407680495911513.
CBS.MarketWatch.com. “Wal-Mart to Shut down Meat-Cutting Operations.” MarketWatch, MarketWatch, 4 Mar. 2000, www.marketwatch.com/story/wal-mart-to-shut-down-meat-cutting-operations.
“Corporate Personhood.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 July 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood.
Feingold, Danny. “Walmart's War Against Unions -- and the U.S. Laws That Make It Possible.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 5 Aug. 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-b-gutman/walmart-labor-laws_b_3390994.html.
Greenhouse, Steven. “How America's Largest Employer Persuades Its Workers Not to Unionize.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 9 June 2015, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/how-walmart-convinces-its-employees-not-to-unionize/395051/.
Harris, Ainsley. “Jeff Bezos Made 1.2 Million Times the Median Amazon Employee in 2017.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 23 Apr. 2018, www.fastcompany.com/40561786/jeff-bezos-made-1-2-million-times-the-median-amazon-employee-in-2017.
Norman, Al. “Wal-Mart's ‘Meat Wars’ With Union Sizzles On.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 25 May 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/walmarts-meat-wars-with-u_b_91757.html.
Totenberg, Nina. “When Did Companies Become People? Excavating The Legal Evolution.” NPR, NPR, 28 July 2014, www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution.
Tuttle, Brad. “Jeff Bezos Net Worth 2018: Amazon CEO Has Made $40 Billion | Money.” Time, Time, 5 June 2018, time.com/money/5301812/jeff-bezos-net-worth-2018-amazon-worker-salary.
Winkler, Adam. “Corporations Are People, And They Have More Rights Than You.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 30 Aug. 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/corporations-are-people-a_b_5543833.html.
facebook.com/jefferson.graham. “FCC Chair Ajit Pai Investigated for Sinclair Ties, Lawmakers Say.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 16 Feb. 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/02/15/fcc-chair-ajit-pai-investigated-sinclair-ties-lawmakers-say/342893002/.