Nominee's Background:
|
|
|
|
Bio: Mackin has 26 years experince with advising employee-owned corporations of all sizes and shapes from Fortune 500 companies to ethically motivated start-ups. One year of service as CEO of SweatX of Los Angeles www.sweatx.net, a model anti-sweatshop employer with a union contract. Ten years of service as a member of the core faculty of the Harvard Trade Union Program teaching a course called Capital Strategies for Labor.
Policy Ideas: A fixation on income inequality among progressives has blinded us to where the real money and the real inequality is located. It is located in ownership of assets of many classifications; housing, retirement income and perhaps most importantly, ownership of the private sector workplace. Progressives must cross the "continental divide" that keeps us as supplicant wage earners. We must become full fledged ownership participants in this economy with all the attendant rights and responsibilities that involves. It is not enough to restrict talk about ownership and assets to well intentioned ideas such as IDA's that would match people's savings with government dollars. We need to help people participate directly in the machinery of capitalism - at the workplace - and not just on the computer screen or in our bank accounts. A real "ownership society" is a participatory, democratic society not just of investors but of workers and managers in the workplace. Whe! re does labor fit in this scenario? Labor's job is to serve as the structural conscience to make sure that participation in these firms is bona fide and not token, to make sure that participation by working people is informed by independently derived data and where necessary challenging perspectives. In other words, labor helps make this vision not one of nobless oblige and paternalism but one of too long neglected industrial democracy.
Publications: Employee Ownership: A primer for Industrial Relations, Perspectives on Work, Vol.5, No 2, 2000 a publication of the Industrial Relations Research Association See also http://www.irra.uiuc.edu/ www.ownershipassociates.com www.sweatx.net
Nominating Speech:
Nominated by: Progressive Goverment Institute
To research this nominee, please look for them on the
Wikipedia website or at
Google.
|
Progressive Criteria:
The Department of Commerce will:
Promote commerce to enhance citizens' lives, not simply to enrich investors;
Promote decent, well-paying, environmentally sustainable jobs;
Take the initiative in developing a Genuine Progress Indicator to replace GDP which does not adequately distinguish between good growth and destructive trends; Work to provide new guarantees for pension security;
Support very small businesses, minority and women-owned businesses;
Direct and manage the patent and trademark system to promote the common good by promoting valuable inventions, research and intellectual exchangee, as a higher priority than protecting corporate profits.
|
