IKEA sucks

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I used to shop there, I admit, back in my grad school days. But at some point you come to realize that it's all crap. And that's hardly the worst of it, at least in Danville, Virginia:

[T]hree years after the massive facility opened here, excitement has waned. Ikea is the target of racial discrimination complaints, a heated union-organizing battle and turnover from disgruntled employees.

Workers complain of eliminated raises, a frenzied pace and mandatory overtime. Several said it's common to find out on Friday evening that they'll have to pull a weekend shift, with disciplinary action for those who can't or don't show up.

Lovely.

On a related note, I saw Made in Dagenham the other night, the true story (with the characters fictionalized for the sake of the movie) of women machinists at Ford's Dagenham plant in England going on strike in 1968 over being reclassified as "unskilled" and being paid significantly less than men. It wasn't just about their appallingly poor treatment at Ford, though, it was about the fight for equal pay generally, and it was a remarkable milestone in the history of labour.

The movie itself is rather trite and formulaic, both plot and characters, but it's really enjoyable, with a fantastic performance by Sally Hawkins as the shy, unassuming heroine who leads her sisters not just against Ford but against the male-dominated union establishment. (I hated Black Swan and Natalie Portman's showy, largely one-note performance. Either the wonderful Hawkins (see Happy-Go-Lucky for more wonder) or Winter's Bone's Jennifer Lawrence should have won the Best Actress Oscar.)

In many ways, we have come a long way since 1968. Equal pay across the board is still an unrealized ideal, but at least there is less discrimination in the workforce, against women or otherwise. But what's going on at IKEA, not to mention at Wal-Mart and other companies big and small, shows that there's still an awfully long way to go.

Some things are still worth fighting for.

General Electric pays no taxes

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

You might want to sit down for this one. The Times is reporting that General Electric pays zero corporate taxes in the U.S.:

General Electric, the nation's largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.

Yes, quite extraordinary -- and, needless to say, deeply troubling.

And yet Corporate American continues to complain about how horribly it's being treated, how difficult it is to make a buck, how anti-business Obama is?

I'm not saying GE does nothing for America. It employs a lot of people, obviously, and it contributes a great deal to society, both for better (e.g., medical equipment) and for worse (e.g., weapons). And, yes, it has its not insubstantial philanthropic activities as well.

But getting away with paying essentially no corporate taxes whatsoever -- and being allowed to do so, given the "maze of [legal] shelters, tax credits and subsidies" it another other companies exploit for the sake of their own bottom lines at the expense of the public good -- is pretty despicable, not least at a time when so many people are struggling just to make ends meet, just to pay the bills and put food on the table.

Can you blame GE? Well, business is business, and business, at least in America, where it is not expected to have much of a social conscience, is about the bottom line, about making as much profit as possible. Let's not fool ourselves into thinking otherwise, into thinking that what's good for business is good for America. It isn't, at least not always, or even mostly.

But this is certainly a sign of what's wrong with Corporate America and with the system that allows it to rape and pillage -- figuratively speaking, to an extent -- without any regard for the consequences, to benefit from a society that allows it to profit with reckless abandon without having to pay for anything in return.

Think about that as you're doing your taxes and as you feel the merciless taxman breathing down your neck. If you were GE, you'd be in the clear, with your money safely stashed away "offshore."

But you're not. You are who you are, and you're screwed.