Will AT&T Do A Komen And Ruin Its Brand By Hurting Workers?
AT&T looks to be shooting for a double-bad award right now. They’re backing the hyper-partisan ALEC, and they’re trying to get their workers to take cuts while they shower cash on a few at the top. More and more, people are reacting to these kinds of attacks on We, the People — look at what happened to the Komen Foundation! So will AT&T do the right thing or will they risk destroying their brand like the Komen Foundation did to theirs?
For decades big corporations have been getting away with all kinds of anti-public, anti-worker stuff — blasting us with propaganda, pushing a right-wing agenda, paying little-or-no taxes, cutting regulations, and passing all the gains to a few at the top (the 1%). But people (the 99%) have been waking up to this stuff, and are fighting back against this alliance of big corporations and the right wingers. And when people react, it can work.
In Corporations Supporting ALEC Are Risking Damage To Their Brands I wrote about the “brand-equity” damage that companies are risking when they associate with hyper-partisan, right-wing outfits like ALEC. The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation got in bed with right-wingers and completely ruined their brand:
A few months ago, in a move to please the conservative right, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure® foundation pulled funding from Planned Parenthood. How’d that work out for them? Komen’s “brand equity” dropped 21 percent, one of the most dramatic plummets in brand-equity ever.
How far a drop was this? Komen was ranked among the top two. This year it ranked No. 56. That’s a drop of 54 spots. The value of the Komen brand is ruined. The Komen executives behind the Planned Parenthood decision were forced out.
You don’t want to hear the phrase “most dramatic plummets in brand-equity ever” when you’re in charge of a brand with recognition like AT&T has. And if even that doesn’t worry you the phrase “executives behind the … decision were forced out” might.
The Link
Last year I wrote about workers at Verizon, the wealth of the company, the demands that workers give up more of a middle-class existence, and their strike:
Verizon, with $108 billion in revenue and huge profits, is not paying taxes. Citizens for Tax Justice, in Verizon Pushes for $1 Billion in Concessions from Workers, While Receiving Nearly $1 Billion in Subsidies from Uncle Sam, explains, (emphasis added below because I got mad when I read it.)
Despite earning over $32.5 billion over the last 3 years, Verizon not only paid nothing in corporate income taxes, it actually received nearly $1 billion (the same amount as the concessions they are seeking) in tax benefits from the federal government during that time.
… In fact, if Verizon paid its corporate income tax at the official rate of 35 percent, it would have owed more than $11 billion (rather than negative $1 billion). This alone is enough to avoid the recent cuts in the debt deal to student loan programs.
CTJ also points out that, “…the top 5 executives at Verizon received more than a quarter of a billion dollars in compensation over the last 4 years.”
There is a link between what the workers at ATT and Verizon are fighting, the right-wing, anti-union agenda that the big corporations are pushing, and what is happening to your own pay and benefits, and the fight to keep from being laid off or getting a job if you have been or get laid off. There is also a link to the fight over minimum wage, Social Security and Medicare cuts and other things that are a “safety net” that keep you from being pitted against other desperate people, fighting for just a scrap of a life instead of a secure place in the middle class.
There is a link between these things and the anti-government, anti-tax agenda that weakens the ability of We, the People to regulate and tax the corporations, and to use taxes to fight the aggregation of wealth and power to a few who then use that wealth and power to erode our democracy. Democracy is We, the People watching out for and taking care of each other, and part of that is keeping the power to tax and regulate and set limits on what the biggest can do. Democracy is one-person-one-vote not one-dollar-one-vote!
Democracy Requires Effort
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